Beautifully restored George Nelson home includes original furniture for $450K

It’s a true modernist gem

By Lauren Ro@blauring Jul 18, 2016, 4:26pm EDT

An exterior view of the two-story Kirkpatrick House showing a wall of windows and a flat roof overhanging the structure. — An exterior view of the Kirkpatrick House.

Have a nomination for a jaw-dropping listing that would make a mighty fine House of the Day? Get thee to the tipline and send us your suggestions. We'd love to see what you've got.

Location: Kalamazoo, Michigan

Price: $450,000

This dream house by architect and American Modernist designer George Nelson in Kalamazoo, Michigan, could not have come back on the market at a better time. Arriving just in time for Curbed’s Furniture Week, the four-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot home was designed in 1955 for James and Sally Kirkpatrick, whose college roommate Frances Hollister happened to be married to George Nelson—Herman Miller’s longtime director of design.

Corresponding by letter, the Kirkpatricks and Nelson, along with his associate Gordon Chadwick, would eventually settle on a design tailored to the specific needs of the family. The Kirkpatrick House was built between between 1955 and 1958, a period that is considered the pinnacle of Nelson’s career, with its interiors—and furniture—also designed by Nelson’s eponymous offices.

The home is now up for sale by Dave Corner, a devoted collector of vintage Herman Miller furniture who first saw the house when he went to inquire with the then-owner about a set of dressers he was interested in purchasing. When the owner put the house up for sale a year later, Corner was the first person he called. Corner spent the next decade carefully restoring the home, all the way down to its original color scheme, and is now downsizing.

The sale of the home includes most of the original furniture as well as the letters between Kirkpatrick and Nelson, original drawings and plans, photographs by Norman Carver, and books and magazine that featured the home when it was first built.

The two-story, rectangular residence—which sits on a two-and-a-half acre secluded, wooded lot—features a wood and steel-frame structure with a flat roof, a recessed entrance, large windows, tiled, hardwood, and carpeted floors, and brick- and wood-paneled walls. Take a look around the exquisite home below, which is asking $450,000—which honestly seems like the deal of the century.