The Sculptured House

Sitting nestled on top of Genesee Mountain in Colorado, is Charles Deaton’s Sculptured House. The house is anything but a cookie-cutter house. People have called the house a “clamshell”, “spaceship,” “mushroom,” “eyeball,” and “taco” Charles Deaton however, perfered sculptured. Afterall, that is how the house was originally made.. Deaton knew when he began the plaster sculpture that it would eventually end up as a house that he himself would live in. He did not want to “simply wrap a shell around a floor plan” He did not even choose a scale until the sculpture was completed. Deaton was a naturalist and found the naturally occurring curves and shapes to be fascinating. It is no wonder he chose such a curvilinear house to be his own.
Charles Deaton was a self taught architect and industrial engineer. He was born to a poor family in New Mexico in the time of the great depression. He moved to Colorado, and this is where he was thirty-four, and this is where he would live for the rest of his life. He did small jobs here and there, but his career did not take off until he got the architectural job at Central Bank and Trust in downtown Denver (sitation) Deaton invisioned the bank as a sculpture and created a plan based on that. This bank would be the precedent for his masterpiece. Another precedent for the Sculptured House, was his bank he created in 1961, the Wyoming National Bank in Casper. “The most distinctive feature was the banking-room pavilion expressed on the building's exterior. Looking something like a flying saucer in which petal-shaped wedges of concrete surround a pierced dome” (Citation)

Deaton designed the house in 1963 as the “house you could live in”. (citation) The house was Deaton’s only residential project that he would create in his lifetime. As mentioned earlier Deaton designed the house for him and his family to live in. Although due to financial trouble he would never be able to do so. His motto was always “People People aren’t angular so why should they live in rectangles?” The first step of the process was to anchor the precast pedestal piers into the bedrock with steel rods. The steel supports a welded cage of steel substructure that is covered with metal wire mesh. The concrete is then poured on top of the mesh and the final step was adding the protective Hypalon. “The Hypalon was infused with white pigment along with walnut shells that “create a textured appearance and added structural integrity due to their extreme hardness.” (Citation)

The house faced many problems over time due do various reasons. The estimated cost of the house when it was finished in 1966 was $100,000 and $120,000 to build. However, the interior still was not finished because Deaton ran out of money. The house sat vacant for quite a while, and Deaton sank further into financial debt due to faltering architectural business and a lawsuit on one of his buildings. To combat the debt he put the Scuptured house on the market in 1988 and did not sell until 1991 for $800,000 to Larry Polhill. Polhill, then spent 150,000 to blast the exterior clean, but the “house fell into disrepair after partying teens broke nearly every window” (citation) Polhill cut his losses and moved to California leaving the house to become inhabited by wild animals. The house was in serious consideration for being demolished. . By the late 1990s, the Sculptured House was one of the most endangered historic buildings in Colorado. Luckily, Polhill sold the house to John Huggins, who was extremely interested in the house. Huggins bought the house in 1999 at the cost of the land an estimated 1.3 million and put another 2 million into the interior of the house.

The interior designer would be no other than Deatons daughter Charlee Deaton and Husband Nicholas Antonopoulos, whom studied under Charles Deaton. Together they designed the interior and constructed another 5,000 square foot addition that Deaton himself had previously designed. The house was to be “a work of art” in itself the furniture was picked out to stand as art as well. “The pair selected brightly colored furniture by renowned modernist designers Warren Plattner, Eero Saarinen and George Nelson, as well as a purple ribbon chair by Pierre Paulin, an orange-lacquered credenza by Robert Loewy and a puzzle couch by Roberto Matta” (citation) Charlee felt her father was a minimalist so she chose exotic natural finishes and details that would not over power her fathers work. The watermelon-seed shaped beds and dining chairs were furniture that Charles Deaton designed and fit well in the house. The house is made up of long halls of windows and cutouts for rooms. The light effects that are in the house give the house even more character. The cutout in the master bath is in the shape of a cat eye that lets light glimmer off of the mosaic tile. The huge open span of the front of the house allows the viewer to look out off the mountain top of Genesee Mountain.

The interior was finally complete in 2000, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. However,Charles Deaton never saw the interior completed. He died in 1996 before Huggins even bought the house.Huggins sold the house to Michael Dunahay in 2006, who purchased the house for $3.45 million. He was the first to ever actually occupy the home. Huggins never lived in the house he only used the house for social events. After nearly fifty years of remaining vacant the house is finally being used for its original purpose. Dunahay has no intention of ever selling the house.

When asked the question if architecture is art, the Sculptured House is full proof that it is. The house was based off a sculpture and is now livable art. The house sits proud on top of Genesee mountain showing off its beauty to the world. Charles Deaton would be proud to look at his residential masterpiece and the changes it went through to be standing here today.