Plymouth Township Home Listed as a National Historic Place

A Plymouth Township home has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of Interior. 

The Tivadar and Dorothy Balogh House, located on Joy Road, just west of North Ridge Road, was designed and built by Tivadar Balogh for himself and his family in 1959. 

Balogh, who died in 2006, was a well known local architect, credited with designing approximately 150 residential, institutional and commercial structures throughout Michigan, Illinois, and Arizona during his career, according to Michigan Modern. 

The house being listed was part of the Michigan Modern Project, which was initiated by the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office in order to highlight Michigan's role in Modernism in modern architecture.

According to Rob Yallop, an associate of Ann Arbor architecture firm Lord Aeck Sargent who was a consultant on the project, 100 of the best examples or representative examples of modern architecture were surveyed across the state. The Tivadar and Dorothy Balogh House was one of only seven or eight buildings nominated to be listed on the National Register. 

"We focused on houses that were designed by architects for themselves," Yallop said. "We just thought it would be a cool theme." 

Yallop said Balogh was originally looking to build his home on a parcel in Farmington, but the Neighborhood Association put up a resistance to the modern design of the house. 

"So one day he was driving home, took short cut and found the parcel on Joy Road and decided to build there," Yallop said. 

The design included plans for two bedrooms and a home office, along with the usual living spaces. The total cost for the project was $32,000, according to Michigan Modern.

"It demonstrates the modern design principals, like simple geometric forms, expansive use of glass to bring sort of nature and sunlight into the house and an open, free-flowing floor plan," Yallop said about the house. "Another thing is lack of orientation - it doesn't have any of the more traditional moldings and all that. It's very simple and geometric, it doesn't have all the other flourishes of early architecture."

For more information about the Tivadar and Dorothy Balogh House or about the Michigan Modern Project, visit michiganmodern.org.