The Last Original Standing Alside Home by Emil Tessin with Interiors by Knoll | House Tour

Michigan City is a unique town, is a very industrial town, but this area that we're kind of pocketed in here, they're all modernist homes and really unique, beautiful homes. This home, obviously, the Frost House, was very much part of the modernist movement. Obviously, we're very forward-thinking for the time. Well, the Frost House was built in 1964 as part of a concept of being a mass-manufactured home. A modular home system. They came, it was from Allside Homes, which was architecturally designed by Emile Tessin. This home here that we're in today, the Frost House, was one of the models for the homes. I think it might've been in the neighborhood of like 10 to 15 or something of that nature. The original owners of the home was Dr. Robert Frost and Amelia Frost. Dr. Robert Frost was a forensic pathologist in the area and they raised their two children here. It's really unique in the sense that all of it is metal. So what looks like walls is actually an aluminum sheet and then on the other side of it is foam and then, again, an aluminum sheet on the outside of that supported by steel beams between those. The wood, obviously, is wood paneling, but it's over the aluminum sheets. It's quite unique in that sense that you don't really see homes that are constructed in this way. The interior of the home was designed by Paul McCobb and Florence Knoll. It's a really unique collaboration, how they came together, because Paul McCobb was considered the godfather of mid-century modern design, but known for a lot of wood design stuff. So all of the built-ins that you see are all Paul McCobb and then Knoll and the Knoll Design Unit is kind of what was responsible for the interior design as it relates to the furniture and the layouts. It was all sold as a package with the homes when you bought them for, at that time, an incredibly affordable price. I think collectors today would be considered amazing, but I think Florence Knoll's the real star of the show in this one because her upbringing is so unique in how she was connected with so many famous designers of the time. It seems not only just unprecedented for that time, but let alone how notable it is for a woman to be leading that at that time, too, as a working professional. I think it's such a great story to see how she pioneered that movement. Knoll was started by Florence Knoll's husband. They met and married, and then she took over kind of the helm of at least the creative vision of the company. Before that, it kind of made very more industrial-type furniture, and so the breakfast table that was original home kind of resembles a bit more of that. It definitely has a point of view, but it doesn't have the mid-century lines that I think the world has come to love today, like what you see in American mid-century modern furniture. She essentially pioneered the idea of collaboration, if you think about it, because prior to her, furniture companies were not releasing furniture with the designer's name attached to it. So it was normally like they would name it something, and it wasn't about the designer as much. But she really kind of brought that to the mainstream, and having the likes of Mies van der Rohe or Eero Saarinen, it's an insane collection of furniture that I think she was able to kind of wrangle together. When we came in the home for the first time, the harmony between the furniture and the layout, the outside even, for that matter, and I think that's really the work of the previous stewards, Bob and Karen, that was what we were immediately taken by. We made an offer in 15 minutes of being in the home. We didn't leave without writing the offer while we were in here. And we had no idea when we came to look at it. We were just like, let's just go, let's just go take a peek. It was a casual like, oh, we'll just, you know what I mean? It was not something we were considering that seriously. But the jazz music was playing when we came for the showing, and we looked at the yard, and we're like, oh, we can see our dogs running around here. It was beautiful, yeah. The patio furniture, for instance, we were not familiar with the Richard Schultz collection at that time. We had seen it, it was familiar to you, but you didn't really know it by name. But we're out there and looking at the furniture, and we're like, this has to stay here with the home. Like, it just made sense. And we didn't know exactly why, but that's been the fun of learning all about each of the individual designers in the story, and essentially how Florence really kind of needed them to make different collections over the time at Knoll to make a full collection of what she really wanted to see. The things that we've seen that have been the most notable pieces that Emile Tessin has been a part of has been the headquarters for Allside, which is a really cool modernist office building, really beautiful design, and then this project. But it's kind of interesting because this project wasn't really considered a success because they intended it to be, the concept was to build hundreds of thousands of homes, some large, large number that probably maybe was too ambitious. I can't say there's a ton out there, but I don't know if you know the story of Emile Tessin and Florence Knoll, which is kind of where the magic of it all started, was Florence Knoll was taken in by Emile Tessin's family at a young age. I think there's not really a whole lot of clarity of what happened or what was the situation there, but she lived with Emile Tessin's family, I think, starting around middle school, and they sent her to Cranbrook Academy where she was taught by Thalil Saarinen, Eero Saarinen's father. So it was kind of like the beginning of this great trajectory of Florence, but as how the two of them were originally connected, Emile Tessin and Florence Knoll at a young age. So I would almost consider them like brother and sister of sorts, which that, I think, is really where the root of this whole story kind of starts. We weren't necessarily fans of modernist homes. We weren't not fans, but definitely wasn't something we were seeking out. I'd say the feeling we got just being in here drew us to it. We've been here since 2021. The previous owners were here for four to five years. It's like the harmony of it all just drew us in. We had an appreciation for it, obviously. How could you not? You know, I think anyone growing up in the U.S., like, you see this stuff. It was in your grandparents' homes or in buildings you walked into. And so it was like, it's kind of like a Kraft macaroni and cheese or something like that. You might not love it, but you have an appreciation for it, whether, in that case, whether it's good for you or not. Our favorite time here is surprisingly the winter time because I feel like we spend way more time inside the house, not out at the pool. And like when we host friends here too, we'll find ourselves playing games over here. We'll have dinner in the kitchen area. We really kind of use the whole home and it just makes us appreciate. The architecture of everything. It just brings you in the home. Sitting in the chair you're sitting in right now, listening to jazz music with a cup of coffee it's just everything. And I think when it's summertime, you kind of tend to spend more time out at the pool and the yard, which is really great too because you're enjoying the outside lines of the home at times. But the wintertime kind of brings you in to appreciate. Where I think the real collaboration of it all is is in the Paul McCobb, the Florence Knoll, the Miltessin. The layout and flow of the home and just enjoying the space of it all where it's true beauty is actually. And I think it kind of gets skipped over a lot because again, in the Midwest, we're just anxious to get outside once it's nice out. All the all side homes that we've seen in existence like from Ohio, they're all over the kind of Midwest and East a little bit. They've all been painted to like from at least what we've seen for the most part. And that was kind of the magic of I think what Bob and Karen saw when they first came in the original color of what a Miltessin imagined it to be. So all the models were these colorful modernist homes. And yeah, as we've seen over the decades after those homes were built, a lot of them were, you know, kind of made to appeal as times evolved and you lost the attributes of kind of what made them. But yeah, it loses its cool. You know what I mean? I have to honestly say I don't love the black steel lines of the home from the outside. The home actually might be cooler if it was painted all white by my standards at least. But that's why I think it's important in preservation. It's not about me or Jennifer or Bob or Karen. It's about preserving the intent of the architectural story that was intended to be created and continuing that. We all have our little personal nuances that we kind of want to create and we can create that in other projects. But like letting this be what it is, I think connects us to a time that is gone. It's interesting living in a home like this. It's a lot of fun, but it's also a lot of work to upkeep. And the work is well worth it. But at the same time, I think it kind of allows you to enjoy it for a period of time. Like any collection of piece of art, you might hold on to it for a period of time and then decide it's time to relinquish it to a new loving owner.