"Flight 227 to New York's La Guardia will be delayed 20 minutes," the flight attendant calls out over the clatter of people and flight carts through the airport terminal.

What could be a stressful wait is an opportunity for George Smart, who will log onto his laptop to work on his online archive of modernist houses in the Triangle and the architects who designed them.

The website, www.trianglemodernisthouses.com, is not Smart's first foray into history. The self-described "armchair detective" chronicled the Knights Templar, special agents of the Pope in the 12th century. A documentary based on his book, "The Knights Templar Chronology," airs on the History Channel almost every month, he says, but "really, really late at night."

Smart says the modernist style grew and flourished here due to Dean Henry Kamphoefner's vision in the late 1940s for a School of Design at North Carolina State University. Kamphoefner's vision stemmed from his belief that "Architecture is a function of design, not the other way around."

A modernist architect, himself, Kamphoefner recruited modernist architects such as George Matsumoto as faculty members and brought in world-renown architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, to lecture and teach studio workshops. Many of the faculty built modernist homes for themselves and other local residents. They established architectural firms and influenced design not only in North Carolina, but throughout the Southeast.

What started for Smart as a quest to do background research before building his own modern house, ended with "the nation's largest historical preservation website for Frank Lloyd Wright-style architecture," Smart says. Wright's Usonian design is known for integrating interior and exterior spaces, and for open interiors, flat roofs and small scale, affordable construction.

The breadth of Wright's vision can be seen in two local modernist homes for sale in the Durham area: the Dr. George Poland house and the Rod McCowan house. Both homes can be viewed in the TMH Website's "For Sale" section.

The Poland house was designed in 1954 by Matsumoto to overlook what was then a pristine and wooded Crabtree Valley in Raleigh. Poland's family donated the house to Preservation North Carolina in 2001, but required the buyer move the house, which then overlooked Crabtree Valley Mall, to a lot more in keeping with it's original environment. In 2002 the house was moved to 24 rolling acres of meadows and woods overlooking the Little River in rural Bahama, north of Duke University near the Treyburn subdivision and Falls Lake Reservoir. The move and simultaneous downstairs guest quarters' addition was designed by Chapel Hill architect Ellen Cassilly. Now at 1,703-square-feet, the home boasts three-bedrooms and three-bathrooms. The house is located at 502 John Jones Road and is listed at $629,000 by Debra Smith and Peter Rumsey.

One of the largest examples of modernist design in the Triangle is the McCowan house located at 222 Tennwood Court in Durham. "This incredible design took four years from start to finish," Smart writes. "Frank Harmon basically designed the exterior. Vincent Petrarca and Charles Holden, both of whom by then had left Harmon's firm, did the rest of the project which was completed in 2004. Petrarca's Tonic Construction and Sigmon Construction built it." The 6,456-square-foot house, which is for sale at $2,095,000 through Susan Richter at Prudential York Simpson Underwood Realty in Durham, features four bedrooms, four full bathrooms, two half-baths and a two-car garage.

Award winning

In May 2008, the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill gave Smart "one of the most unique awards we've ever given -- an award for preservation efforts through the web," says Ernest Dollar, the society's director.

"George is utilizing a wonderful new media to save old houses. Most people don't think of these houses as history, so if we can get a jump on our efforts to save these houses built in the 1950s, then we will have a better chance at success."

In October 2008, Preservation North Carolina followed the Chapel Hill society's lead and awarded Smart a 2008 Gertrude S. Carraway Award of Merit -- one of 12 given each year and the first time the award has gone to someone for doing preservation work via a website, according to Elizabeth Sappenfield, director of urban issues for the agency.

Smart has a passion for mid-20th century buildings that Preservation North Carolina shares, says Cathleen Turner, the regional director for the statewide preservation agency. His website has links to houses for sale, a valuable feature because "finding people passionate enough to buy and save these homes is important," she says.

Putting it together

The awards are all the more significant given that Smart has a full-time day job and didn't start his research until January 2007 when he began looking at modern houses around his hometown. When alive, his father and namesake who had been an architect in Raleigh for 50 years after graduating from N.C. State's School of Design, had talked to his son often about architects who built modernist residential houses, but the homes were not on the Internet.

"By August, I had talked with the owners of about 50 or 60 of these modern homes and sometimes the architects who designed them," Smart said. "I was encouraged to put the information on a website to share with other modernist house enthusiasts."

One of those enthusiasts is Sally Greene, a Chapel Hill Town Council member and modernist home owner, who took photos of some modern structures for the website, including shots of the Chapel Hill Museum building on East Franklin Street, which was put under easement to Preservation North Carolina largely through her efforts.

By October 2007, with the support of Greene, Sappenfield and other enthusiasts, www.trianglemodernisthouses.com had features for 518 modern houses and 121 architects who built them. Triangle Modernist Houses (TMH) has also held three tours of five modernist houses this year and attracted 610 architecture enthusiasts from North Carolina and beyond, according to Smart. Because Smart's focus sprang from his interest in modernist houses created by architects that were influenced by the N.C. School of Design, most of the houses on his website are within 20 miles of Raleigh.

Traveling man

Smart, who graduated with a business degree from UNC in 1983 has a minor in computer science. His day job as a motivational speaker and executive coach takes him to businesses across the globe and he runs the website from airports as he's traveling. He has about 50 more houses he wants to add. "After that, I'll probably do this site for at least another year and then turn it over to somebody else to keep updated," he says. "I want the site to be an advocate for modern architecture, preservation and design."

Gary Kueber, who blogs about Durham's architecture at endangereddurham.blogspot.com, respects Smart's work to save modernist homes in the Triangle.

"I think George's work on Triangle Modernist Houses is invaluable," he said. "While preservation is always an uphill battle, the 'newly old' frequently seems to be the most threatened architecture -- buildings that have aged enough to be seen as outdated without having aged enough to be seen from enough critical distance to appreciate their unique style and form. I think George nudges us towards that critical distance and shows us both the richness of our modern architectural stock as well as the magnitude of the threat to its survival."

Smart is now working with volunteers to ensure that Triangle Modernist Houses will become a formal nonprofit -- Triangle Modernist Archive, Inc. He is taking suggestions now for board members for the nonprofit and making calls to architects to feature their homes on the April 2009 Modernist House Tour. Anyone interested can contact him at (919) 740-8407 or george@trianglemodernisthouses.com.

Next project

Smart, who was born and raised in Raleigh, has lived in Durham since 1935. He is looking ahead to his next project: building his own modernist home in Durham next summer. A year-and-a-half of brainwashing has pulled his wife, Eleanor Stell, over to Smart's modernist side. Stell is an employee of N.C. State Agriculture Extension in the Profession and Organizational Development unit, which provides executive education to extension agents across the state. She does the same thing Smart does, but for one organization instead of many.

"The Carraway Award meant a lot to me," Smart says. "I was very much pleased and delighted that there was so much support for modernism, which is just one-quarter of one percent of the housing stock in the Triangle." Even that small percentage means that the Triangle has more modernist houses than anywhere else in the country with the exception of Los Angeles, Chicago and New Canaan, Connecticut.

"My hope is that the award will attract more people to this type of architecture," Smart said. "I see the award as more for the site than for me. I just happened to be the person who did it. I think the main thing the website accomplishes is that this huge group of modernist enthusiasts, who previously thought they were alone, have found each other."

Sally Keeney can be reached at shkeeney@yahoo.com or 919-942-1027