855 Circle Drive - Haertling House

855 Circle Drive / Charles and Viola Haertling House / Style: ‘International’ - Mies Van Der Rohe / Architect: Charles Haertling / built 1958

While the original house has been extensively remodeled, we included this stop on the tour because it has lessons to teach us. Architect Charles Haertling built this home for his family in a manner derivative of the architecture of the master of Modernism, Mies Van der Rohe. It was a beautiful, innovative, Modern design with complex, cubic massing and composition of exterior materials. As the home of possibly the greatest MCM architect in Colorado, the building should have been landmarked to protect its importance. Instead, there has been a remodel that obscures the original design. While the new design is clearly grounded in the spirit of modern architecture it is sad to have lost the original by Haertling.