R5 David Wallance, David Wallance Architect, Manhattan

When David Wallance was just 5 years old, he startled his industrial and graphic designer parents as they drove home from a tour of Washington, DC, by asking, “Why are there three different kinds of columns?” Somehow, he had discerned the differences among what he’d later learn were Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns. After graduating from Cooper Union, Wallance worked eight years with modern architecture master Edward Larrabee Barnes, who has gifted Westchester with many beautiful structures, including the Katonah Museum of Art, IBM’s former headquarters in Mount Pleasant, and homes in Bedford, Chappaqua, Mount Kisco, and Pound Ridge.

Where does an architect go from there? At his next firm, then called the Polshek Partnership (now Ennead Architects), Wallance helped design another iconic building: the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. In 2008, Wallance chose to also focus his practice, now split between Manhattan and Croton-on-Hudson, on residences. After years of designing museums and institutions, Wallance says, “I could be very happy designing houses until the end of my days.”

Known as both an innovative technologist and a designer, Wallance does “contextually sensitive” modern architecture, meaning he pays attention to “the surrounding landscape, to the climate, to the light, even, perhaps, to the culture and history of the location.” The context and use of natural materials are two of the reasons design review boards are relieved that “someone’s proposing modernist architecture that isn’t alien.”

The House: Nothing alien here. Triple threat—client, architect, builder—David Wallance built this Croton-on-Hudson house for his toughest client: himself.

David Wallance Architect PLLC  
David Wallance AIA, 244 Fifth Ave, Ste 2171, New York, NY, (212) 842-8716 , dw-arch.com

Interior Metalwork: Paxton Metalcraft, Peekskill (914) 739-7004
 

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