A month ago, the historic Houston-area home of acclaimed modern architect Victor Lundy appeared slated for demolition. But just weeks before the home was set to be taken apart, a Houston couple has swooped in.
Originally sold in Nov. 2024 after Lundy’s death at the age of 101, the Bellaire home was scheduled to be taken apart by new buyers, who had concerns about the house and wanted to build a new home on the lot. The new buyers rejected an offer from several local and national preservation groups to buy the home for more than its original listing price. But after public outcry from local and national preservation groups, the new buyers reneged and sold the home for more than $1.75 million on Oct. 15.
Dan Price, who recently purchased the home with his wife, Carol, told Chron that the couple had initially heard that the home would be preserved by the new buyers. But when they learned that the house was going to be dismantled, the Prices joined the initial offer to purchase it. When the new owners decided to sell it again, the Prices were first in line. Price said the couple wanted Lundy’s house not as an investment property, but for its artistic value.
“We didn’t have engineering drawings. We didn’t do a bunch of due diligence in advance. We decided that we liked the house and we wanted it to survive,” Dan said. “We liked what Lundy himself was trying to do with it in particular. What mattered to us at that moment was thinking about the Lundy house as a piece of art.”
The interior of late architect Victor Lundy’s home. (Pro House Photos/For Martha Turner Sotheby’s International Realty )
Both Dan and his wife have a long fascination with modern architecture. Dan, a faculty member at the University of Houston who has a doctorate in philosophy, said that modernist aesthetics interest him on a “philosophical level.” Carol serves on the board of local nonprofit Preservation Houston and has a background in architectural history. When the couple visited the Lundy house during an open house earlier this year, they both were taken by the home’s elegant, curved windows. Dan said it reminded him of the Glass House, a famed work by architect Philip Johnson.
“The use of light is just exceptional. The curved space of the big living room space is just quite brilliant,” Price raved. “It’s about the light and then the connection to the landscape. There’s something very interesting about an intimate space that flows inside, outside, and has the wood as really part of the vernacular.”
Price said that the previous buyers had decided to sell the home after public outcry from preservation groups both local and national, who argued that tearing down Lundy’s home would erase a key work by the towering modernist and sever Houston’s connection to the famed architect. Steve Curry, a member of local architecture group Houston Mod, personally celebrated the sale.
“What good news for us all that this acclaimed architectural masterpiece, the Lundy House and Studio, is in the hands of preservation-minded new owners,” Curry told Chron by email.
The studio of the Victor Lundy house in Bellaire on Sept. 18, 2025 (Gwen Howerton/Chron.com)
Price isn’t sure what comes next for the home, though the couple doesn’t plan to live in it. One example of what the Lundy house could become that Price cited was that of the Dora Maar House, a historic mansion in the village of Ménerbes, France. Originally owned by Dora Maar, a surrealist photographer and companion of Pablo Picasso, the house was bought in the 1990s by an American arts patron and is now used as a residency for artists and writers. Price said that already, academics from around the world come to Houston to teach art at local universities-the Lundy house could be a space for them.
“There’s this great art studio that they could have a little residency in,” Price said. “That’s the type of thing that we started thinking about. We’ve got different ways in which we can kind of create a space that is a little bit more about creating community.”
The Prices have dabbled in historic preservation, too. In 2011, the couple bought and restored a 1920s-era home in Shadyside, where they live today. The couple had the house designated as a protected landmark by the City of Houston. The Lundy home is in need of similar restoration work. The home has limited water damage, and the roof needs to be replaced. The house also resides in a floodplain, and the City of Bellaire requires that the home be protected from flooding.
“The whole structure needs to be raised, or we have to in some other way kind of create an appropriate response to potential flooding,” Price said.
Ultimately, Price said that preserving the Lundy house and making it a community space will be a new endeavor for him and his wife. Still, it’s worth it to save not just the house, but the hopeful outlook that modernist architecture sought to exemplify.
“It’s an interesting leap into the unknown for us personally,” Price said. “But there’s something about that that goes along with the optimism of modernism. There’s this kind of gesture that’s smaller, but has an integrity to it.”
More Culture
Merch | H-E-B’s latest t-shirt collab was a disaster
Drama | Houston billboard lawyer ousts partner, adds new one with similar name
Super Bowl | Petition calls for Texas country icon to take halftime show
History | This 1995 flick almost derailed Matthew McConaughey’s career
For the latest and best from Chron, sign up for our daily newsletter here.
This article originally published at Famed Houston home of architect Victor Lundy saved by last-minute buyers.