Hal Moldstad Northwest Contemporary asks $2.2M

This is not just another NW Contemporary. This 4,000 square foot house was designed by Harold Moldstad, the modernist who also designed houses for Bill Gates and Paul Allen. This $2,200,000 house was distinctive even before they made their first millions. The land has been distinctive for much longer.

Take the conventional NW Contemporary and skip the imperfections. Cathedral ceilings defined by long lines of lumber are part of the style, but here the wood is cedar and clear. Wood paneling for the walls, exposed columns, rails, and dividers are built with the minimal of ornamentation to emphasize the space and the materials.

Continuous walls of windows weren’t common in 1974. Here, they are a natural because the house sits on the bluff that is Foulweather Bluff, the entrance to Hood Canal that is properly named. The property is more than a half million square feet, more than twelve and a half acres edged by 775 feet of high bank waterfront. Most of the land is left as natural forest, with a bit of cliff and tidelands included.

Around the house are refined gardens and a pond designed to a Japanese theme that blends with the native forest. For a more pragmatic gardener, there are raised vegetable beds, a greenhouse, and various other outbuildings, including a shop and a dog run. Between the house and the bluff is a lawn that won’t block the view north up Admiralty Inlet. Cruise ships and container ships head to the right. Nuclear submarines head to the left.

It is an interesting setting and package for three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms.

If you arrange a tour, ask about the two very tall antennas. Maybe they’re there for some high-end amateur radio action. Maybe they’re there for some official purpose. In any case, you get a couple of conversation pieces that would be fertile fodder for conspiracy theorists.

• 41401 Foulweather Bluff, Hansville [Estately]
• Moldstad, Harold A. Jr [Docomomo]