Harriet Moran
Gordon

(1927–2022)

Gordon was born in Goldsboro NC and ended up in Raleigh by the sixth grade. She graduated from Broughton High School and attended St. Mary's for a year, then attended UNC-Greensboro. She married in the early 1950s, but her husband tragically died in a 1958 plane crash. She moved back to North Carolina — with four young sons — and settled in Chapel Hill, in her words, "the finest place in the state."

With drive and determination and with no formal training in architecture or construction, Gordon designed herself a house in Chapel Hill on Woodhaven Drive. Dick Tripp was the builder. That worked so well she decided to design and develop many more houses, most of them in the Modernist style. Eston Rives did most of the construction. With support from a banking friend at Wachovia, she took the Lake Forest area by storm, buying lots from fellow developers Peg and Patsy Owens among others. With striking attention to detail, she supervised everything and insured that important finishings like doors and cabinets were built from scratch. She would ultimately built around 15 in the area, creating memorable homes people still treasure.

Gordon left Chapel Hill in 1972 for Tiburon CA and started working in administration for an architectural landscape firm. Later on, she got a real estate license and started buying houses and remodeling them. From the 1980s until retirement she worked for her son in commercial real estate. She last lived in Mill Valley CA.

Read 1975 Harriet Gordon letter about her Chapel Hill houses