Inside an distinctive IM Pei-designed home now available on the market in Fort Value

IM Pei designed solely three non-public homes; the grandest of those, the Westover Home in Fort Value, Texas, is now on the market for the primary time.

This seven-bedroom, 13-bathroom 19,333 sq ft home options Pei’s trademark geometries, most notably in its backyard room, a sloped atrium harking back to volumes discovered within the East Constructing of the Nationwide Gallery in Washington, DC, the Louvre Pyramid in Paris and plenty of different of the late architect’s most notable buildings.

At a second when Pei’s Dallas Metropolis Corridor 30 miles away is at energetic threat of demolition – topping Preservation Texas’ 2026 record of Texas’s Most Endangered Locations – this property is clearly valued rather a lot, with its $22 million price ticket.

The home was designed in 1969 for Anne Burnett Tandy, an oil heiress, and her husband Charles Tandy, who constructed RadioShack into an ubiquitous retail presence. It’s positioned in Fort Value’s swank Westover Hills on the identical block as Paul Rudolph’s largest residential fee, the Bass Home. Pianist Van Cliburn additionally lived close by and performed the Tandys’ grand.

Pei designed a home fitted to sociability and artwork. He noticed in Home and Backyard in 1970, ‘Mrs. Tandy loves events and she or he provides them fairly often, so she needed plenty of area. She wanted a home that will be comfy for 2 folks — or two or 300.’

Pei cited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in addition to Mediterranean and North African homes as inspiration for the house’s enclosed courtyards. The backyard room has the most important, that includes a fountain (and for the second a Frank Stella piece).

A large artwork gallery close to the middle of the home neatly cinches off the non-public from public areas of the house. The backyard room’s sloped home windows are echoed at 4 different factors, within the eating room, front room, major bed room and visitor sitting room. The backyard room additionally encompasses a glass ceiling the place gentle is subtle by a wood lattice.

There was shut consideration to surfaces in and out. Partitions are poured concrete with an mixture of rose-quartz granite. Pei looked for a yr to search out that mine, he mentioned. Fluting was then hand-hammered.

There are different elegant particulars; the constructing has no window frames, Pei defined in Home and Backyard: ‘It was fairly a feat inserting giant sheets of glass into concrete and took a lot effort and time. Simplification at all times takes extra time. However not having the middleman metallic window frames additionally provides the phantasm of transparency, so you’re feeling the rooms are open.’

Pei wished to make the home as ‘maintenance-free as potential’ even for many who might simply afford it, selecting, ‘sturdy, serviceable supplies all as everlasting as you’ll find.’ These embrace white Portuguese marble and Burmese teak flooring inside and granite surfaces outdoors.

The first suite encompasses a bed room, sitting space, rest room, closets and a library containing a fire and moist bar. There are two dwelling rooms, two formal eating rooms, three kitchens, two wine cellars, and far else. Some components have been modernised however the bones of the home stay strikingly authentic.

The home, listed by Ashley Mooring, Ralph Randall and Madeline Jobst of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s Worldwide Realty, sits on almost 4 acres containing a greenhouse, placing inexperienced, heated pool, storage and carport. It’s surrounded by reside oaks, which Pei most well-liked.