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"In many ways, it's the cutting edge of architecture today. You hear a lot about sustainability: using local materials, natural heating and cooling. And here is a building that's been doing it for more than 50 years.

"I personally think this is, flat out, the greatest modern house in North Carolina," Harmon said.

Local attraction

So radical was the design compared to most of what existed or was being built in post-World War II Raleigh that the construction site became something of an attraction. On weekends, traffic would stop in front of the house, on Alamance Drive, and along Pasquotank, which runs behind it. Even after the couple moved in, before work was completed, Paschal would occasionally encounter people climbing through windows to peek inside.

The Paschals welcomed visitors to the house for as long as they lived there: design-school faculty; medical society members; the founding PTA of Aldert Root Elementary School; members of the Junior League; friends of the N.C. State library and its million-book campaign; and friends of the Paschals' sons and daughter, who played basketball on the court in the yard, or football in the space beyond it, or flew through the air on a zip-line that followed the terraced slope from the back of the house to the bottom of the lot.

George Paschal died in 1995, and his widow has moved out. The house remains exactly as it was built, save the Paschals' early decisions to enclose a screened porch to enlarge the dining room, and to fill in several wading pools built close to the house. It has never had air conditioning. It would need a new heating system and other updates, to be approved by Preservation North Carolina.

Real estate agent Joe Hodge Jr., who has sold property in Country Club Hills, said a home next to the Paschal House sold recently for more than $1.32 million to two builders who plan to demolish the house, divide the property into two lots of just under a half-acre each and build new homes on each. That comes to about $660,000 per lot, compared to the $800,000 per lot the Paschal offspring want Preservation North Carolina to get for their property.

This month, the Paschals were inducted into the Raleigh Hall of Fame, he for helping integrate the state medical society, she for her efforts with the N.C. Museum of Art. Beth Paschal, a docent at the museum for 40 years, understands the historical significance of the house, which helped bring international attention to Raleigh in the 1950s as an incubator of Modernist design. She'd like to see the house survive but would add one more provision for a buyer.

"I want somebody with at least three children," she said. "What a wonderful place to grow up."

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