National Register of Historic Places - 2012
On April 10, 2012 the West Lafayette house of Connie and Dick Grace was listed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States National Park Service. Their house joins six other properties and two historic districts in the City of West Lafayette, Indiana.
The Curtis-Grace House is named after Roy and Leona Curtis, who built the house in 1958, and Connie and Dick Grace, who have lived there since 1980. Their house also is called a “Robert J. Smith House”; Smith was the architect who designed the house in 1957. The architectural style is known as Mid-Century Modern with iconic exterior hallmarks of redwood, natural stone, plate glass, concrete block, flat or nearly flat roofs, and carports. This style began in 1946 and lasted approximately 25 years.
Smith, a Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois, designed twenty houses in West Lafayette between 1955 and 1972. Smith’s designs often combined architectural styles from Mies van der Rohe (glass walls), Frank Lloyd Wright (symbiotic relationship between indoors and outdoors) and Joseph Eichler (post-and-beam construction).
Built on one of the natural ravines which flow to the nearby Wabash River, the Curtis-Grace house features a plate glass window wall across the back façade, freely-flowing interior space, and post-and-beam construction. One can see throughout the entire upper level. The upper bedroom overlooks the back ravine and a center stairwell, plant-study, living room, dining area, screened porch, and carport. Tall plate glass windows maximize transparency with the outdoors and the changing beauty of the seasons. Large redwood beams, a massive natural stone fireplace wall, and fiber mat ceilings unite the outdoors with indoor living.
The Curtis-Grace house received a Sycamore Plaque from the Wabash Valley Trust for Historic Preservation in 2006. Indiana Landmarks and the Wabash Valley Trust included the house on their 2009 Mid-Century Modern Home tour, and the house was featured by the City of West Lafayette in the 2010 video, “Tour de West Lafayette.” In 2012 the Indiana Department of Natural Resources listed the Curtis-Grace house on the Indiana Register of Historic Sites and Structures.