RALEIGH - In the current Raleigh real estate market, a mid-century modern architectural marvel could end up like the master's unsigned painting that gets sold at a flea market for the price of the frame, ripped out and replaced with an art-shop print.

The Paschal House, a Modernist home on the National Register of Historic Places, is in danger of being sold for the value of the land on which it sits -- nearly three picturesque acres as rare, inside the Beltline, as an undiscovered Monet. If Preservation North Carolina can't find a sympathetic buyer, the home may be leveled and the land subdivided for as many as seven new two-story mansions.

"I try not to think of that," said Beth Paschal, who had the house built in 1950 with her husband, George Washington Paschal Jr.

Preservation North Carolina has a renewable three-month option to buy the house at $5.6 million and resell it for $5.75 million with covenants that would protect its essential elements. To get that price -- based on the Paschal heirs' valuation of $800,000 each for seven lots of about four-tenths acre apiece -- Preservation North Carolina expects to have to parcel off some of the land.

"It wouldn't be our first choice," said Myrick Howard, president of the nonprofit. "But it's better than losing the house."

The nonprofit will sponsor a national juried design competition seeking ideas for how some of the land might be developed without destroying the integrity of the Paschal House.

The Paschals met in Philadelphia, married in 1944 and moved to Raleigh in 1946. After searching for a house and finding nothing that suited their taste, they approached the dean of the new School of Design at what is now N.C. State University. The school was founded in 1948 with young, innovative designers recruited from around the country. Dean Henry Kamphoefner loaned the Paschals some books on modernism and recommended then-associate professor James Fitzgibbon as architect.

The Paschals had a few stipulations: George Paschal, a physician, wanted an outside door from his study and a circular drive so he could make nighttime hospital calls without disturbing family or houseguests. There could be no steps to the house, so elderly parents in wheelchairs could come straight in. And in the kitchen, where Beth Paschal reigned, cabinets were custom-made so the countertops were the right height for kneading bread dough.

"Not too high, not too low," Paschal recalled.

Beyond that, she said, Fitzgibbon was largely at liberty to design a modern home in harmony with its landscape, on what was then the edge of Raleigh in Country Club Hills off Glenwood Avenue.

Organic yet manmade

He came up with 3,340 square feet of wood, native granite and glass that shows the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright and blurs the line between organic and man-made. Its long, low-sloping roof fits snugly beneath huge white oaks and magnolias. With courtyards on each end, an atrium at the entrance and a patio in back, it blends smoothly into its surroundings. Interior walls are lightly stained plywood, and floors are of cork tile. The overall feel is of a mountain lodge set deep in the laurel, or a tree house close to the ground.

In summer, the house is shaded by deep overhangs, cooled by prevailing breezes through open doors and ample windows. In winter, a low sun pours through expanses of glass into the living room. Heated floors and a massive central fireplace with a sunken hearth and built-in seating make a cozy retreat, Paschal said.

"I'm sure people thought it was odd-looking," said Frank Harmon, a Raleigh architect who used to teach at NCSU and took his classes to see the house each year.

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