Today we’d like to introduce you to George Smart.
Hi George, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in Raleigh, son of an architect dad and a radio announcer and amateur actress mom. I sold computers, got a Duke MBA, consulted for thirty years. One night in 2007 I went looking for Eduardo Catalano’s 1954 house — that hyperbolic paraboloid roof, Frank Lloyd Wright called it the house of the century, then I learned it was demolished in 2001. It was the 2nd most famous house in North Carolina after Biltmore. So I built a website so the next one wouldn’t vanish quietly. A year later 200 people came to our first tour. I’d found my tribe.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
For years it was me, a laptop, and a lot of unpaid weekends. Nonprofits are hard at first. Money’s always short, volunteers come and go, and I had to learn fundraising, archiving, and podcasting on the fly. The worst days are when we document a beautiful house right up until the bulldozer shows up. You can’t save them all. But every so often somebody buys one because they found it on our site, and that gets me through the rest.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
USModernist. We started in 2007 as Triangle Modernist Houses, became North Carolina Modernist Houses, and now we’re a national nonprofit – same obsession, much bigger map.
USModernist is the largest free open digital archive of American residential Modernist design. We’ve documented more than 500 architects and 30,000 houses, and scanned over six million pages of America’s great architecture magazines — all free. No paywall, no login, no membership. We produce USModernist Radio, 475 episodes and counting with architects, critics, and historians, and we take people on design tours around the country and the world. Everything is educational and nonprofit.
How do you think about luck?
Lucky to be born to an architect and an actress. Lucky the internet showed up right as I got obsessed. Lucky my consulting career paid the bills while this one didn’t. Bad luck too – houses lost, grants missed, a pandemic that cancelled a year of tours. But mostly luck is just showing up. Say yes, answer the phone, respond to the emails.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.usmodernist.org
- Instagram: mr.modernism
