Welcome to Icons Only, a series about loving restorations of historically significant homes.

A dusty-green home sits above a collection of rocky ridges. Its walls of windows, wooden beams, and rectilinear shape hint at hallmarks of its famed architect, Richard Neutra. But this midcentury residence wasn’t built atop a hilly California landscape, like so many of the modernist homes Neutra designed between the 1920s and 1960s. Instead, it sits in Missoula, Montana, making the residence one of two in the state designed by the influential 20th-century architect.

The story of this particular home begins in the 1930s, with Montana native Arthur “Art” Mosby, a local radio broadcaster and founder of KGVO, the first radio (and later, television) station in Missoula. At the time, Montana’s media was tightly controlled by its incredibly influential copper mining industry (its “copper collar”), with much of the local press owned by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, but Mosby’s KGVO refused purchase and takeover by the industry giant. Years later, when his eldest daughter Aline, a rising journalist, was blackballed by Anaconda, she had to seek reporting jobs elsewhere, eventually ending up in Los Angeles.

On a trip to visit Aline, Mosby was struck by all the modernist homes that had come to dot the hills of Hollywood. He saw a similarity in the landscape to the mountains surrounding the valley where Missoula sits, and an idea was born—what if he could bring modernist architecture to the hills of Montana?

In the ’40s, Mosby purchased a large plot of elevated farmland south of Missoula, with dreams of turning it into a new development he called Farviews. The town of Missoula was dubious. “He had a very difficult time getting permits for building and everything,” Aline once said in an interview. “Everybody in the city council and the government and in the town said, ‘You can’t build a house on a hill. It will slide down!’” But Mosby wasn’t deterred, and in 1949, when Neutra came to Bozeman, Montana, to deliver a lecture for a university summer program on urbanism, he commissioned the architect to build the pilot house for his development in Missoula’s South Hills area.

Neutra positioned the Mosby House along a hill on its four-acre lot and added floor-to-ceiling windows surrounding the main living spaces to take advantage of the expansive, westward views of the valley. The architect used locally sourced timber and stone throughout the construction—plywood walls, Douglas fir kitchen cabinets—and, as was his style, designed the four-bedroom house with an open layout. Corner balconies and a flagstone patio connect the interiors to the outdoors. At the time, Neutra’s architectural style was already pioneering, but it was even more so in Montana‌, where the harsh weather and landscapes meant that homes were typically designed more like fortresses than glassy, cantilevered residences.

Mosby and his wife, Ruth Greenough, lived in the Mosby House from 1950, when it was completed, until the end of their lives. A few years before Mosby’s death in 1970, he willed the home to the University of Montana, intending for it to become a President’s House. The university took over the home after Mosby’s passing (coincidentally, the same year of Neutra’s death), but eventually sold it to private owners. Over the decades, the house passed from owner to owner and underwent a few interesting renovations and additions (including a garage built for a monster truck, along with a plethora of shag carpet). By the time 2009 came along, the Mosby House was in rough shape, sitting largely unnoticed and unattended. That was when the current owners, Andrew Smith and Courtney Saunders, came into the picture.

Montana is an important place to Andrew and Courtney—Andrew was a professor at the University of Montana from 2005 to 2015; his stepfather, William Kittredge, helped create UM’s creative writing program; and his mother, writer and filmmaker Annick Smith, has centered much of her work around the state, where she’s lived since the ’60s. However, like Mosby, Andrew and Courtney’s love of modernist architecture also began in Los Angeles, where a memorable stay in a midcentury-modern house in Sherman Oaks kickstarted their hunt for their own modernist residence. After hearing about a rare Neutra home in the Missoula hills at a dinner party, the pair went to see the Mosby House for themselves. “We were just blown away,” says Andrew. “It was completely empty. And not only was it empty, it was clearly untended—there were foxes living on the grounds.”

While looking around the property, Andrew and Courtney pulled a forgotten For Sale sign out of the bushes. They later learned the home had been foreclosed upon and was owned by the bank. The pair bought the Mosby House soon after, and their lengthy, phased restoration began.

The home needed a lot of work; they began by addressing cosmetic issues and removing the unnecessary additions that had built up over the years. But Andrew and Courtney weren’t without help. For the restoration plans, the couple brought on architect Byoung Soo Cho of BCHO Architects, working alongside Bozeman architects John Montoya and Erik Horn of Ensitio Design. They tasked local builder and historic preservation specialist Jason Lonski with construction and restoration. Jeff Rolston-Clemmer of Missoula’s Habitare Design Studio crafted the construction plans for the final stages of the project and designed the guest suite. (BCHO Architects also designed a new guesthouse, in dialogue with Neutra’s Mosby House and the site’s unique topography, which the residents have not yet built.)

When making design decisions, the team repeatedly went back to the idea, ‘What would Neutra do?’

The new Mosby House owners had a secret weapon, too, in the form of archives: all of the original blueprints and sketches, as well as correspondence between Neutra and Mosby, had been donated and kept in the University of Montana’s special collections library upon Mosby’s death. There were also some additional drawings preserved by Neutra in UCLA’s archives. This meant the team had access to everything the Mosby House had been and was supposed to be.

The architects used the original designs and blueprints to restore the home to its former glory, with a few updates, like replacing the salon room with a guest bedroom and converting the downstairs carport into more living space. They also replaced the added carpeting with period-appropriate old-growth maple flooring saved from a nearby school’s demolition, and they were even able to add back in original Neutra cabinetry to the kitchen. When making design decisions, the team repeatedly went back to the idea, ‘What would Neutra do?’—and the answer often came to: “It should be totally functional, beautiful, and simple,” says Montoya.

“The house was like a home designed for California,” adds Cho. The architects maintained the home’s original character and its Montana considerations by restoring finishes and features that had aged poorly over the years, like its many windows, and updating parts that needed some extra attention, like the insulation and roofing. Andrew and Courtney love the wall-to-wall windows and the endless views of the sky they provide. “So many of the houses in Montana ignore the sky,” Courtney says. “And that is the craziest thing—[Montana] is Big Sky Country! But as soon as you walk into this house, you just see the sky.”

Andrew adds: “What Neutra and Mosby were up to—it was like, ‘Hey, you don’t have to live like that. You can have the indoors and outdoors flow together. You can embrace the sky from within your living room. You don’t have to live in a little hovel with a small window because you’re scared of the elements.’”

Today, the Mosby House continues to honor its Montana roots. When Andrew, Courtney, and their family aren’t there—they split their time between Montana and California—they often rent the home out to artists, writers, or visiting University of Montana faculty. Pulitzer finalist writer Sierra Crane Murdoch was a resident last year while teaching a spring 2023 graduate workshop in environmental writing. This year, the homeowners are working with artist-in-residence program Open AIR to host three selected artists at the Mosby House this April, and three others in October.

Andrew and Courtney want to honor the home’s legacy by preserving it as an artistic and cultural stronghold. “We see the Mosby House as a hub for various kinds of artists to have a place to stay that creates the inspiration, peace, and interactivity that Neutra had in mind for all of his dwellings,” Andrew says.

No time like seven decades later.

Related Reading:

The Mystery of L.A.’s “Lost Neutra” House

A Forgotten Philip Johnson Home Gets a New Lease on Life

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Byoung Soo Cho, BCHO Architects

Restoration Plans: Ensitio Design / @ensitiodesign

Builder: Jason Lonski Construction & Historic Preservation

Construction Plans: Habitare Design Studio

Landscape Design: Native Yards

Lighting Design: Seth Ely

Interior Design: Courtney Saunders

Cabinetry: Martin McCain Woodworks and Design

Restored Midcentury Cabinetry and Furniture: Tanya Cohen, @piece Furniture / @atpiecemissoula