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Last summer, having accepted a position at the University of Pennsylvania, I came to Philadelphia to look for a house. Going through the pages of a real estate agent's directory, I chanced upon a postage stamp-size photograph of a structure that looked familiar, a building I remembered visiting 30 years ago as an architecture student on a traveling scholarship. The house was of unusual design: A sort of quadraplex, it was one of a four-unit cluster whose cruciform arrangement ensured privacy for each of the dwellings. According to the directory, the house was located in Ardmore, a suburb on Philadelphia's Main Line. It was not where my wife and I were intending to live, but I thought the house itself would be worth a visit.
The brick and lapped-cypress exterior of the building was almost completely hidden from the sidewalk by trees. We went up the short driveway, under a large balcony that sheltered the carport (which previous owners had partially enclosed to create a study), and turned right to face an unprepossessing front door. Once inside, we found ourselves in the corner of a room that rose unexpectedly and dramatically to a 16-foot height. Two tall walls, entirely glass, not only allowed light to fill the interior but also made the garden outside seem like an extension of the room. There was a deep fireplace in one corner and a cozy built-in settee in the other. Built-in cupboards and bookshelves lined the brick walls, and the floor was polished concrete. The owners were in the process of moving out, but the room, even though empty, was a beautiful, serene space.
The modest materials and the profusion of built-in furniture throughout reminded me that when the quadraplex was built in 1938, it was intended to be an affordable starter house for young couples. Each 2,300-square-foot unit, which cost $4,000 to construct, had a master bedroom and two additional bedrooms with bunk beds. Each unit had three levels, with two large roof terraces that augmented the outdoor space of the small garden and made the upper rooms feel like penthouses--features that no doubt accounted for the development's original name, Suntop Homes.
A narrow stair led from the living room to an eat-in kitchen overlooking the living...