It’s a strange experience to revisit your childhood home through realtor virtual tours. Over the years I saw a few. I visited the house a couple of times in the thirty years after Woodie sold it, and although the house was often littered with overstuffed chairs and the kitchen counters covered in garish tiles, at least the house and gardens were adequately cared for. After my father died, the brother Hubbard and I knocked on the door and introduced ourselves. As the owner showed us around, he bragged about how the gardens themselves were worth over $100,000. We nodded and smiled to ourselves, thinking yes, we knew how valuable those gardens were, and what they had cost us.

When I returned for a tour in 2010, I was thrilled to see the 60s Modernist jewel had been updated and renovated by a skilled Mexican woman architect/owner. Now elegantly furnished and filled with art, she said she and her husband loved the house and hoped they never to have to move. She appreciated the original design of the house and she brought it up to date in marvelous beautiful ways.

The best way to see the house is in the virtual tour a few years later, when the house was on the market again.

View the Virtual Tour

The realtor Susan Rissover’s website Cincinnati Modern has links to other information about Woodie Garber’s buildings.