Mid-Century Mastery

A free-flowing 1959 house with a lofty interior rises to the next level in the hands of two detail-obsessed owners.

- Deborah Baldwin

For many period-house lovers, the term “mid-century modern” evokes sharp angles, bare windows, and no place to sit except a stiff chrome chair. But you won’t have trouble finding privacy or comfy seating in the spacious 1959 home of George Marrone and Michael Nocera, dedicated restorers with a distinct preference for the floor plans and furnishings of the Mad Men era.

Instead, their postwar gem, in a leafy neck of Wilmington, Delaware, is more slinky than severe, with warming trends at every turn, from luminous wood accents to a fireplace open to pooled living space ideal for both cocooning and entertaining.

Appraising the house from the outside, near a sinuous creek and a wandering walkway, George tips his hat to the couple who commissioned it, Carolyn and Stanley Blish, and who “emphasized curves,” as he puts it, right down to a low-slung stone wall that wraps the back as if giving it a hug. The property’s well-rounded approach extends inside, to a curvaceous swath of flagstone flooring and a floating staircase in the shape of an inverted capital C.

Carolyn Blish, an artist, now 90 and living in rural Pennsylvania, seems surprised to get a call about the house, as if it’s newsworthy. It sits, after all, in the shadow of a Frank Lloyd Wright built around the same time on the very same creek, she says, by her late husband’s then boss.

The Blish house lacks a big-name provenance. “No architect,” says Carolyn, offering credit only to a savvy hairdresser. She and Stanley, an executive at DuPont, had been given an acre-and-a-half plot by her parents, who lived next door. “I saw a picture in a magazine, which I found through the guy who cut my hair,” she says. The house had a self-effacing brick facade and wild amounts of glass in back. “We said, ‘That’s it’ and gave it to our builder.”