The Milton Small House, also known simply as the Small House, is a modernist house built on a steep hillside on the Lake Boone Trail in Raleigh, North Carolina. Built in 1951, the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. From the 1940s to the 1960s, the faculty of the North Carolina State College School of Design included several modernist architects, including G. Milton Small, FAIA (1916–1992). Small had studied under

Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...

at the Illinois Institute of Technology before moving to Raleigh in 1948. He designed the Small House as his own family residence. Small used builder

Frank Walser Raymond Frank Walser (June 6, 1924 – June 10, 1996), commonly known as Frank Walser, was an American builder who operated in the Raleigh, North Carolina area from 1949 into the 1980s. Born in Tyro, North Carolina, Walser was an engineering g ...

to construct the house. Small went into business with Walser for a time, building homes in the Drewry Hills neighborhood of Raleigh. In its original from, the Small House was "a compact T-shaped, flat-roofed frame box." Most of the home's public living spaces were combined in "one long, carefully proportioned rectangular room that opened with sliding doors onto a full-width,

screened porch A screened porch, also known as a screen room, is a type of porch or similar structure on or near the exterior of a house that has been covered by window screens in order to hinder insects, debris, and other undesirable objects from entering the ...

." The interior included a variety of exotic woods. A number of the home's design elements, including "the definition of space as roof and floor separated by exposed posts, and the large public area that opens onto semi-outdoor spaces," are considered to be typical of the Miesian style. The Raleigh Historic Development Commission has called Small House "the first structure in Raleigh to evoke the design concepts of Mies." A 1961 addition was designed by Small, adding bedrooms to the sides of the house and separate living and dining rooms.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina Modernist architecture in North Carolina Houses completed in 1951 Houses in Raleigh, North Carolina National Register of Historic Places in Raleigh, North Carolina