The Lassiter House, the oldest identified Modernist house in Charlotte, and one of the few designed by architect A.G. Odell still standing, will be torn down if not sold by June.

The house’s only owners put their three-bedroom, three-bath house in Charlotte’s Eastover neighborhood on the market in 2010. Triangle Modernist Houses (TMH), the state’s award-winning non-profit organization for Modernist residential architecture, today issued a National Alert on the Lassiter House. The group’s last National Alert saved the historic Carr House in Durham designed by architect Kenneth Scott.

“The Lassiter House is a classic Modernist design by one of the south’s foremost architects,” said TMH Founder and director George Smart. “ A. G. Odell put Charlotte architecture on the map through the Ovens Auditorium and countless other Queen City buildings. Because the land value exceeds the house, Modernist gems like this are disappearing at an alarming rate.”

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission calls the house an “extremely rare as a fully realized example of Modernist Style” and “important as an early example of the [Modernist] movement after World War II to apply technology to residential architecture.”

Published in Better Homes and Gardens magazine in 1956, the house features steel beams that support the roof, eliminating the need for load-bearing interior walls. As a result, the interior spaces are large, open, and thoroughly wheelchair accessible. Extensive glass walls and doors visually and physically open the inside to outdoor gardens. Architect Charles McMurray did an addition to the house in the 1970s.