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Home / News / Planning Department Co-Sponsors October 8 Bus Tour of Modern Homes and Buildings Designed by Architects Deigert and Yerkes

Planning Department Co-Sponsors October 8 Bus Tour of Modern Homes and Buildings Designed by Architects Deigert and Yerkes


Itinerary includes houses in the Tulip Hill and Oak Spring neighborhoods, The Primary Day School and Cedar Lane Unitarian Church

SILVER SPRING, MDThe Montgomery County Planning Department, part of The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, is co-sponsoring a bus tour of midcentury modern houses and buildings in the County on Saturday, October 8 from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The event is being organized with Docomomo-DC and the Potomac Valley chapter of the American Institute of Architects as part of Docomomo-United States’ national tour day, titled “Modernism in Your Backyard.”

The tour will be led by preservation planner and architectural historian Clare Lise Kelly, who is the author of the Planning Department’s award-winning book, Montgomery Modern: Modern Architecture in Montgomery County, Maryland, 1930-1979.

The bus tour will explore the Montgomery County work of Deigert and Yerkes, a leading modernist architecture firm in the Washington, DC area, best known for the National Arboretum Administration Building The partnership of Robert Campbell Deigert and David Norton Yerkes, which operated from 1947 to 1967, created distinctive designs characterized by their variety in materials and textures, surprising angles and contrasting spaces.

On the itinerary are the rustic modern houses of Tulip Hill (1950-55) and Oak Spring (1966), lunch at The Primary Day School (1955) and a concluding reception at Pietro Belluschi’s Cedar Lane Unitarian Church (1958). Bus pickup and drop-off is at the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro Kiss and Ride.

Tickets for the tour cost $50 per person and $40 for members of Potomac Valley chapter of AIA and Docomomo-DC.

Learn more about the Planning Department’s Montgomery Modern programs.