Modernist Home tour – Herbert and Elaine Crovitz House

2745 Montgomery Street

1966

Frank DePasquale

Preservation Durham

Herbert and Elaine Crovitz, both professors in Duke University’s Department of Psychology, had two children and were expecting their third when they built in Duke Forest. They hired Durham architect Frank DePasquale, figuring they could count on him for a Modernist design.

DePasquale was a 1951 graduate of the North Carolina State College (now University) School of Design. By the mid-1960s, he had worked with venerable Durham architect George Watts Carr, becoming a partner in a reorganized firm with Carr’s son Robert. He was also active in the arts community, and Elaine Crovitz wanted a house that could double as a personal gallery for her collection, which included Joe Cox paintings and sculpture by Wayne Trapp.

The dwelling the Crovitzes commissioned appears spare and protective from the street, but a series of windows opens the back to the wooded lot. DePasquale flooded the building with light and provided plenty of white walls for the art. “It was what you would see in a museum,” Elaine Crovitz recalls, referring to the space. “Frank knew about that.”

DePasquale had to teasingly urge his client to furnish the house and not just hang canvases. She did so with a large teak table, a smattering of chairs and sofas, and a baby grand piano in the open living area. Elaine Crovitz lived in the house 23 years, raising her three children there.

DePasquale, who died in 2010, made an imprint on Durham’s architectural character during his long career here. Carr Harrison Pruden and DePasquale Architects operated from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s. DePasquale later founded DTW Architects Planners and designed 11 schools in Durham County in the 1980s. The firm also remodeled the old City Hall into the Arts Council building on Morris Street.

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