Seattle Culture
Home of the Week: The Famous Vista 63 Home
Architect Ken Koehler's far-out, futuristic masterpiece is still up for sale
By Lauren Mang January 6, 2015
Each week, we’re featuring one Seattle-area home that we think is interesting, inspiring or just a downright feast for the eyes. Some of them are actually on the market, while other homes will offer enviable style tips–courtesy of their ingenious owners or designers–that you can steal for your own abode.
At 3,942 square feet, this angular home rooted in Futurism was designed in 1963 by local architect Ken Koehler for the Seattle Home Show. (View some of the archival press for the space-age manor, including how it was erected inside the Coliseum, right here.)
Dubbed Vista 63, the four-bedroom, tri-level Seward Park home has been on the market since November 2014. It’s listed at $948,000 and was last sold in 1987 for…get ready…$151,000. My how times have changed.
The place swells with groovy vintage details, including an original Low-Fi Rangaire intercom system and vintage masonite paneling with an embossed basket-weave pattern. And those views! You’d have to be positively mad not to adore this house.
I love how the owner kept most of the furnishings–and even the color palette–appropriate for the era.
Have a home or a room in your home that you’d like considered for Seattle mag’s Home of the Week? Email a few pictures and a little information about it to lauren.mang@tigeroak.com.
Follow Us
Where Function Meets Finesse
Without the use of a single brick, Little House turns the tables on the Big Bad Wolf.
Texas residents John and Julie Connor had spent many summers visiting family near Seabeck, an unincorporated waterfront village and former mill town in Kitsap County. They loved the wildness of the southern Hood Canal and imagined a small retreat here of their own, so they purchased a large lot with lush second-growth trees on a…
Master of Transparency
Award-winning architect Eric Cobb’s work seamlessly meshes glass, space and light
Noted architect Eric Cobb is collaborating on a second-home project near The Gorge Amphitheatre with a former junior high school soccer teammate, embodying a classic Seattle story of connection. The new Cliffe Pointe at the Gorge project located within the Cave B Estate grounds features 60 second homes surrounded by vineyards, natural sage, and rolling…
Sandy Sanctuary
Mercer Island couple find bliss with a cabana on the beach
With 8,000 lakes, fifth most in the country, Washington is a happy hunting ground for waterfront lots. Highly popular Lake Chelan, the third-deepest lake in the United States, is not on the top of the list of affordable freshwater options, at least not anywhere near Chelan, where scarce waterfront residential lots start at $2 million….
The Space Arranger
Kyle Gaffney and SkB take a holistic approach to building design
To say that Kyle Gaffney backed into a career in architecture may be a bit exaggerated, but he did get a late start. Gaffney, a cofounder and principal at Seattle architecture firm SkB, suffered a devastating knee injury and lost a soccer scholarship to the University of Puget Sound. Instead of college he went to…