In 1960, after returning to Boulder, Colorado, from their first year together in Italy, the Woodman family moved into the Sirotkin House. One of more than a dozen modernist homes in Boulder by architect Tician Papachristou, the house was designed for the original owner as a pair with the house next door. Not long after moving into the house, Betty and George became close with Tician and his wife Judy, forming a friendship that lasted for the rest of their lives. Both couples later made their way to New York, where Papachristou became a partner at the architectural firm of Marcel Breuer.

The house was set in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, close to the University of Colorado, where George was a Professor of Painting and Philosophy of Art and would ride his bicycle daily to teach. The floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows filled the house with light and provided a perfect view of the mountains and the deer that visited regularly to eat from the apple tree in the yard. The house was designed with curving landscape walls which connected its interior with outdoor living spaces, including a patio with a marble table—the site of many of Charlie and Francesca’s birthday parties and numerous other gatherings and meals. Betty’s studio and kiln were set in a round building added behind the house; twice a year, the whole yard was filled with her pottery for “studio sales,” significant events in the Woodman household, and memorable, too, in the city of Boulder.

To read more about Tician Papachristou's architectural legacy in Boulder, please click here, here and here.

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