Salt Lake City’s Gore House is something of an architectural landmark.
Eduard Dreier, a Swiss-born architect, designed the midcentury modern home with its distinctive, mushroom-shaped carport right out front.
“Everybody knows this house because of it, so it’s a super distinguishing feature,” said Summit Sotheby's International Realty broker Mony Ty, who has listed the residence at 2777 E. Comanche Drive for $2.25 million.
And the home’s iconic status rings true: In an Instagram post announcing the property listing from Ty’s @Saltlakemodern account, a user with the handle @75yards commented: “I’ve been obsessed with this house for years is it on the market?!”
“Yes,” Ty replied, offering to get the user into a showing as soon as possible.
Completed in 1956, the low-slung home’s cachet isn’t a given: There are a lot of Dreier residences out West. After growing up in Switzerland and studying architecture, Dreier made his way to the United States, working primarily in Utah and Nevada before dying in a car accident in 1996.
Still, Dreier has an expansive legacy. He constructed hundreds of residential projects over his decades in practice — Dreier homes also exist in Wyoming and California — and his son, Guy, also pursued a career in architecture.
Ty has about 60 or so Dreier homes on his mailing list alone, he said.
“This one is cool because it is the only house that we of know of that has that mushroom carport,” Ty explained.
The carport also looks like a Knoll tulip table
Although evocative of the umbrella-like carport that hovers above Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1948-era Sol Friedman House in Pleasantville, New York, the Gore House carport has a bit more curve to its stem. To Ty, the carport looks like the base of Eero Saarinen’s iconic Knoll tulip table.
For much of his early work, Dreier was “probably very much influenced by [Ludwig] Mies van der Rohe,” Ty speculated, referencing the iconic 20th-century architect known for his steel-and-glass structures. Later on, the agent explained, Dreier’s work became “more sculptural,” but the two-story example at Comanche Drive has those Miesian characteristics of floor-to-ceiling windows slotted into a horizontal steel-framed structure.
Since its last trade, the 4,038-square-foot home has undergone an overhaul, Ty explained. The exterior, with its metal and white brick, was carefully restored, but the windows, systems and appliances were wholesale replaced. Designer Tally Stevens, who also works with a Salt Lake City importer of marble and granite, spent a year overseeing the restoration, filling the four-bedroom structure with polished quartzite, earth-toned marble, honeyed travertine and terrazzo, among other materials.
These natural stones are “perhaps a little more decorative,” Ty noted. Stevens wanted the project “to be more a luxurious midcentury” option.
Midcentury homes can cost more
Heading into the end of the year, Ty has five midcentury modern listings on his roster, including the Gore House. Two of those are under contract.
These midcentury homes “tend to get about 20% premium above a comparable” listing, Ty said, just by the nature of their style and history, and that can draw out the process. The residence at 3017 E. Saint Marys Circle — another iconic Salt Lake City Dreier once owned by the inventor of the artificial heart — has been on the market for about 30 days and just saw its $4.8 million price tag drop by $315,000. Another broker has the listing.
And, as fate would have it, the Gore House’s distinguishing feature is also holding some buyers back. Although people “love the house,” Ty said, “they want a garage. I think in Utah, the carport thing is a little tough.”
“That’s been our shortfall,” he said. “Our only shortfall.”