The Mid Modness of a Neo-Mansard Roof with Atom Stevens

The neo-mansard roof is as polarizing as an architectural feature can be. Mansard roofs belong along a street in Paris or maybe on an 80’s vintage Burger King, right? Yet, a slew of mid-century architects seemed to independently decide to give them a try in residential design during our favorite decades. Why, though? Why?

Today, I'm talking that over with our favorite mid mod house historian, Atom Stevens. 

In Today's Episode You'll Hear:

• What exactly IS a neo-mansard roof? 
• Who made the mansard roof a thing?
• Why was there a neo-mansard moment in the mid-century? 

Get the full show notes with all the trimmings at https://www.midmod-midwest.com/2303

Like and subscribe at Apple | Spotify | YouTube. Want us to create your mid-century master plan? Apply here! Or get my course,  Ready to Remodel.

Transcript

Della Hansmann  00:00
I know I'm dating myself when I say that this episode has me humming, I see a mansard roof through the trees. Shout out to my Vampire Weekend stands, I see you. And after this episode, you may also be seeing more mansard roofs hiding in plain sight everywhere you look. Now, what does this have to do with mid mod remodel?
 
Mansard roofs belong along a street in Paris or maybe on an 80s vintage Burger King. Well, the mid-century years were a time of a lot of experiments, and one experiment that a number of architects and builders seemed to independently decide to try during our favorite decades was remaking the traditional mansard roof style into a house, and that's what we're talking about today.
 
Welcome back to the mid mod remodel podcast. This is a show about updating MCM homes, helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I'm your host, della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast. You're listening to Episode 2303 and today I am talking with one of my favorite mid-century fans, mid-century stans Adam Stevens, we had this call on my schedule. I thought we were going to talk about how to better research your mid-century home, and instead, he hooked me right into his latest little research rabbit hole, which is noticing and trying to find out more information about mansard style mid-century homes all around the Denver area.
 
The more we talked about it, the more I started realizing I have seen them around Madison in my own neighborhood. I had completely erased out of my brain the fact that one of the first houses I did as mid modern remodel, one of the first proto master plan designs was a modern mansard roof house. So this may ring a bell with you. This may actually be something you have a personal connection to, or maybe it's just an example of the weird little rabbit holes that mid-century fans can go down one way or another. I know everyone always enjoys an episode with Adam, and we'll get to that in just a moment before I do a quick item of calendar interest.
 
It's January. Hi. This is a time of year when people start to think about plans and goals and the future again, and it's particularly a time when a lot of people start to ponder if this year is the year that some small or large remodeling should happen on the house, if that's you. Then step one is reaching out and having a first call you and I can chat about what's going on in your house, what you'd like to change about it, what you have to change about it, and what you already know and love about it.
 
Look, you don't have to have every single duck lined up in a tiny little row before you get the ball rolling on your mid-century master plan. In fact, the mid-century Master Plan process is about getting your ducks into a row. We will hold your hand and ask you for the kind of information you need about your house, your hopes and dreams, what is the definition of your personal style you don't need to know all those things before we begin the process.
 
All you need to do is get it started. So because I so often have to apologize to people who've come to me because they're now all ready, they're now all excited, and they have urgency, how quickly can we do their master plan? And I have to tell them that we've got a first sign, first serve basis, and we've got a bunch of other people in line ahead of them. Let me encourage you to start the ball rolling now, while you're thinking maybe this is the right time, rather than waiting until the time when you're sure it's the right time, and then you have to go ahead and wait again. Hurry up and wait is never a good feeling, and design does take time, but it has so much value in terms of helping you figure out what's possible, what's probable and what's going to happen next.
 
By the way, if you haven't caught it already, you want to check out this week's YouTube video, because it's the beginning of a series of case study analyzes where I'm talking through a recent mid-century master plan project, not just as it was solving the specific problems for that homeowner. But as it is, perhaps general, this first case study I chose is how to make the most out of a small mid-century house. Many people feel like their mid-century houses are small.
 
This house I'm featuring is quite possibly the smallest that I have ever done any master plan work on the dimensions of every single room are the snuggest I had my design assistant notice that it had a similar floor plan to a project we'd done, not the same, but sort of a little sibling floor plan to a project we'd done earlier this past summer. But when we compare the two of them, this one was smaller by inches and sometimes feet in multiple dimensions.
 
So I'm going to show you how this house actually is going to be transformed into the perfect jewel box, little container for all of the activities, projects, crafts, engagements, hobbies and social hosting that this couple could dream of without adding a single square foot to its footprint. It's a really fun video. Go check it out and. Think about getting the process underway, reaching out soon, rather than later, to have a conversation with me about what's possible, what's probable, what's a good idea for your mid-century dream house.
 
Okay, you may remember Adam from previous conversations we've had here on the podcast. He is doing amazing work all the time, documenting, promoting and matching people with amazing mid-century modern homes. You can follow him on Instagram. Dig in more deeply with his second Instagram account, specifically documenting the Harvey Park neighborhood of Denver, or check out the I think four previous episodes I've chatted with him on those are 1103 and four and 1805 and 1812 we've talked about the history of Denver, the history of building of energy resources for vintage houses, just all sorts of great stuff.
 
And he is a Constant Delight and a wonderful mid-century friend to have. He can be your mid-century friend too. So find all the great Adam resources on my show notes page at mid mod dash, midwest.com/ 2303 without further ado, let us allow him to take us down a research rabbit hole into modern mansard roof houses and all that's great and sort of horrifying about them. There will also, by the way, be many pictures that he has shared on the show notes page mid mod dash, midwest.com/ 2303.
 
I'm della I'm talking to Adam Stevens, a local real estate agent in Denver, Colorado, and also one of my favorite people to talk to about going deep into the lore, into the history, into the background. You are maybe the best mid-century research, I know, and if you're curious about Adam, by the way, listeners, there are a host of other podcast episodes of interviews we've had, and I will link to all of them in the show notes page, but we are not giving you the episode I thought we were going to today, because before we started recording, Adam persuaded me that we should talk about Neo mansard homes. And I'm so curious. What got you started down the rabbit hole of Neo mansard homes?
 
Atom Stevens  07:09
Well, the first thing is, like, one of the things I don't know offhand is, how many people even know what a NEO mansard is? Good question, yeah, or even what a mansard is So, you know, being an architect, you probably took lots of architectural history classes. You probably learned about the mansard roof, which kind of comes from France, Paris.
 
You know, if you think of a lot of the buildings in Paris, they have mansard roofs, which is kind of, you look at the top portion of the building, and it the kind of the attic floor of the building, you could say is a bit of an angle, and there's usually, like dormer windows or something like that at the top of the building. And I want to say, when I was taking my architectural history classes, there was something about it was an attempt to try to reclaim attic space, to put more living space into a building, or something like that, but stylistically, it became kind of the signature of French architecture, right?
 
Della Hansmann  08:13
Well, and not by accident either. I mean, okay, so my history nerd kicking in here, the move towards mansard roof designs in Paris came hand in glove with a huge Urban Renewal Project, which, if we were looking at it today, we would probably think was pretty politically iffy. They did a lot of slum clearance. They moved a lot of immigrant or undesirable populations to the people in power at that time were sort of shoved out, and they cut a bunch of big pathways through the city to make grand dramatic, basically military parade grounds.
 
And then they put in a whole bunch of houses that all look the same. I want to say they were all six stories, but maybe it was five and the top story was, as you say, a livable attic space that looked like a roof and had big windows in it. Yeah. So if you think of, if you think of what we now think of as beautiful vintage Paris, it was a huge, kind of brutal clearance project with what at the time people thought was kind of unattractively similar, or tidally similar, depending on your preferences, buildings all at the same time. And now we're like, oh, it's so romantic. Oh it's so European. It's so vintage.
 
Atom Stevens  09:21
And that is really interesting. I had no idea about that. That whole background of it,
 
Della Hansmann  09:28
I'm not gonna remember his first name, but the sort of social engineer of all that was a guy named Haussmann, two ends on the end of his name. So I remember it because it's like mine, which is also weird, because that's not a French name, but definitely not he was. He was mover and shaker in Paris, and I'm not going to remember when either, but when there's a blog post for this episode, I'll put that date in there.
 
Atom Stevens  09:52
Well, not to get soundtracked. I just think that's funny, because Denver actually about the time that the Neo mansard. Is happening. Denver was doing the exact same thing we were doing, what they called Urban Renewal, which involved demolishing blocks and blocks and blocks of downtown Denver. Many of those blocks remained undeveloped for decades. The whole idea was that they would demolish all of these blocks, and then, of course, that would pave the way for high rise development or whatever and totally remake downtown. And of course, it also involved clearing slums and clearing ethnic neighborhoods and all sorts of stuff. So that's eerily similar, right?
 
Della Hansmann  10:37
It almost makes me wonder, not everybody, probably, but was there someone involved in planning and design in that moment who was like, well, if we're doing neighborhood clearance projects, I guess we ought to put it in a mansard style.
 
Atom Stevens  10:48
That is funny anyway. So what is a NEO mansard then? So in the late 1960s we started to see this kind of new housing style. It was, it feels like sometime it actually started happening in the late 1950s but it really took hold kind of mid 1960s was, I don't want to call it a rejection of modern architecture, but there was this notion that architects and home designers and whatnot are going, we're going to start being more historicist in their style.
 
A lot of times it was called Early American style. Like you would have a ranch home that would have a lot of ornate detail on it, and it was supposed to be kind of colonial, but really the design of the house wasn't colonial in any way, shape or form, but it was this notion of we're kind of harkening back to our roots. And then they started bringing in styles of other places like France. And so in the late 1960s you get these houses which have what we today call Neo mansard roofs. And what's interesting is they don't look a lot like the mansard roofs of France per se?
 
Della Hansmann  12:02
No, they don't have the cream plaster and the sort of green copper metal roof or any of those pieces. They just had the shape.
 
Atom Stevens  12:10
They were the same shapes. The idea of the top of the house would have kind of that angled roof, but it wasn't another whole floor. It was almost just like a little cap on the house, although sometimes it was a second floor, like, that's kind of what I found about these is that there's a lot of variety to how they were executed.
 
And so when I started, you know, at first, these houses were kind of invisible, until I started really paying attention to them and realizing that actually this Neo mansard roof is everywhere, like we have hundreds, hundreds of them here in the Denver area, maybe 1000s, I don't know.
 
Della Hansmann  12:51
And sense a cataloging project coming on, depending on how you say, excited about this.
 
Atom Stevens  12:56
Maybe even more than that, because when I started trying to figure out. I was like, So what are the roots of this? So, you know, other than kind of the background I gave you that home builders and whatnot, of the time, we're trying to pull from other sources than doing modern architecture or whatever.
 
So I wondered, like, Is that all there is, or was there like an architect who came up with this idea, and that architect was the source of the Neo mansard, and as I tried to research it, I found nothing. I haven't found books about it. I haven't found articles or anything that says, hey, this is the source. But what I can tell you is, from the late 1960s to the late 1970s during this little 10 year window, it was like every architect who was anybody was doing neo-mansard stuff.
 
Della Hansmann  13:47
Okay, so you are, you are so good at tracking down like, who built this, who is the builder, who is the designer, all these things, by the way, this is for anyone who lives in a mid-century home that you don't know isn't famous, isn't notable, isn't in a development that has a lot of history associated with it. This is how we start to figure things out.
 
When you can't google it, when there isn't an article about it, you just sort of start tracking down property records and figuring out who had their name on it. But I'm curious about when you say every architect in the arrow area, in the era was doing it, were they each doing like, this is my one Neo mansard house, and I'm gonna go under things. Or were they kind of, are you finding the same architects name associated with a couple?
 
Atom Stevens  14:28
Um, yeah, I've been finding that that it was like, you know, these architects had been doing other things before, and this is just like their Neo mansard period, because I guess that's what their clients wanted, or something like that.
 
Della Hansmann  14:47
I mean, as a designer myself, I feel like once the roof details of that are different, the structural details that are a little different, if I was going to do one of them, I wouldn't want to figure all of that. Out and then never think about it again, I guess, unless I hated it, in which case, yeah, put it behind me. But that's so interesting that it just became this, everybody had to try their hand at a neo-mansard roof, and I certainly have them in the Midwest as well, although right now, in this moment, I'm going to say, I don't think we have hundreds of them in Madison or 1000s.
 
But you've just identified also one of those classic things that happens with mid-century buildings, which is, they can be very anonymous until you start paying attention. They can just kind of blend in the background, true. And then once you start looking for them, you start seeing them, and pretty soon you see them everywhere.
 
Atom Stevens  15:38
So yeah, and so what I've been doing that, it's kind of a funny thing I've done, been doing a few things, like as a real estate agent, I've realized so we have this type and this and as I've started, I actually started posting these to social media, and I started doing something called Neo mansard Monday. And I called it, you know, the day nobody asked for, but that everybody secretly loves. And so I would post a picture or a video of a NEO mansard house and get people's reactions.
 
And one of the things that I found is that people either really like them or they hate them. They think they're the ugliest things they've ever seen, and so they're very polarizing. There isn't people, there aren't people who are like, Oh, this is just so and so it's so. So this is like, I either hate it or I like it.
 
Della Hansmann  16:31
That's so funny. And I think that some people feel like that about the entire mid-century era. People don't normally feel mad about it. We either have people like you and me and everyone who's listening to this podcast right now, mid-century, Stans, or it's our for lack of a more specific, less generalized term, our baby boomer parents, who were like, That's a boring house I grew up in that I do not like the look of anymore. That's so interesting. So people are really reacting to them, and they are, are they giving you information you need as they react to them? Not really,
 
Atom Stevens  17:07
no, because they don't seem to really know anything about them. And what's interesting too is the way that they're built. They almost invariably have a flat roof. But not all of them, not 100% of them, but most of them do. And really, the house is just a box, and the mansard part is actually tacked on to the box, so it's not even really a roof at all. It's almost like a misnomer that we call it a room.
 
Della Hansmann  17:43
So okay, actually, I'm curious, because I have a pretty strong idea of how a house like this would be detailed in the Midwest, and I'm getting the sense that it's different in Denver. So when you say it's, are these one or two story homes in Denver
 
Atom Stevens  17:56
both I found them in ranches, but they're, they're actually it's kind of a mix between ranches, which is kind of the most rare, lots of tri levels and then lots of two stories.
 
Della Hansmann  18:09
Oh, fascinating. All right, we will put pictures into the blog post for the show notes page. So go check those out. Everybody. Also, this is going to be in my Instagram when this episode goes live. But in the Midwest, I tend to think of a NEO mansard house as usually being two stories.
 
The first story is sort of modernist, minimalist, and then the second story, the entirety of it is roof with some windows cut back into it. But the actual top, the hat of the house is usually a very shallow sloped center peak, rectangle with four, four triangle, sides right, shutting downwards, almost like a hip roof, exactly like a really, really, really flat hip roof, a low slope hip roof. Yeah, we have a few of
 
Atom Stevens  18:53
those, but most
 
Della Hansmann  18:54
of them are not a flat roof, where you've got almost like a pediment of mansard going around it hiding the flat roof edge. Is that house done in Denver?
 
Atom Stevens  19:03
Interesting? Yep, it's got, like, a typically, it's got a parapet that you wouldn't see from the street, like all you would see is the Neo mansard part of it. Well, you
 
Della Hansmann  19:12
know what that feels like to me is that feels like an architect who does both commercial and residential work, borrowing a commercial detail to decorate the facade of a residential house.
 
Atom Stevens  19:24
That could be
 
Della Hansmann  19:25
because you'll see that in, like in a strip mall building or something, they'll have, I don't think of them as mansard roofs as much, because they usually don't have the windows coming the roof, and the windows don't interact
 
Atom Stevens  19:36
right on the on the strip mall. It's almost just like a like a little hat. And that's, that's the way a lot of people describe the neo-mansard roof is on these houses. Is it looks like a hat? Or the funny thing, though, is that it's not consistent at all like and this is what makes me go, this is more than a cataloging project. I almost think I need to write a book about this or something, because when you see the photographs. Um, you're going to see that there's a lot of variety among these houses. So some it's just little hat at the top. Others, though, the roof comes all almost all the way down to the ground on parts of it and so and on. Some houses, it's all over the place.
 
So in some parts, like half the house is like a little hat, and the other half of the house, the roof comes all the way down to the ground, and then in some cases, you know, the bottom of the house is brick, and then the top of the house is the mansard covering the whole second story. And you'll have dormers that stick out. Others have dormers that are recessed cut in, yeah.
 
And so it's like, and then there's a style, and I'll include it in the photos too, where the mansard actually it comes down and then it at the bottom of the mansard. Instead of just being flat and cut off like you see on most of them, it actually returns at an angle back to the roof, creating a really bizarre look to the house. And that's the funny thing I think a lot of people find about these houses, is that they call them, they would probably call them weird. They're weird houses.
 
Della Hansmann  21:14
And it's, it's so interesting. At the time this airs, I'll have just also shared an interview with Scott Sidler of the Craftsman blog, who was talking about how, for all of history, we've pretty much built houses in very conventional ways. Certainly, all of American history has very standard building techniques and kind of standard building looks. And then in the mid-century, everything went weird. We just started experimenting. Ranch houses themselves were an experiment, and he was speaking specifically a window types too. But like, this is an example of, just like, a weird kind of house that got tried for a while. And I don't think anybody's building Neo mansard houses today.
 
Atom Stevens  21:53
Definitely not. In fact, one thing that we're seeing, and, you know, I should probably like, get this information out there before it's an issue on some multifamily projects, we're actually starting to see building owners, de mansard their houses, or de-mansard their buildings. So they're tearing the mansard part off and completely restyling the building.
 
Della Hansmann  22:15
That feels like a shame, that feels like a loss of history. I know
 
Atom Stevens  22:20
I never thought I might be interested in protecting these weird buildings. But yeah. And, of course, like, you know, one of the one classic place where you see a NEO mansard, although it's kind of a more stylized Neo mansard than you typically see on these houses, is the old Wendy's restaurant design, yeah. And Wendy's is now de-mansarding their restaurants these days, which has a lot of them, feels like a loss, right?
 
Della Hansmann  22:49
Well, interesting, and so, yeah, I think from anyone who's interested in what history has been and understanding it, and, you know, recognizing that it's cool and interesting and not and trying to preserve it. It's sad to see an effort to roll it back or erase it or make it go away. I guess I'm happier to see someone, if I had to pick, happier to see someone dem answered a house rather than knock it down, right?
 
Atom Stevens  23:13
But it's feel like a loss in a way I don't know the other interesting, the other thing I didn't mention is, and I don't know if this is typical across the country, but it's typical. It was typical here is that in most cases, these Neo mansard roofs had cedar shake shingles on them, so they were both this kind of French reference, but also rustic Colorado style.
 
And we're actually seeing all that cedar shake go away now because of fire danger, fire codes, things like that, you can't do it anymore. So as a lot of people replace these cedar shakes, they're replacing them with all sorts of other materials, which changes the whole look of the house, right?
 
Della Hansmann  24:05
I mean, anytime you change your roof, it changes the esthetic, I guess, except a flat but even there are angles from the street that you're going to see even a flat roof. But certainly when the roof is part of the walls and you change the roofing material, you have dramatically changed the house. Do you have a thought? Do you have a thought? Do you have a recommendation if someone needed for if they're changing out their roof because they have to, and probably they're not permitted to do cedar shake anymore for fire risks in Colorado, yeah? What should they do?
 
Atom Stevens  24:35
Well, of course, it's always the most expensive option, but there are roofing materials that are imitation cedar shake that you can, you almost can't tell that it's different. And, of course, it's, it's more durable and whatnot, but and fire resistance fireproof, but it's, of course, also the most expensive option. What a lot of people are doing. Is they're putting on
 
Della Hansmann  25:01
professionals. Is always the most expensive,
 
Atom Stevens  25:03
right, right? A lot of people are putting on just asphalt shingles, which makes the house look a lot less interesting. It's It definitely changes the look of the house, I would venture to say, downgrades the look of the house.
 
Della Hansmann  25:20
Yeah. Yeah. And I would actually say, just by the nature of having cedar shake singles as the roofing material, that kind of marks these as a higher end choice, originally, in their original era, that a NEO mansard house. I mean, anytime you're reaching beyond what's conventional, you're probably paying extra that. It's probably it's because you cared, right?
 
But, yeah, taking off a mansard roof house done in asphalt shingles doesn't seem appealing or nice in any way. I would, you know, if you're gonna throw all the way back to the French mansard tradition, I'd say a standing seam metal roof wouldn't be an inappropriate choice, although some
 
Atom Stevens  25:59
people have been doing change. They have been doing standing seam metal. That's been another option that I've seen people do. And I've seen some people doing just more of an asphalt tile look, which works pretty well because it's dimensionally, looks like the cedar shake, even though it's a little different look. It's not as rustic, but it tends to work. Yeah.
 
Della Hansmann  26:21
Oh, this, I'm really this is cueing all sorts of thoughts remain. It really feels like it's leading. It's sort of the leading edge of the mid-century, going into the late 70s, into the 80s. Yes, one
 
Atom Stevens  26:31
might call it transitional. It is transitional, although what's funny is, when I typically use the term transitional, I'm using it to describe a house that is going modern. You know, it's trying to be both traditional and modern. In the direction of going modern. This is now, you know, as we went into the 70s and into the 80s, there was the reverse movement of transitioning from modern to traditional. So this is, like, transitional in the opposite direction. Yeah.
 
Della Hansmann  27:02
I mean, when I think about I grew up in a neighborhood of 70s eras homes, and they were some interesting split levels. But as they as the next block over was built a little later and built a little later after that. And we get a lot of just sort of like, I would think of it as sort of a proto McMansion with a style just sort of applied to the front of it, the English style, the faux Tudor style, the French style. And, you know, I'm now thinking of a house in that neighborhood that had a, you know, mansard, okay.
 
Atom Stevens  27:32
Oh, my thing in the pet that in the past, and that, one of the biggest things that differentiates mid-century houses from late 20th century homes is the fact that they finished all four sides of the house in the mid-century. And on these neo-mansards, they were still finishing all four sides of the house generally. But you're right, that's like kind of after that, into the 70s and the 80s, they started just finishing the front of the house and not finishing the other three sides, not finishing
 
Della Hansmann  28:00
the other three. I mean, sometimes it was like brick on the front, vinyl on the other three sides in the worst case scenarios. But even still, it was just like clear or like, the one that always stuck out to me, even as a kid, because I was, you know, you know, studying history in school and being like, why are people in Illinois suburbs trying to do a colonial style on their house? Like, why do we want to yay the slavery era.
 
And also it just felt so like this is not our tradition, this is not our history. Why are we trying to make a fake colonial house that was clearly built in 1985 what? But totally stick any kind of front entry onto your classic sort of two story. Yeah.
 
Atom Stevens  28:40
Well, and builders even offered elevations. But, you know, one of the and that's a couple of the other things that make these Neo mansard homes interesting. Not only are they finished in all four sides, but the designers of these houses were kind of trying to take advantage of their unique architecture, the fact that they were just a box, which, interestingly, a lot of houses being built today are just boxes, but they don't have neo-mansard decorations on them.
 
But they were taking advantage of the fact that they were building boxes and having maybe a lower box next to a taller box and things like that. And I There are several examples where they've integrated balconies into these or two height spaces in a way that kind of actually really works architecturally. And again, going back to the notion of these are transitional, there are several examples I found where they're still doing floor to ceiling glass on the main level, and modern things like that.
 
And in fact, one of the most modern things is that, you know, in Colorado, we have very few examples of atrium style or courtyard style homes where you have a home that completely surrounds an atrium or a courtyard, right? And most of the houses I can think of that still exist in the Denver area that have atrium. In the middle of them are Neo mansard ranch homes. So if you really want an atrium, you're not going to get the Eichler look. But if you should go shopping and find a NEO mansard ranch home, there's a chance there might be an atrium in the middle of that completely surrounded by glass, and like all the things that you would think of a of an Eichler atrium home, but it's 1970s Neo mansard style
 
Della Hansmann  30:26
that's fascinating. So your answer is probably going to be its inconsistent, because the style of the mansard's roofs have been inconsistent. But what would you expect to see on the inside of a house that was a NEO mansard in terms of is it? Is it going to be more mid-century traditional? Is it always going to be reaching more modern? Does it have a rustic vibe? Is it tipping towards more sort of postmodern, early 80s? What? What sort of what? Wouldn't surprise you to find inside of you answered, I
 
Atom Stevens  30:58
found that it really depends on the house. You know when, since a lot of these were built in the mid 1970s if you find one that has a lot of its original finishes in it, one of the biggest things you're going to find is what I've heard people refer to as the early ugly era cabinetry and woodwork, where they're doing a lot of very dark stains. They're doing a lot of really almost kind of ornate paneling, but with a modern touch to it, with like a pole, like a pounded brass handle in the middle of the cabinet. Yeah, sure you can imagine.
 
So that's kind of the kind of fit and finish that were inside a lot of these was that 1970s dark wood, very dark, stained wood, fit and finish. But there are some examples that are more rustic. You go in and there's real wood paneling inside, still, and stuff like that, which is kind of, I think it was, it depended on, really, what level of home you were talking about. A nicer home would have had the wood paneling in it, whereas a lower level home might have just drywall. Interesting.
 
Della Hansmann  32:12
This to me, it feels like one of those distinct typologies that, I mean, you can see it everywhere across the country, but there aren't that many of them. People kind of, again, love or hate them, or even identify with them. It strikes me as falling into the same category as, like an A-Frame. Yes, being very similar to an A-Frame, it's like your whole personality, if you choose that as your house. Yeah, it affects the way any frame, maybe a little bit more, affects the way you can even live and occupy the space. But they have that sort of sense of like we're the this one in the neighborhood, and everybody knows who we are.
 
Atom Stevens  32:43
And of course, I'm always posting just the exterior of these houses, because I haven't really gotten into that many of them, but I have had at least a few people ask me, What are those houses like on the inside? Because I think one of the things they're hoping is that if you go up into the mansard you know, if it's saved, it's one that has a mansard roof around the second level. They're hoping that you come in and that the walls are actually leaning in on that second level. And unfortunately, I have yet to see that it really is typically a tacked on element on a box. But that would be neat if they had done that.
 
Della Hansmann  33:20
Yeah, it's more of an honestly, if they're not gonna, if you're not gonna get the lean on the inside of the walls, you ought to be insulating the heck out of that cavity for
 
Atom Stevens  33:27
right here. Cavity gives you a nice airspace where you really are getting a little bit of natural insulation there. Anyway, that's true.
 
Della Hansmann  33:34
Yeah, I just, I had the start of this conversation. I said I couldn't think of a lot of these around here. And I'm the examples are popping into my head,
 
Atom Stevens  33:43
like you're gonna see them everywhere next time you go out.
 
Della Hansmann  33:46
And I'm thinking about a house tour I did. Actually an architect designed house that was on what we do these. There's an organization that does write and like tours. So they do Frank Lloyd Wright houses, Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice houses, and then just houses that are similar in that sort of era and style. And there was definitely one that I toured and I think we were not allowed to take interior photographs of, unfortunately, but it might have been weird enough to actually have slanting interior walls. I'm gonna have to go back through my camera wall and see if I can find it out, but I
 
Atom Stevens  34:16
can think of one that probably has them, and it's actually one I'll share a picture of, but it's kind of like one part of the house is a double height space where the roof goes all the way to the ground. And it's almost like an a-frame with the top chopped, you know, the top of the A chopped off. But what makes it interesting is also the rest of the house is a neo-mansard so it's really more relating to that Neo mansard roof than being an A-Frame. But that's the one house I can think of that probably does have walls that lean in, almost like an A-Frame.
 
Della Hansmann  34:48
That's so interesting. Well, this is going to be an exploration. I think also, does this happen? Because, again, I'm thinking of another house here in Madison, blocks from where I'm sitting right now, where they. Took a NEO mansard style, and then they also built that cedar shake angled wall into a carport design that hung off from the building and that, that's an angled wall with no interior finish, so it has right gives you a little more room at the bottom of the carport space than up at the top. But you've just sparked a new obsession.
 
This is great. I love this. Okay, so I had a couple of follow up questions that are more general around this, because this is a perfect example of when your house isn't designed by x brand name architect. You know, you don't have a cliff may house, you don't have an Eichler house, you don't know, then it's local, famous architect, so and so, but you want to learn more about it. One thing you're going to do is just look around for other houses that look like yours, and study them visually, compare them. It's just a like this looks like this or doesn't thing you've done all the right things, of posting on social media, although no one's come through for you yet with like, Oh yes, I know all about this, and allow me to tell you, because it'll happen. But what else do you recommend? When someone is just curious about a topic and they want, they want to know more, and there isn't the book on that hasn't been written
 
Atom Stevens  36:13
yet, right? You know, I, I face this all the time. I have people call me. They're like, I want to learn about my house. I want to learn more. And I even just offer it as a real estate agent, as kind of a value add to my clients, like, when you buy this house or when you sell this house, you're about to learn more about it, because I'm going to do the digging. But really, the place where I find the most gold is just in the newspaper.
 
And what's wonderful is, for the last decade, I've been digging through newspapers to try to find information, and that entailed taking trips down to the downtown library, where they have the newspapers all on microfiche, and basically digging for needles in a haystack. But more and more, as time goes along, these newspapers are being scanned and they're becoming searchable. And that is amazing. And there are paid service like newspapers.com, and things like that.
 
But actually, more and more, actually, the Denver Public Library, for instance, in Denver, now has a searchable scanned copy of all of the Denver Post, oh, wow, available for free for library card holders and for those who want to search like the Rocky Mountain News, there's another nonprofit called the Colorado historic no Colorado historic newspaper collection, also free. You can go on there and search, and I imagine most other cities are starting to have these free resources where you can jump on and search the newspaper.
 
So you go in, try typing in your address, or try typing in your neighborhood name, or if you know the builder of your neighborhood, try typing in the name of the builder. And you wouldn't believe the gems in like advertisements and articles and stuff that you're going to find, you may learn, oh, hey, my house actually was designed by an architect I had no idea. As one of a dozen, or just this one.
 
Della Hansmann  38:03
Yeah. Well, that's amazing. And I should say, for people outside of Denver, that's interesting that the Denver library chose to make their own searchable archive. Here in Madison, for example, your library card gets you free access to newspapers.com, so you can, oh, that's nice, and you don't have to pay for it excellent. And I don't that's an interestingly salty choice by Denver to be like, No, we won't pay for your service, but we'll make our own. We've got an intern who can do that.
 
Atom Stevens  38:29
Well there, and their service is hosted by some other Newspaper Archive company. But, yeah, I've had a newspaper.com subscription for a long time. So that's great to know that libraries are actually offering that for free. That's awesome.
 
Della Hansmann  38:44
And that I think, one way or another, I think the first stop when you want to learn more about anything mid-century is go to the research the reference desk at your local library branch and just ask what free resources are available to you, or go to the website and poke around. But usually, if you speak to a person, they will know, and this is like, I'm speaking to you right now, you'll go tell me what worked for you, and it's always nice to get that
 
Atom Stevens  39:05
yes, and if you do, if you're one of those lucky few who do have an architect designed home, and you know who the architect is, and things like that, particularly if it's a very well-known architect, go to the library or go to your local historic preservation organization or whatever. Most states and most a lot of cities have them, and oftentimes, when these architects pass away their papers, their archive, their drawings, everything gets collected and goes to a place like that, either a library or a university or something. So if you really want to dig deep and learn about the architect who designed your home, if you know who they are, oftentimes, there is an archive somewhere, if you can find it, that has all of that architects papers,
 
Della Hansmann  39:55
yeah, and I will say if they're not dead yet, or if they're business. Isn't dead yet. I'm flashing back to fun times I had in grad school. One summer, I had a job I imagine big or bigger. I work for I work for myself. I've always worked for tiny firms. We never paid anyone to answer the phones, but I worked for a big skyscraper architect in Minneapolis, where my job was basically to sit there and answer the phone if it rang, which it did not ring very much, and occasionally to organize files. Oh no, occasionally put together marketing materials.
 
But during the summer I worked there, we moved from one building to the next adjacent skyscraper, don't ask. And so we moved all the file records. And one week, my job was to move boxes, and it also was to, like, hang out in the box room, and I cracked them open and found the residential sketches that one of the first founders of the firm had done for a bunch Oh, wow. And they were so cool. And I just, you know, I don't think I even identified them as, I didn't identify them as mid-century buildings now, but looking back, they absolutely all were cool mid-century houses.
 
And at that point, later, the firm only did malls and mega churches and, like, big, big, big corporate stuff. But back in the day, they'd done some houses. And I have no idea if the current owners of those houses had any idea where the records were, but the guy who designed them, his name was still in the firm. So that's another place to go. If you can track down the name, or you can figure out, like, where did they work?
 
They might there might be a box room somewhere, yeah, very dusty where you could, I'm sure they would let anybody go in there and just like, poke around and find things. So anyway, fun things to research. I All right. So I think this is so inspiring, just to find another rabbit hole and get excited about it and figure out what's the history of your particular place, but also, Neo mansard houses are everywhere. So when you travel, you can go looking for them. You can compare Neo mansard in Denver to Neo mansion in the Midwest to California.
 
Atom Stevens  41:51
If you go on the show notes or whatever, and you see the photographs, and you realize that's what a NEO mansard is. You're gonna see them everywhere. And then you're going to start asking the same questions, like, why does that one look like that? And then you'll be going down the same rabbit hole I am, like,
 
Della Hansmann  42:10
so I guess I'm going to use this chance right now everyone who's listening. If you are a chattier extrovert than either of us, and you want to go knock on the door of people who live in Neo mansard homes and ask to see inside of them. Ask if you can share pictures. I won't do it, but you might marvelous. So have you had the chance to sell or buy for someone Neil mansard house yet?
 
Atom Stevens  42:33
No, but I'm hoping that somebody will take me up on it. And actually, I've been doing a funny thing as well, in addition to my new Neo mansard Mondays, if you go to my website, I have a page now devoted to just the Neo mansard homes for sale in the Denver area. And I can probably, without doing a lot of research, I can probably say that my claim is accurate that I'm the only real estate agent in the country who has a curated page devoted to Neo mansard homes for sale. So and what's what is wild, and I include both multifamily and single family homes on there. Like in the middle of the summer, there were well over 100 listings of Neo mansard homes for sale in the city, which kind of blew my mind. I was like, Really,
 
Della Hansmann  43:30
what's your sense from having been interested in this and talked to people about it? Do you think it's a plus or a minus for a house trying to find a new owner to be a neo-mansard house?
 
Atom Stevens  43:42
Man, I don't know yet.
 
Della Hansmann  43:46
Well, I'll say this. I think when I, when I think about finding a, finding and buying a mid-century house, my personal goal, my goal for anybody, is to find something that's sort of unappreciated for what it is, and then, you know, hopefully not make yourself like something you don't like. But, you know, find, find the beauty in something and find the like, this needs this needs love, this needs maintenance, this needs a shine up. But like,
 
Atom Stevens  44:10
I think it is the kind of home that you could really kind of embrace and adopt and like, just, just dive headlong into, like, really understanding, and, like, I don't know, really appreciating this kind of house. It's full of, you know, whether you love it or hate it, and people love them or hate them, there's no question that these homes have a certain character to them.
 
Della Hansmann  44:39
They right, they're saying something. And I think that that, just to jump back to an earlier topic, I think they're part they're an example of the mid-century experimentation. That's part of why all mid-century is so much fun, so playful, so creative, so interesting, because it was never trying to be bland. Sometimes it was trying to be universal. Cool, but it was always trying to be interesting. And yes, certainly were. You don't, you don't ever design or build a Neom answered house, sort of because you were half assing it, right?
 
Atom Stevens  45:12
Yeah, because it's extra. Like, what? What builder would be like, Oh, we're going to spend all this extra money tacking on this thing on the top, like,
 
Della Hansmann  45:20
do it a new and different way. We're going to make the builders put on, you know, use learn different techniques. We're going to design different details. Yeah, let's go
 
Atom Stevens  45:29
and we're going to do a flat roof, which most residential builders don't know how to do flat roofs. Like, that's like, that's a unique thing in and of itself.
 
Della Hansmann  45:39
Well, this really makes me think that at least some, I mean, it's fairly common thing for residential architects to kind of go back and forth between small commercial and
 
Atom Stevens  45:46
residential and so especially in a smaller market like Denver, yeah, they're
 
Della Hansmann  45:50
trying to innovate and borrow ideas back and forth between their two typologies. And that's really fun, too, yeah, well, this has been such an interesting rabbit hole. We're gonna have so many pictures of Neo mansard houses notes page, so go check that out. And also, I think we'll put out a call. I mean, you're doing it right now. Go ahead and find go back. Do you have a tag for you, Neo mansard Mondays?
 
Atom Stevens  46:15
It's just hashtag Neo mansard Monday that's
 
Della Hansmann  46:19
easy to do. So you can go back and see everything that you've been posting. Adam, how long have you been on this kick
 
Atom Stevens  46:24
already? I want to say it's been more than a year now.
 
Della Hansmann  46:27
So there's an archive already on it, and I haven't done it
 
Atom Stevens  46:31
every single Monday, but there's a lot of them. So yeah.
 
Della Hansmann  46:36
Well, this is so fun. And apropos of nothing, I think one of the first houses I did. It was before I was doing mid-century master plans, but one of the first houses I did design work on here in Madison was actually two story Neo mansard house, and I got the sketches for that somewhere, so they're around. And apparently, I've even designed one and forgotten all about it until just we started talking about it. So that's hilarious. This really is the proof. I think mid-century houses hide in plain sight in front of you, mid-century office buildings, mid-century apartment buildings.
 
And of course, we're losing them all the time. So let's highlight what's cool about them and try to draw attention to and preserve them. But once you start looking for a mid-century feature, you start seeing it absolutely everywhere, and now this is your next obsession, and ours Neo mansard houses. Yes. Okay, you came. You listened. Thank you for being a good sport about this crazy little research rabbit hole for the both of us.
 
And maybe you're sold on the idea that a mansard roof mid-century house could be a cool thing. Maybe you're starting to think about some houses in the area that are suspiciously mansard like that. You've just been driving by every day and not thinking about but now they're popping up to the top of your consciousness. Maybe as you go driving around on your errands over the next week, you will see them where you had never spotted them before.
 
That's what happened to me immediately as we started discussing this. But one way or another, I'm very curious to know whether you have just been charmed by this topic, whether you're sort of fascinated in the way that one is by rubbernecking a car accident, hoping everyone's okay, but not at all attracted to it, or whether you're just like Della, why did you two oddballs spend this whole time talking about mansard roof houses on mid-century buildings? That's an odd thing to do.
 
Let me know. Pop over a say hey in my Instagram story. Say hey to Adam. Let us know if you've got mansard roof details to report. If you've lived in or loved one, if you found it to be practical, if you've ever visited one, or if there's one in your area that you've got questions or answers about, let's all form part of the research circle and have a little fun thinking about the specific style.
 
And if you had so much fun listening to Adam and you wish he was talking more about your style of house, don't worry. I will have him back on the podcast again to talk more about mid-century history being a researcher and a curator of your own home and how to advocate for all mid-century houses everywhere, all the time as he does. Okay. Catch you next week. Mid model remodeler, this has been fun.