Mary Lund Davis Home for Sale: Inside the Architect’s Personal Midcentury Modern Residence.
Updated: Aug 10
The personal Mary Lund Davis home has come on the market in Fircrest, offering a rare chance to own an architect-designed midcentury modern residence that helped shape Pacific Northwest modernism.
NWMLS
AUGUST 2025
You know those houses that seem to announce themselves the moment you pull up? This isn’t one of them.
It’s a simple home tucked beneath mature trees on a quiet street. A low roofline. A carport. Just under 1,000 square feet.
Honestly, that’s part of what caught my attention. And once I learned this is the Mary Lund Davis home, every design decision became more interesting.
Architects have the rare opportunity to design for themselves. Some use that freedom to create something bold or experimental. Mary Lund Davis went in a different direction. She designed a house that feels remarkably restrained.
Once you know it was her own home, every decision becomes worth a closer look.
Davis was one of the Pacific Northwest’s pioneering modernists and the first woman to graduate from the University of Washington’s School of Architecture after World War II. She believed good design wasn’t about adding more—it was about making every decision count.
More than seventy years later, the house still makes that case surprisingly well.
NWMLS
The first thing I noticed wasn’t what the house has. It was what it doesn’t.
There’s very little space devoted to simply moving from one room to another. No long hallways. No oversized entry. No formal rooms that sit empty most of the year. Nearly every square foot is doing something useful.
The vaulted ceilings make the living space feel larger than its footprint, while the walls of glass borrow space from the landscape beyond. Standing in the living room, your eye keeps drifting outside. That isn’t accidental. Northwest modernism has always been less interested in separating people from nature than in finding ways to connect the two.
The house was built with prefabricated wall panels on a post-and-beam frame—forward-thinking construction for the early 1950s. The open kitchen, dining, and living areas still feel contemporary, not because open floor plans are trendy, but because they’re genuinely practical.
Downstairs, a flexible space with its own entrance could become a studio, guest suite, home office, or something entirely different. I suspect Davis would have appreciated that. She designed for changing lives, not fixed floor plans.
Outside, terraced gardens step down the site toward a secluded hot tub. Even here, the landscape feels considered rather than decorative. The house never competes with the setting. It lets the setting do some of the work.
Why Mary Lund Davis still matters.
Davis grew up around construction. Her father was a builder, so buildings weren’t abstract ideas—they were things people actually made. That practical mindset stayed with her.
After enrolling at the University of Washington in 1945, she became one of Washington’s first licensed female architects of the post-war era. Her work embraced prefabrication, efficient planning, honest materials, and flexible spaces years before those ideas entered the mainstream.
This home earned an AIA–Sunset Western Home Award in 1966, but awards aren’t really what make it significant. To me, what’s fascinating is that this wasn’t a showcase house built for clients or magazines. It was where she chose to live.
Whenever architects design their own homes, I pay attention. It’s one thing to recommend ideas to clients, and another to live with those same decisions every day.
In many ways, this house feels like a distilled version of everything Davis believed architecture should be.
NWMLS
Looking beyond this house.
Davis’s influence reached well beyond Fircrest. She co-designed Tacoma Millwork Supply Company’s office with Alan Bucholz, earning national recognition in Architectural Record. She developed furniture and cabinetry plans for the Douglas Fir Plywood Association, helping bring modern design into ordinary American homes. Later, she designed a striking hexagonal residence overlooking Wollochet Bay and a Usonian-inspired home for her father-in-law.
What’s consistent throughout her work isn’t a recognizable style so much as a way of thinking. She designed buildings that worked hard without looking like they were trying hard. That’s a lesson many contemporary homes could still learn from.
NWMLS
Three Details I Wouldn’t Want You to Miss.
The windows. They’re positioned to extend the rooms into the landscape rather than simply admit light.
The lack of wasted space. Notice how little square footage is devoted to hallways.
The restraint. Davis could have designed anything for herself. Instead, she chose simplicity.
NWMLS
Property Details.
137 Del Monte Ave.
Fircrest, WA 98466
Note: Some historical sources list the home’s construction date as 1954. The current listing identifies it as 1952.
MLS #2412581 | Photos courtesy NWMLS | Listed by Teresa Nielsen, PRO RLTYSRVCS Eastside
Shawn Williams is a Washington real estate broker with Keller Williams Eastside and founder of House of Grā, specializing in architect-designed homes, midcentury modern houses, and distinctive residential properties throughout the Pacific Northwest. Through her writing and client work, she helps people understand not just what a home is worth, but why thoughtful design adds lasting value.
Call/text 206.436.9099 | email: shawn-williams@kw.com
