#479/The North by Northwest House with John Boccardo and Derek Esplin and Christine Madrid French + Mark Lamster + Eyal Einik + Musical Guest Monika Ryan

Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio

0:00Hi, I'm Todd Saunders. I'm a Canadian architect based in Bergen, Norway. You're listening to U.S. Modernist Radio. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Oh, I don't care what mama don't allow, gonna draw my modern anyhow. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio, where we talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world.

0:37I'm Tom Guild, and like most architecture fans, I love the Hitchcock film North by Northwest. Our first guest, John Bocardo, Derek Esplin, and Christine Madrid-French, have brought that cinema classic a little closer to reality. They've turned Hitchcock's fictional Van Damme House into a $45 million modernist marvel in Utah. Then, Mark Lamster, the newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner, reports on his work to save Dallas City Hall from demolition. Eyal Eynick is an architect-turned-developer transforming one of those Holiday Inn corncob buildings of the 1960s into a new Hotel Indigo.

1:16We'll wrap things up with a return visit from our musical guest, Monika Ryan. And now, here's your host who's going to be at that Hotel Indigo grand opening, Mr. Modernism, George Smart. Thanks, Tom. Every few weeks, I get an email or a call from someone who wants a new modernist house in North Carolina, or maybe a mid-century renovation in Palm Springs, or five acres outside Atlanta, a condo in Sarasota. All of these fine folks have wanted a modernist home for years, perhaps decades.

1:49And now, because of this podcast, they are positive I'm the right architect to hire. My dad, also named George Smart, was an architect. I know a lot about modernist houses, and I give talks around the country. Tom and I have interviewed over 800 people in modernism. You hear me discussing windows, or easements, or curtain walls, or approval processes, and you conclude, reasonably, let's get that guy to be our architect. You look at the U.S. Modernist website with hundreds of architects and 30,000 houses, and you pick up the phone to call me.

2:24True confessions, though, I'm not an architect, and I won't design your house. I never went to architecture school. I never designed a building. Nobody at the North Carolina Board of Architecture will ever recognize Mr. Modernism as a pathway to licensure. And being an architect requires a degree, thousands of supervised hours, and a mostly black wardrobe. So while I can't design your house, I'm always glad to talk about the ins and outs of the journey to becoming a modernist homeowner.

2:55Reach out. U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of Richard Neutris' Kauffman Desert House in Palm Springs, and six other houses in California. By the Ife Jones Conservancy, preserving the legacy of modernist architecture in northwest Arkansas. IfeJonesConservancy.org. And by Diane Bald and the Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs.

Building the Van Damme House

3:24John Bocardo fell in love with the fictional Van Damme House, a modernist villain's lair, from Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest at age 11. Decades later, he and his partner Derek Esplin actually built it, a real $45 million six-bedroom version, perched above Park City, Utah. They hired architectural historian Christine Madrid French, author of the definitive book on Hitchcock's cinematic architecture,

3:55to document this movie star of a house. Here's George's conversation with John Bocardo, Derek Esplin, and Christine Madrid French. George, North by Northwest has been a long time since its premiere. So to catch people up who are perhaps a little younger, Chris, tell us the plot of this movie. Yes, thanks, George. It is a romantic mystery with some intrigue and spies invented by Alfred Hitchcock. It's a 1959 movie.

4:27It starred Cary Grant as the hero and Eva Marie Saint as the heroine. Also, it's known for its villainous settings, is one of the things that distinguished it outside of Hitchcock's other works. And was this the one where the plane is chasing him? Yes, famously, yes. The plane is chasing Cary Grant, and he's wearing his own suit in that scene, by the way. Okay. And if my research is right, Eva Marie Saint is still around, right? She is. She is one of the few collaborators of Hitchcock still alive, and she is definitely one of them.

5:02Okay. She's 101. Yeah, I think she's 101. John and Derek, have you invited her to the house yet? No, but we've asked her through agents for an interview for our documentary on the house, and she declined, and she also declined an audio interview. She doesn't want to speak about it. Maybe she's, you know, at 101 and incapable of speaking about it. I don't know. It's heartbreaking.

5:33We would have loved to have spoken to her. Yeah. And she's the last one, I think, right, of the cast? Yeah. Of that cast. Yeah, and James Mason and Cary are all gone, you know? Now, Chris, towards the end of the movie, we get the introduction of the house, which is called the Van Damme House. So how does that factor into the plot? Oh, this is what's interesting, George, is that this house doesn't appear until over two hours into North by Northwest, but it ends up being one of the most famous homes ever projected on screen.

6:07The Van Damme House was the home of the evil villain Philip Van Damme, played by Mason, as you mentioned, James Mason. And what's incredible about the building is it made such a huge impact on audiences and other filmmakers. It changed forever how people, for one thing, look at modernism, which, well, it applies to some of what you do. So after that, people saw modernism in an entirely different way, that it could be the place where somebody villainous would live,

6:38not just as a ranch house or as a place where you could put your family. It suddenly achieved it. It was so effective that Hitchcock put a handsome villain in a handsome modernist house that everybody took off with that, including all the James Bond movies afterward. Oh, right. Of course. Yes. The villains always had the best houses. They always have the best houses. And it has to be up on a hill. It has to be a little bit isolated. And that's what makes this house so incredible, the real Van Damme House, because you have to take what was projected in the film and you have to articulate spaces that were never explored by Hitchcock.

7:14Now, John, when did you first see this film? I was 11 years old and I first saw it on its original release in San Jose, California. And somehow I got my mother to take me back about seven times, see it over and over again. And I had already been exposed to Hitchcock through The Man Who Knew Too Much, the second version. And I think I had even seen Vertigo, probably didn't understand much of Vertigo at that age. But I was sort of already on my path to thinking about becoming an architect.

7:50And the house at the end of North by Northwest just knocked my socks off. So I went back to see it many times, not only because I love the movie, but because I love that house so much. And started drawing it on my drafting board up in the attic of my parents' house. And just didn't get out of my system. Now, I did eventually become an architect and I did think about it from time to time. But it was only lately, you know, near the end of my career that I thought about actually building it.

8:23I knew it wasn't a real house. I'd figured that out in the years in between. But the challenge was always, could that really be built? Because it looked a little bit, well, it looked challenging, even in the movie, that it would stand up, even with those angular struts coming up, holding up the living room. But I investigated and I did find that it actually could be built at great expense. And went about conceiving it with a local architect in Park City, where I was living.

8:59And eventually turned it into a buildable project and found a lot for it and built it over the course of four or five years. Now, Chris, you know a lot about the history of North by Northwest. Who was the production designer and how did the original house get portrayed? Because it wasn't a real house. They didn't build that entirely, did they? Oh, right. The production designer was Robert Boyle, who is one of Hitchcock's collaborators over a number of his films.

9:29He's an Academy Award winning production designer and art director. And he writes that he was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture. And if you look at the Van Damme house, you can see a lot of that Frank Lloyd Wright influence. The John Lautner influence with those huge cantilevers projecting over space. Very Lautnerian. And but so Robert Boyle went to the USC School of Architecture. He graduated. He couldn't really find a job as an architect in 1933 during the Depression. So he went to work for the studios.

10:01And what's interesting about the buildings of Hollywood is that they were designed by architects. So the architecture of the Van Damme house was inspired by his training at USC and the things that he knew about Los Angeles architecture, including the Frank Lloyd Wright designs of Los Angeles. When John mentions finding the architect, we had seen another home in the area that had a kind of a minor cantilever on it. And we finally tracked the architect down when we met with him and mentioned this project to him.

10:35He said, I've waited my entire career for somebody to ask me this question. If the Van Damme house could actually be built. Oh, OK, cool. Now, I remember from the movie, I think this is correct, that the exterior shots were just artwork and then it was on a soundstage for the inside. Is that right? Yes. There was the primary view of the house projecting over the hill with Cary Grant running up to it is a matte painting. And they would use their own special effects. This is all analog.

11:06No computers at that time. And they would be able to make the house look like it was real. And then there was another view of the house from the other side. On set at MGM, they constructed the cantilevered portion and portions, obviously, of the inside. It was Hitchcock's intention. He wants you to believe that this building is real. Right. That's part of being involved in his fantasy there. And it works so well that people will ask me, like, where is that house? Like, how do you get to the house on Mount Rushmore?

11:37And it never existed. I went to Mount Rushmore about eight years ago and asked the park rangers if they ever got questions about the Van Damme house. It's like, oh, all the time. People are still asking about, is that house behind Mount Rushmore somewhere? This is the rumor that never goes away because of that movie, right? Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. John and Derek, how did you meet Chris? Well, she was doing a lecture in Palm Springs.

12:09And she was talking about a book that she had just written. Christine, the book is incredible. The Architecture of Suspense. Thank you. The Architecture of Suspense. And we actually had a copy of it. And John said to me one day, oh, my gosh, she's speaking at this symposium in Palm Springs Modernism. We have to go and we should tell her we're building this house. And so we went and the lecture was fascinating. And she talked quite a bit about the Van Damme house. But it was funny because when we went up afterwards, we waited and waited.

12:39And then we said, we introduced ourselves and we said, we want to tell you we're building this home. And I remember there was a little bit of a look of bewilderment on her face. And I said, no, we're really building this house. So that's how we met her. Yeah. And then I didn't really believe it either, George, by the way. Right. Yeah. I was pretty skeptical. I'm like, sure you are. You're building this house. Because I had no idea of the scale of what they were aiming for. And then I heard from him when the house was nearing completion.

13:10And I went out to visit it. Now, John, when I saw the movie, I didn't see all the views of the house. I mean, you didn't get a 360 degree experience of it from the movie. So how did you interpret what the whole house was going to look like? Well, I figured if I repeated what was in the movie, at least was true to that, to a certain extent, I had freedom to design the rest of the house to be a modern house with however many bedrooms I wanted,

13:47what other kind of things. As long as it didn't veer too much away from what was presented on film. And, you know, Eve's bedroom in the movie sort of got expanded out to be the master bedroom in our version. And then I took some other things from my own appreciation of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture. Like I repeated the following water, long vertical window from that in the corner of the house where the great room ends and Eve's bedroom is.

14:19So I figured I had pretty much free reign to do the interior, complete the interior the way I wanted without being so totally married to the movie. But we asked ourselves continually, what would Mr. Van Damme done in the kitchen? You know, what would the primary bedroom look like? What would the fireplaces look like? So we made sure that the house at least had a very cohesive feel that kind of echoed the feel of the interiors in the movie. And it's very much of 1959, our version.

14:51When you walk in, you're sort of like, you're taken aback, you know, 50 years to when the house was, you know, would have been lived in. And we've had people walk in that have essentially said, wow, this is, you know, this is very madman. Or this is very much like stepping into a different era. Right. And that was all intentional. It really is an incredible accomplishment. Did you all design this together with an intent to live there? Or were you planning to sell it? What was the goal as you were putting it together?

15:24I think the intent more than anything was to get it built. Okay. About 10 years ago, when we first started, it was about 10 years ago when we first started talking about it. But John had been through a few health issues and he said, I really want to get this house built while my health is great. You know, I hope it's great permanently, but he really wanted to get it built. And it was really on his bucket list. And the goal more than anything was to get it built, whether we lived in it permanently or sold it. So we didn't really have a succinct plan either way, but we've decided ultimately to sell it.

15:57Yeah, we've lived in, Derek and I both have lived in a lot of mid-century modern houses. And that's kind of what we prefer. It doesn't have to be a house designed by me as an architect. If it has the right feel, it gives you that comfort that mid-century modern design affords. And I think in terms of living here in the Van Damme house, we could do that for the rest of our lives.

16:28I think that probably we're going to repeat this pattern in the future if we move on from it. Yeah, we're very much into preservation. We did that to a house in Salt Lake City that we bought. A mid-century that was just out of the box, a 1958 that was just out of the box, totally original. We bought it with the idea to preserve it so somebody didn't come in and start ripping kitchens out and things like that. And then we later sold it to someone that was a massive preservationist, just massive.

17:02And they haven't touched it. They haven't touched anything. But what I wanted to say regarding selling the home, what we wanted more than anything is to have the story to tell about why the house was built. And that's really why we engaged Christine, because she's such a masterful storyteller with putting stories together and historic stories and current stories. And it's just such a fascinating story, even to me, that John envisioned this as an 11-year-old. Envisioned it possibly, well, he was fascinated by the home, but possibly building it.

17:33Yeah, and to that end, and cementing the story, very early on we hired a film director who does documentary to do a documentary about the building of the house. Well, and about architecture that is in film. Architecture in film, and specifically Hitchcock films. Because his best man at his wedding was Robert Boyle, the set designer from North and Northwest. And he was a teacher at AFI, Robert Boyle, when Daniel, the director, was going through AFI film school.

18:08Daniel Rehm. Yeah, Daniel Rehm. So we cast a wide net in terms of building the house and getting the story out there. And one last point is that when he talks about casting a wide net, we've had just a fascinating team, Christine included, working on this project. I mean, we look around at everybody, you know, from painters to landscapers to people that laid the heath tile, you know, from Sausalito. Everybody was an incredible part of the house, you know, rising out of the hillside in Park City, Utah.

18:40As of this recording, the house has been on the market a week, and hopefully it will have sold by the time this airs. But you can go on to MLS sites and look at it yourself. The address is 3968 Pinnacle Sky Loop in Park City, and you can see the photos of all the house. One of the things that I was really impressed by is this is a large house. It's six bedrooms, 12 bathrooms. How did you determine the scale of this? Well, I think more than anything, we knew that whatever Mr. Van Damme, whatever Philip Van Damme would have built, would have been grand to some degree.

19:18And we wanted the footprint to be comfortable and basically to be kind of a haven away from the world for either us or, you know, fictionally the Van Damme family. But, you know, there's a guest bedroom wing. You know, there's a lower wing for kind of a wellness area with wellness accoutrements like infrared spa, steam room, things like that, gym. But it's just the way it came together with six bedrooms, etc. And the engineering of the cantilever allowed for us to do a column-free parking garage for our collection of collector cars.

19:58Another owner, hopefully it will be a car collector, but another owner could convert that space into an ice skating rink, a shooting gallery, whatever they, you know, whatever they want. But they have 8,000 square feet of completely, there's no beam in sight. It's all being held up by the post, tension, concrete above it. Yeah, and that's all underground. So it's not something you see from the 360 view of the house. When you pull into the motor court in the front of the home, you are above the 8,000 square feet of parking, which is below that.

20:33And there's a tunnel that takes you into it, just like Mr. Van Damme might have had. There are some great pictures of this out there on the internet that you can be looking at as you go through this. How many cars fit into this incredible garage? We think that if you did it like a showroom where they're kind of placed at an angle, kind of like an art collection, probably 18 to 20. If you were parking them side by side in maybe three or four rows, you could probably fit somewhere between 35 and 40 comfortably with steel room to back a car out and drive out.

21:06So it is a very large space, depending on how big the cars are. Right. Yeah, we tend to collect cars from the era of the 50s and the 60s. So our cars are quite large.

21:19But someone with a collection of Porsches or something like that would have a lot more space. Well, I have to thank you guys for doing what I'm sure many people have fantasized about for decades in bringing this house to real life. I mean, that is just astonishing. Well, thank you, George, for spreading the word about it. And it's exactly what we need at this point of the project. It's been five years. It's been very difficult. It's kind of what we do. So we don't see it as work as much as pleasure.

21:51But this one has been a hard one. Well, but thank you, more importantly, and Christine especially, for telling this story. I mean, there are not a lot of homes built that begin with a story. And so we are most appreciative of you sharing this story. Thank you. Well, since Eva Marie St. is not available, I have a recommendation for you. Yeah. Barbara Bain, who was married to Martin Landau at the time and was on set during North by Northwest, she's still around.

22:23That's interesting, because that was his first movie, I think, or one of his first. Yes, very much so. Yeah. And they were together on Mission Impossible, correct? That's right. They were married for something like 37 years. Okay, Christine, let's find her publicist. Yeah. Yeah, we're going for it. Big time. All right. Yeah, I was a big Mission Impossible fan and Barbara Bain fan. So that would satisfy me. That's a great suggestion. She played Cinnamon Carter. Yeah, that's right.

22:53Haven't heard that name in a while. Gentlemen, Chris, thank you very much for being on the show. This is just delightful. You're welcome. Thanks so much, George. Bye-bye.

Saving Dallas City Hall

23:06Mark Lamster spent years editing other people's architecture books before he started writing his own. Now he's the architecture critic at the Dallas Morning News, a native New Yorker who somehow became one of Dallas's fiercest defenders. His first book was about baseball, the story of Albert Spaulding's 1888 world tour, spreading the sport and his sporting goods empire from Cairo to Paris. His most famous book took on Philip Johnson, the architect behind some of America's most iconic buildings.

23:38But it's Lamster's fight to save Dallas City Hall, the IM Pei building the city wanted to tear down, that just won him architecture journalism's biggest prize, the 2026 Pulitzer, for criticism. His new book, Welcome to Paradox City, tells the story of Dallas through its buildings. Hi, Mark. Welcome back. Thanks for having me. Great to be back. Mark, congratulations. I got to ask, since you're one of the few, you know, Pulitzer Prize winners that I know, what prize package did you get?

24:12Do you get a special, like, membership card or a secret handshake or a plaque? Or a car? Or a car, yeah. What happens? Well, if there's a secret handshake, I have not been admitted or introduced to it yet. You do get a check of a reasonable size, not enough for a car, but the prize is administered by Columbia University, and my daughter is an undergraduate there. So, basically, they give me the check, and I give them the check right back. Turn around and endorse it back to the school. That's great. Exactly.

24:43For about a quarter of a semester. Okay. The university cashier is standing by to take your money. Always. Always. Well, the Dallas City Hall has been in the news a lot, particularly in 2026, as the city is considering a different fate for it. When we last talked to you, I think this was kind of the middle of a process where it started off being a certain low, reasonable amount of money to fix it. And then that doubled or tripled, and then that doubled or tripled into this monster number that the city is now kind of using as justification to abandon the building or tear down the building.

25:25Have I got that right, roughly? That's roughly accurate. What started out looking like somewhere in the $30 to $50 million range ended up over a billion, and now it's come back down far again. But the city is still trying to figure out what to do with the building, and it has become the biggest political football in the city at the moment. And Dallas periodically has these great debates over what to do with itself and whether it's build a park and then run a highway through it or – yeah.

26:02So this just falls right into that. You know, the book, as you noted, is called Welcome to Paradox City, and the city is constantly pursuing these paradoxical objectives. You've been in Dallas City Hall, I assume, many times. How bad a shape is it in? I mean, like many, Dallas has a tradition of neglecting its buildings, whether it be City Hall, a Frank Lloyd Wright Theater that's falling apart, the city's most important public place, which is Fair Park, a 277-acre Art Deco National Historic Place that is a perennial problem in terms of maintenance.

26:46So City Hall, you know, it's an aging building that hasn't been taken care of. It's tricky to fix, but it's entirely not that complicated. It's complicated, but it certainly would be far more wasteful, environmentally disastrous and expensive to replace it than to simply go ahead and make some thoughtful fixes that could be made over time, you know, staged and made over time. Weren't they eyeing the property where the City Hall is for some other project?

27:19Exactly. So one of the excuses for dumping City Hall in the first place was to take its prime real estate and the local basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks, is searching for a new home. So they thought, well, we'll just turn this space over to the Dallas Mavericks and they can build their new arena there. Well, the Mavericks decided they would prefer to go elsewhere in the city and have already started on that process on a big, empty site that was the former home of a large mall in the northern part of the city.

27:53So that has sort of removed that pressure. And you would think that removing the principal potential use for the City Hall site or alternate use would have slowed the city down and stopped this process in its tracks or at least, you know, put it very much on the back burner. Instead, the forces behind it have seemed to be nervously pushing it forward even harder. That's kind of an absurdity. So where things are now is sort of kind of a stalemate as the city, you know, keeps putting out requests for more information about what a move would cost.

28:29And we're at a place where the public has been very clear in polls, in showing up to city meetings, that the public is very much against leaving the building. At least a large majority of the public is against it and thinks leaving would be a boondoggle. But the political classes and the developer class who donate money to the political class still seem to think it's a good idea. So that is the stage we're at now, which is uncertain.

29:00I understand there's a big piece of property next door that the Mavericks were thinking about for their own arena that's still empty. Are there any plans for that or is that where they want to build the new City Hall? The people who want to get out of City Hall, one of the reasons they want to get out is because the city, like many downtowns, has large commercial vacancy rates. So some of the developers who own that property would love to have, you know, the city move in and solve their vacancy problems. The land you're talking about that's being opened up, it's not vacant at the moment, but Dallas is building a new convention center on the site of its old convention center.

29:39But in doing that, it's reorienting. The new center will be in a different orientation than the old center, and that will open up this large space that the city has yet to figure out what to do with. It started work on the $5 billion or $4 billion, depending on who you ask, convention center with having zero plan for what would go into all this space that it's opening up. So that, too, is kind of a giant mystery box for the city and also indicative of the way it goes ahead doing things, you know, making decisions before thinking about their ramifications.

30:18For our listeners who have never heard of I.M. Pei, why was he an important architect, and why was this building so critical to Dallas when it was built? I.M. Pei was a Chinese-American architect. He lived to 102, died about five years ago. He was part of a golden generation that you could say came out of Harvard in the 1940s. He was classmates with, among others, Philip Johnson, John Johansson, Paul Rudolph, Hugh Stubbins. You could go, there's a whole group of modern designers who would sort of shape the way the American landscape and the American city would be developed.

30:57He was a little bit outside of that group. He was very commercially successful early on in his career, but he developed this very idiosyncratic, highly formal, sculptural, modern practice. Yes. And Dallas City Hall is one of the iconic buildings on his resume, and I think one of the two great modern, brutalist City Hall buildings in America, along with Boston City Hall, which was contemporaneous. And actually, he was a part of that design in that he designed the master plan for the Boston City Hall site. He didn't design the building itself.

31:35I did not know that. Oh, cool. Okay. Yes. Paye had a very large practice, did a great deal of urban planning during that urban renewal area, often not for the past, and at least certainly controversially, shall we say. But a central figure in 20th century architecture, most famous for the Pyramid at the Louvre, the JFK Library in Boston, the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, among many other important works throughout the country.

32:13Yeah, I'm really impressed when I dig deeper into Ion Pei's work, because he and his firm did so many, and the firm's influence from him continues under his two sons, I think, who are both architects. Is that right? I know his son, Sandy, took over his practice. One of his partners was Harry Cobb, who was, you know, an extraordinary architect in his own right. And the firm has left a huge imprint on Dallas, because there's not only Dallas City Hall by Paye, and also the Meyerson Symphony Center built in the 1980s, which is one of America's great symphony halls.

32:51But then there are a series of office towers designed by Harry Cobb, Paye's partner, including Fountain Place, which is one of the most extraordinary office towers in America. So the firm left a huge imprint on Dallas. And you're right to mention that, like, you're growing interest in pay. I think for a long time, Paye was not fashionable among critics and architectural historians who are seen as very commercially driven, formalist, when those types of building haven't been super fashionable.

33:23And I think there's now sort of a recovery and a reexamination of his work has been happening over the last, you know, five or ten years. The preservation groups have really come out for saving Dallas City Hall. I saw recently Innovative Gathering. This was a screening of the movie RoboCop, which had 400 people, and I didn't even realize was shot at Dallas City Hall. Oh. Yes. So RoboCop, which is actually supposed to be set in Detroit, is actually almost mostly filmed in Dallas.

33:58So it's a great view of Dallas in the 1980s. I guess Denver wasn't available. It had to be a D-City. Yeah, so the RoboCop is especially funny in that one of the epithets thrown at Dallas City Hall is that it's overbearing and looks – it wasn't quite cruel enough for the film. So in the film, they actually, using computer graphics, they took Dallas City Hall and stacked it on top of itself.

34:28So there are two Dallas City Halls like this, so it would be extra looming and scary. And another architectural note, the chairman of this corporation that, you know, occupied the building in RoboCop was actually played by the father of the wonderful architect Lorcan O'Herlihy from Los Angeles, who passed away about two weeks ago. So a real tragedy for architecture. The book is Welcome to Paradox City.

34:59Mark, thanks so much for coming back on the show. Thanks for having me. We were talking with Mark Lamster of the Dallas Morning News.

Transforming a Corncob Holiday Inn

35:06I.L. Eynick trained as an architect at the University of Pennsylvania – go Quakers! – before crossing over to real estate, and to date, he's a principal at Tidal Real Estate Partners, developers of the 19-story corncob-shaped downtown Holiday Inn in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was nearly demolished before public support encouraged Tidal to do a $36 million renovation, reopening this October. George went to New York City for this conversation with I.L. Eynick.

35:39We are sitting on roughly the 35th floor of the Voco Hotel in Manhattan. In case you're a travel buff, you know that it's an IHG brand, which is part of the Holiday Inn system. And today we're talking about a very notable Holiday Inn hotel that was built in the 60s. So thanks for being with me. Yeah, happy to be here. How did your firm choose this building to invest in?

36:10We're really interested in Raleigh and the market in general. And so we were looking for opportunities to invest. And the Holiday Inn at the time was sort of on and off the market. I think there's a succession of owners that didn't quite know what to do with it, to be honest with you. Oh, yeah. Definitely they did not know what to do with it. They did not know what to do with it. And it had been this succession of just Band-Aids and sort of small renovation projects, but never really giving it what it needed. And we saw that it was on the market, toured the building, and really loved its location.

36:42And to be totally honest with you, when we first saw it, we didn't exactly know what to do with it either. And so once we did acquire it, our initial thought was to tear it down. And we were planning on tearing down the building. There's a parking lot next to it and building back what would have been a different project, but a pretty amazing 20-story building that would have had a hotel and some apartments and stuff like that in it. Like the rest of Raleigh's doing. Pretty much like the rest of Raleigh's doing, which is, I think, not a bad thing. It's like, you know, Raleigh has a lot of open parking lots and surface parking in an urban core,

37:15which just it's begging to be developed and, you know, built to a denser degree. But that project, you know, we stepped back at a certain point from that as a project and then took another look at the building and really started to investigate it and understand what we could do with it. Well, you skipped the crowd uproar about this because people did not want you to tear that building down. I think it's a little bit more complicated than that. I think we polled people. We talked to a lot of people about it. And I'd say there was a strong 40% maybe saying, you can't touch it.

37:47I'm not sure what it looks like today. I haven't been there in 15 years, but you can't touch it because I was there in the 80s or something, which I get and I get. And that's why it's so important to people. There was another 40% who were like, I was there in the 80s. It's an amazing building. I have been in it in the past 15 years. It needs so much love. It's just not worth it. And then there's 20% saying density is good. We just want more things in Raleigh. So I think just 80% then were so attached to the building for a lot of different reasons that all of a sudden the narrative started to build itself a little bit in terms of what we can do with it.

38:18Is the building technically considered historic? Does it have any benefit from a tax basis to develop it? It does. It is now a local Raleigh historic landmark as well as on the National Registry of Historic Buildings. Oh, yeah. So you went all the way. It is. It is a historic building. And it's something that we didn't even totally think through as an option to get it on the registry and all sort of the benefits that come associated with it. But it's just kind of an interesting moment. I mean, I'm an architect by training. So I think it's a really interesting moment that there are buildings that this building was built in the late 60s

38:51that are now starting to qualify for these programs. And it's an interesting thought because it's not like it's a 19th century Victorian home that you're saving. It's a building that was built in the late 60s that has a very different level of detailing and concept and that sort of thing. Okay. So you're just stepping right into the problem of modernism. A little bit. Is that these buildings don't look like the past. They look like the future. And so when you've got a historical review board, considering them, it's like, this thing doesn't look old. Sure. Sure.

39:22I don't think that's a problem, though. I think it's just, it's like a realignment of what we think of as historic and reimagining of that period, right? Now, I was around when this building opened, and it was unbelievable in Raleigh. Everybody talked about this building. And it's a revolving restaurant. Yeah. Did you know about this? That was the rumor that would not stop that the top of this building had a revolving restaurant, which it does not have and never had. Never had. But everybody thought that.

39:52Yeah. And I discovered in my research on the other similar buildings across the country, that was the same story in every city. I mean, it's just, you just think it does. I mean, just like, we looked at a lot of these, like, of the similar buildings that were designed and built, you know, as you know, like, in roughly the same time period. And they all had this sort of cantilever top floor, right? And it just begs to spin, right? I mean, but most of them, I think, do have kitchens and infrastructure. And a spinning rooftop is a very complicated thing. Yes. And that's not what Holiday Inn was doing. I mean, these things were just quickly getting replicated, and that would have required a lot of engineering.

40:24It would have been very complicated. But it's kind of a fun rumor. I mean, we're happy to talk about it, but it never, never rotated. My family went up there fully anticipating a rotating experience. Everybody had told us. That's even funnier. And they would have these buffets on the weekend. Back then, it was four bucks or something. Sure. And you go through the buffet line. And so we were anticipating, you know, we got dressed up. We went downtown. Yeah, sure. And for the $4 buffet at the top of the rotating Holiday Inn that just came into place.

40:58Sure, sure. And the views certainly didn't disappoint of downtown. And still doesn't. Yeah. I mean, I think you get up there, and it's an orientation that is, first of all, it's one that you don't see very often in Raw. There's not a lot of, like, public moments where you can get up to something that's that high. Yeah. And I'm really curious. I don't know when you were up there last, but people that last remember being up there in the 80s or even earlier, that view is now very different. Yes. And the buildings around it, you start seeing layers of the city, right?

41:29Because you see the state capitol in one direction, and that's pretty much going to be a protected view because of the things between us and the capitol. But then you have the Raleigh Crossing building right across Hillsborough. You have 400H, which are two very new buildings. And so you start walking around the dial of the clock, and you see the warehouse district in the distance, and you see, you know, various layers of the city kind of unfolding in front of you. It's very cool. Well, it's interesting that the hotel is now going to be another Holiday Inn brand, the Hotel Indigo.

42:01That's right. That's a fantastic lineage. Yeah. Well, so Holiday Inn is now part of IHG, which is a larger group, right? And so when we bought it, it was the Holiday Inn, and it had been a Holiday Inn for obviously a long time. I think there was a moment where it was a Clarion, and then it came back as a Holiday Inn. And we talked to the IHG folks about what would be an appropriate brand here. We knew that we wanted to do something more than a Holiday Inn as like a brand, as a flag from the group. Not that Holiday Inns aren't great. It's just a different sort of aesthetic.

42:32And Indigo, we felt, was like the exact right spot. And what that means is there's a lot of flexibility in terms of what the interior and the exterior could look like. But it's still part of like a great hotel brand and IHG in general. So we thought that was sort of the sweet spot. One fun thing about this building, if you stay there, are the pie-shaped rooms. That's right. So tell our listeners about the pie-shaped rooms. So the building, it's a really simple diagram. There is just sort of concentric circles. So there's a core in the center, which is a tight circle of the elevators and the stairs and stuff.

43:05And then there's a corridor outside of that. So when you get off the elevator in this building, you're in a round circle of a corridor and you can kind of keep going around forever. And then they have the rooms coming off of it and they're reverse pie-shaped. So what it means is that right off the corridor, it's quite tight. It's about the width of a door. And then at the exterior, it's now a very deep hotel room. And we build new hotels in a lot of other places. And we've designed hotels in Raleigh. And you would never design a room the same way that they did back then. And we spent a lot of time with the architect and the interior design firm.

43:37And the FF&E procurement and IHG about how you really furnish a room that's shaped like a triangle. Well, they certainly didn't have things like flat-screen TVs back then. That's right. So that's easier, I would guess, to put in a room. Definitely easier. It's definitely easier. And you end up with actually a bigger room than we would typically build today. So, you know, you end up with a nice place to obviously sleep and, you know, hang your clothes and stuff like that. But you also end up with a small little work area with like a sofa. And you still have the great views, depending on sort of where you are on the dial of the clock.

44:09So it's like a really fun exercise trying to fit what a modern traveler wants into a room that was designed over 50 years ago. And also in the base of this hotel, interestingly, is where you park. That's right. So, I mean, the hotel and, I mean, you have to go a little bit back into like the history of when these hotels were developed. But it was a drive-in, drive-out hotel. When they designed these around the country, it was really like a suburban concept, right? Because the idea is not really like I'm going to walk in off the street into this hotel.

44:39The thought was always that somebody was going to park their car, get out of their car, into the hotel, back into the car, and then leave. And so you have three floors of parking, four floors of parking, actually, that is way more parking than we would ever build today for a similar-sized hotel. Yeah. That's just because they expected everybody to have one car per one family and whatever. And they also were anticipating guests for the restaurant. That's right. That's right. I think some of the like really interesting things they did back then, which is now something that the city is really focused on, for example, is that parking drum.

45:13So there's sort of the first floor is the lobby, which we could talk about the things we did to change what they had originally. But then you have just really three floors is just parking garage. But they built this like incredible breeze block screen around the parking, which is just like a detail, frankly, you probably couldn't afford today. But it's something that in terms of screening parking, the city is really focused on, you know, rightfully so, because you don't want to just see empty parking cars, you know, and headlights kind of coming through parking garages in an urban setting. Right. And I think they did a great job of like creating a volume despite it just being parked cars, you know, on the first four floors of the building.

45:48And the breeze block allows the exhaust to blow through. That's right. Making it a little safer for the area. And you don't have to, I mean, there's some other like mechanical benefits to it where if there's enough open free air, you don't have to ventilate it, for example, and it's sort of safe to drive your car in it and that sort of thing. But it's, you know, as like a detail, it's very much a mid-century modern detail and not something that we would do, you know, be a very expensive detail to like actually put in place today. So most people don't know the name Leonard Lundgren or T.Y. Lin, but they were the team of architect and engineers that created this concept and Holiday Inn started building these things all around the country.

46:25Do you know approximately how many they built? They built, I think there were a lot of them. There's a little bit of nuance in terms of like what they look like eventually because there is differences between all of them. I think there's maybe, I'd say, half a dozen that are still, no, probably more than that. I'd say maybe close to a dozen that are still like in their general form. I think there's probably close to like three to five that are in their like pretty original aspect of like Charleston has, for example, one that's very similar. We've talked to a couple of folks that like re-skinned them.

46:57So it looks like a glass cylinder, for example. There's a couple in California where they built additions next to it. So it's like a square building next to a round building and sort of connected them, which are kind of interesting. Yeah. And in Denver, they converted one to apartments, which is kind of interesting. So you maybe get two pie slices in your apartment? Maybe so. I think they're micro apartments. But yes, you could get two pie slices. That's right. I think there was a little bit of like nuance based on the location, but that was not, I don't think that was their goal. I think it was very much like a mass production of a prototype that Holiday Inn at the time approved, liked, and they just sort of rolled this thing out off a production line, which is interesting.

47:33I was trying to remember, and maybe you know this, Holiday Inn was famous during the mid-century for something that was referred to romantically now as the big sign. This was their enormous neon sign that was out in front of almost every Holiday Inn. Yeah. Did that one have one? It did. It did. If you look at historic photos, there was one. I have no idea of when it sort of went away and what happened to it. Yeah. But this one did have one. Yeah, right on Hillsborough. There was a really cool sign. If you look at some old like photos from, I think it's like mid-70s or so.

48:04Yeah. Yeah, I think it definitely had one. And they would usually have some sort of marquee in the middle. They would put up announcements like, you know, apple pie, $1 this week. $3 steaks or something on the roof. Yeah, that's right. Something like that. This was an era where the big signs were in several places. Arby's had the big hat. Yeah. That was out in front of all their locations. And a few of those are still around. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like it's Billboard, right? I mean, it's just like it's that was like the best advertising. I mean, obviously, I was not in Raleigh in the 70s, but I'm curious if they just use that also as, hey, I'm just driving through town.

48:42I'm looking for a place to sleep. I just happen to see that sign, I guess. That was the idea. I think so, right? It was not because you're not really planning forward. You're just like, oh, I'm in this town. Oh, wait, where am I going to sleep tonight? Here's that. And you recognize the sign. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's familiar thing. Yeah. I think it was the same kind of effect of the Tom Beaudet Motel 6 song. Yeah. Which has been on now for 40, 50 years. Sure. You know, it just gets in your head. That's right. You see a Motel 6. Yeah, they have a pretty good signage, too. And we leave the light on for you. Right, right, right.

49:12I remember that. That's great. What are your plans for the lobby and for the restaurant up top? I'd say the biggest programmatic change we made here was really in the lobby. And that was, you know, up until we sort of undertook this renovation, the only way to get into the lobby was through a vestibule after you dropped your car off. That was like the way to get in. And that's how it was designed, based on a bunch of different things. And we felt like both this hotel in this location in a city that Raleigh has become, where is a place that you want to come out of that hotel and just either walk downtown, you want to go up Glenwood, you want to go to the warehouse district, you want to be on your feet doing things.

49:52Because there's so many things to do. And so we reoriented the lobby, actually. Okay. So now the lobby, the front doors to the hotel are right off of Hillsborough, off like a new courtyard that hopefully gets activated a little bit and is a place that people want to spend time. Oh, that's great. Yeah, so you will now come down Hillsborough, which is a beautiful street. The front porch of the hotel. That's right. That's right. And now, you know, there's a storefront there and it's open and it's not dark because that was just, you know, you're set back from the street and it was kind of a dark experience. So this is now open. It's lively. There's people who want to spend time there.

50:23So that was a big sort of change we made. And then on the top floor, the big move is we added a fully built out and redesigned bar experience. And that we had found at some point somebody had sketched out what that might have looked like. We actually don't know who originally put together that concept. We just kind of found it as we're doing our research. And it really is you kind of come off the elevators, which are in that core that you can't really change. And now you come out and you're looking through sort of a glass storefront to this brand new bar and sort of looking south into the city.

50:55So it's just a very cool place to spend time, we think. And the interior design team, the architect did a great job sort of like making what we feel like is a very special place. Okay, so let's talk disappointing details now. So when you encountered the building, what were the worst problems you had to solve? Did you have to replace the elevators? Was there water damage everywhere? Was there mold? What did you have to fix? Yeah, so, you know, there was like a general state of disrepair, right? So we spent the first three months just doing things that weren't like new construction in the project.

51:27We were just fixing the roof, making sure there are no water leaks, making sure there was no contamination in the building, whether it's cleaning out the existing kitchen that was there and wasn't really cleaned that well and things like that. We just like first, honestly, four months were probably just that. And then when we started building back, the things that we encountered that we didn't anticipate was probably just like the general infrastructure of the building. So a lot of it was original. And the building was built in such a almost basic way that, again, you would not design it this way, but every bathroom backs up to another bathroom and they have their own vertical plumbing riser,

52:03which means the pipe's going all the way up and down the building. And those were original to the building. And we said, okay, great. I mean, it's cast iron. It's got to be okay. And most of it was not okay. And so we went in there and we replaced all of that. Yeah, these were, if I recall, these were like long vertical tubes through the building, right, that would carry the different utilities up between the rooms. Yeah, that's right. And that's pretty common, right? You have like a vertical chase there. How they detailed it was not exactly how we detailed it. So what we had to do is go into those tubes, those shafts, and just bring everything up to what it needs to be, realistically, right?

52:38Because it's a hotel that people are going to stay in and it's got to work. And it kind of wasn't in a position where it's working. So we spent three months kind of cleaning the place. Then we spent three months just pretty much like, you know, fixing things we didn't totally anticipate. And then we could get into like, okay, you know, getting the new carpet in, getting new furniture in and stuff like that, which is the exciting part. Did you have to replace the elevators? We took them through a really serious modernization, which is like their motors, their cables, all that sort of stuff. The cabs are going to look totally new. So when you walk into them, they're going to be totally new cabs.

53:11So like fixing your 68 Mustang here. Yeah. I mean, it's not, we didn't like rip them all out and put in brand new ones because that was actually impossible to do with just how it was built. Yeah. But we did just about everything else we could do to bring it up to what is a modern elevator. Okay. And did they go faster? Because I don't remember them going very fast at all. I cannot guarantee that. There's a chance that's part of the experience. There's a chance that's, you got to take your time when you're in old buildings, you know. You know, we thought we could make them faster. We decided against it. I think it's, they're going to go at a fine pace.

53:41Just enjoy the journey. Enjoy the journey. That's right. That's right. Up into the top. Well, thank you so much for you and your firm for saving this building and bringing it back. I mean, certainly, it's a gift to the environment for not tearing down a building and throwing all that stuff into the atmosphere. Yeah. And, you know, despite its up and down history, as you discovered, this really was a very much a loved building within the Raleigh community. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can't tell you how many people. I mean, people that I work with, people that I just meet on the street and I know that I'm involved in this.

54:16And they just, everybody launches into a very cool story about it. And those stories are just really personal. It is not like, oh, I kind of remember this. I remember being there with this person back in the day or having this prom after party there or whatever it is. Oh, yeah. And that's why it's just so cool. And what I think our goal is just from day one, when we said we're going to renovate this thing, is just to like have people walk in and say, first of all, this looks amazing. Second of all, I remember it and the details are still there, the experience is still there, and they can harken back to both what was that really fun experience and then also appreciate what is like a brand new hotel effectively.

54:55If you want to see what we're talking about, just Google Round Holiday Inns or Corncob Towers Holiday Inns or Leonard J. Lundgren, the architect, and you'll see what we're talking about. Thanks so much for speaking with me today. Yeah, I'm really, really glad we got to do this. It's great. That was George's conversation with Eyal Eynick.

Jazz with Monika Ryan

55:17Returning podcast guest Monika Ryan started singing professionally at the age of 15 and studied at the New School for Jazz under legends including Jackie Paris and Sheila Jordan. Monika has built an entirely independent career. She's never been signed to a record label. Now she's back with George Smart.

55:39Monika, welcome back to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, George. It's great to be here with you. So last time we were together, we were having breakfast at Balthazar in New York. And one of the things I wanted to ask you, but we didn't get to talk about, was that you actually saw Ella Fitzgerald perform. I did. I did. I did. I can't remember the year, but I was probably 18, 19 years old at Radio City Music Hall. Wow. It was great. What was that like?

56:09How old was she at that time? Do you know approximately? Oh, I don't know how old she was. It was just a few years before she passed. So it was somewhere between she passed in 1996, I believe. So it was somewhere between 1993 and 1996. And she was a little petite thing. And I bought the seats I could afford way, way, way up high in the balcony. And somebody yelled out from the crowd, we love you, Ella.

56:40And she stopped what she was doing and looked up and said, I love you too, baby, or something like that. I love you too, honey. It was the cutest. The cutest. You can hear her little voice, like her little bell tone talk. Well, that's amazing because, I mean, she was kind of small. She was very, very petite. Yeah. Wow. What a voice, though. I never stood next to her. Oh, incredible. Incredible voice. Incredible musician. And you credit her Greatest Hits album, Volume 2, as one of the inspirations for your career.

57:10Well, yeah. You know, Ella Fitzgerald is like, she's one of those artists that is maybe every jazz vocalist's favorite or the vast majority. She's the person that first captures many of our attention. And I think that her artistry is both very deep. You can go very deep with it. But also, it's very, very accessible. So, it's a first stop on the jazz train for a lot of people. And at the minute I heard her, I was in love.

57:43And I went about listening to everything I could, everything Ella I could get my hands on, and learning everything I could. And that was a very potent learning time in my life. You're a teacher, aren't you, among other things? I am. I teach different ways. Sometimes it's one-on-one lessons. Sometimes it's with beginners. Sometimes it's with professionals. Sometimes it's people preparing for the studio. And sometimes it's classwork. Sometimes it's symposiums.

58:14You know, it just depends on where I find myself in any given period. What is needed and what's crossed my threshold. So, you pull Ella out every now and then for your students? Oh, yeah. Of course. I mean, she's the gold standard for scat singing and for swinging. You know, so when you're teaching those principles, and she's, it's so complex and still, again, accessible. So, especially for people who are finding their way into jazz, she's a great place to go. But also for those who want some advanced technique work, she's a great place to go.

58:48Tell me about this first song from your new album, Delightfully. Delightfully was the last track I wrote for the album. So, I wrote these songs over the course of, I think the first ones were written at the beginning of 2025. I keep a spreadsheet because I write a song most days. I mean, when I'm in a groove and not interrupted, it's every day. I keep a spreadsheet so I can know when things are written. And I always, often double back and fill in the holes so that I write as much.

59:19But Delightfully was written last, very much last. So, it was written in the fall. And when I assembled these songs, I thought, these are an invitation to be delighted. These are an invitation to people to come along and have some fun in this moment. It's a time where a lot of people are not having as much fun as they might for very good reasons. And this song is an invitation to put everything down for a minute and come and have some fun and buoy your spirit. I'm talking in first person as, this is what I'm going to do.

59:51Please come along with me. And so, when I assembled this body of work that sort of had that vibe and titled the album, Delightfully, I thought, I need a title track. So, I wrote the title track after titling the album. Really? Yeah. It works. It's a lovely song. Here's Monika with Delightfully. Thank you. I'm going to go through life delightfully.

1:00:30I'm going to live with all of my heart. I'm going to dance and take chances and live life as an artist whose life is their art. I'm going to go through life delightfully. I'm going to listen, learn, and grow. I'm going to let myself ignite fully with wonderful people and places everywhere I go. I'm determined, as can be, to really know all that this epic tale of life has to teach me.

1:01:10And so, I'm going to go through life delightfully. I'm going to find revelers all along the way. I'm going to keep truly always in sight, you see. I invite you to play along in your own way. I invite you to play along in your own way.

1:02:00I'm determined, as can be, to really know all that this epic tale of life has to teach me. And so, I'm going to go through life delightfully. I'm going to find revelers all along the way. I'm going to keep joy always in sight, you see. I invite you to play along in your own way.

1:02:44Monika, tell me about the New York jazz scene these days. I know a lot of clubs either closed or just disappeared during the pandemic. What's happening now? Well, right now, there's an amazing thing happening where there's a bunch of incredible musicians and incredible former jazz club owners opening up new clubs. And it's a real blooming of a resurgence of jazz clubs. Over time, over my life, I've seen a lot of jazz clubs, serious jazz clubs close.

1:03:20Bradley's closed. Sweet Basil was a serious jazz club that closed. Fat Tuesday was a serious jazz club that closed. Several incredible clubs have been closing one after the other over a long extended period of time. And in recent years, we've been seeing in the clubs a lot of young people coming out for jazz, as well as the diehard fans that have been along with the music the whole time. So, if you go out to one of the clubs on New York's scene, like the Django or Smalls or Mesro,

1:03:51they are full many nights with lines down the block. And you're seeing people show up for the music. So, the owner of Smalls and Mesro, who is a wonderful piano player and songwriter, he played piano on my last album. His name is Spike Willner. He opened up a new club called Jazz Cultural. And it's inspired by his teacher, Barry Harris, who had a jazz school that he called Jazz Cultural. So, that club is wonderful, wonderful.

1:04:21And then there's another new club called One Flight Up that just opened, owned by a great drummer who's on this album and my last album, Joe Strasser, who I've known since I was 16. And then there's another new jazz club on 46th Street called The Pocket. So, these great new clubs by serious musicians are being opened up everywhere, which is lovely. Well, let's hear another song from your new album. This is called If You Know, You Know. And if you're on Instagram, it's I-Y-K-Y-K, right?

1:04:54That's the abbreviation? Yeah, right. So, tell me about this song. You know, as a songwriter who writes a lot, I'm always looking for new things to write about, always new ways to write about similar things that are lived experience, right? New ways to talk about it. And this song is actually about saying what you mean and meaning what you say and being a straight shooter and keeping your word and living with integrity. But it started as the hashtag I-Y-K-Y-K, which we're seeing, you know, these acronyms everywhere, shorthand text.

1:05:31So, I thought it was a fun way to talk about that. Here's Monika with If You Know, You Know. If you don't, you don't.

1:06:04If I say I will, I will. And if I say I won't, I won't. It's pretty straightforward.

1:06:14No need to be any other way.

1:06:18Life is shorter than we realize. Makes much more sense to go through life meaning what you say. If I say I can, I can. And if I say I can't, I can't. And if I say I shall, I shall. And if I say I shan't, I shan't. I try to make it easy by being clear and true. So if I tell you I love you, you know that I do.

1:06:49I cad-by-gy-knowing. I like. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. Thank you.

1:07:36Thank you.

1:08:06Thank you.

1:08:36Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If I tell you I love you, you know that I do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

1:09:06Thank you. Thank you. I'm just signed with a booking agent. So I will be touring more, which is very exciting. But I have two shows this fall in New York that are currently booked. On November 15th, which is a Sunday, I'll be singing at Mesro, also with Spike Wilner, the piano player I had mentioned, and with Michael O'Brien on bass and Joe Strasser on drums. That's awesome. Monika, thank you so much for coming back on the show.

1:09:37It's always wonderful to talk with you and see you. Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here. I love your show. Thanks for listening. U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of Richard Neutra's Kauffman Desert House in Palm Springs, and six other houses in California. By the Ife Jones Conservancy, preserving the legacy of modernist architecture in Northwest Arkansas. IfeJonesConservancy.org. And by Diane Bald and the Budman family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs.

1:10:11Visit usmodernist.org's massive archives to listen to past shows. Discover documentation of 30,000 significant modernist houses and access six million pages of classic 20th century architecture magazines. U.S. Modernist Radio is produced by Soundtracks Recording Studios in Raleigh, North Carolina. Our theme song is performed by George Smart and Robinson Earl with guest research by Bobby Morris. Got a guest to suggest for our show? Writer at bobby at usmodernist.org. U.S. Modernist Radio is a production of Modernist Archive Incorporated, a non-profit educational archive for the documentation, preservation, and promotion of modernist residential design.

1:10:51I'm Tom Geild, George, and I'll be back soon with another architecture-adjacent edition of U.S. Modernist Radio. The Sub Хотя