Some homebuyers look for particular features in a prospective new home - a finished basement, say, or a large kitchen. Kristi Lane was more specific when she went house-shopping 18 months ago.

ABOVE: In the kitchen very little has changed since the house was built in 1958, including the Nevamar cabinets and the casement windows.
RIGHT: Front entrance of the Lanes' home welcomes visitors with its soaring doorway, textured glass, and sleek wood details. The house was designed to make the most of its wooded surroundings.

She wanted a house designed by Frederick "Bud" Hyland.

Hyland was a Richmond-based architect who, after serving an apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1930s, designed about 30 modern- and contemporary-style houses in the area from the 1950s to the 1970s.

With their original owners now in their eighties, many of Hyland's houses are showing up on the open market. Inevitably, some are being torn down to make way for more traditional houses. Others are in decline.

Lane and her husband had looked at several Hyland-designed houses, but they sold before the couple could make an offer. The 49-year-old house they managed to snag was in great shape, and it was a true period piece.

How period? The main living area featured four-inch-thick white shag carpet.

Shag carpet aside, the Lanes' 3,700-square-foot house, sited on a lushly wooded 1.7-acre lot near Windsor Farms, shares several features with Hyland's other residential designs.

"They're all very site-specific," says Lane, who is an interior designer and a principal at 3north, an architectural design firm. "So you couldn't pick it up and put it in another site. They sink into the landscape. This house slopes with the lot. You enter on the main floor, and they've tucked the private spaces underneath."

In common with many of Wright's house designs, the street-side facades of Hyland's houses are solid, but their backs feature extensive bands of windows that show off the landscape.

"The trees are what sold the house for my husband," Lane says.

Inside, horizontal elements - like the windows and a long sconce that runs along the top of one wall - dominate the main living area's open-floor plan. Like Hyland's other houses, the casement windows are trimmed in stained birch. Throughout, the detailing is sparse, with recessed casings around the doorways instead of heavy, traditional trim.

Homeowner Kristi Lane, an interior designer at 3north, added only a new mirror to this glamorous mid-century bathroom on the main living level.

The shag carpet didn't survive the Lanes' renovations - it was replaced with African walnut flooring. And the couple removed a wall that separated the kitchen and the main living area, along with a banana-shaped divider that served as a prep surface in the kitchen. With the wall removed, the open space measures 34 feet by 55 feet.

The renovations aren't complete yet. The Lanes are still working on the four bedrooms downstairs, for example. And they are about to add a fireplace to one wall in the main living area, with bookcases on either side of it. The fireplace surround will be stainless steel.

But while she admits that some change is good for a house, Lane says she would never change some of the house's details - like its windows. "They're custom Pella windows, and they still have the original screens. They're not efficient because they're single-pane, but the wood is so pretty, I'd never change them."

If you want to know more about Modernism, the Visual Arts Center of Richmond is sponsoring a class on Wednesday nights in November at Metro Modern, 1919 W. Cary St. Go to visarts.org, or call 353-0094 for more information.

And while the couple repainted the interior walls, they kept the color white. Three large contemporary paintings decorate the main living area, but the décor is otherwise subdued.

"I like the gallery look, and the windows are really the artwork," Lane says. "It doesn't need a lot."

The couple also kept the wood-grain, plastic laminate kitchen cabinets, although they updated the hardware. Likewise, they merely changed the centerline of the three period lamps that hang over the family's custom-designed dining table.

"We tried to keep the integrity of the old house," Lane says. "It's a balancing act, keeping the good things and updating the rest."

About Frederick "Bud" Hyland Frank Lloyd Wright faced a dry spell in the 1930s. Already in his late 60s, he was considered passé by some critics, and until the 1935 design for Fallingwater, he didn't receive many significant commissions. To make ends meet, Wright launched an apprenticeship program. For a fee, young architects could study with the master at his studio in Wisconsin. Many young men (and some women) took him up on the offer. Among them was Frederick "Bud" Hyland, an Illinois native who had moved to Richmond to practice architecture. There was a snag, though. Hyland had recently married, and he and his wife couldn't afford the standard tuition Wright charged - $1,100 per student, which was no small sum in the Great Depression. Never one to pass up a deal, Wright made an offer: the young couple could both serve apprenticeships for the price of one. In addition, they would work as the program's cooks. They arrived at Wright's studio in 1938.

At the end of the apprenticeship, Hyland and his wife returned to Richmond. After a stint in the Army Corps of Engineers, Hyland opened an architectural firm and eventually designed several significant structures in the Richmond area. Among them were 30 homes, many of them for prominent families. "My husband, Elmer Bear, knew Bud Hyland from the service," recalls Barbara K. Greenberg, who with her husband commissioned the house featured in these pages. "We were very friendly with the Hylands. So we turned to Bud when we wanted to build a house." Hyland had already designed an office building for Bear at 2016 Monument Avenue. Although nobody believed a house could be built on the Bears' sloping site, Greenberg says the house was perfect. "Living there was very easy. And I loved the fact that the living area was upstairs and the bedrooms downstairs because the view was so nice upstairs." Hyland's residential designs share many features with Wright's houses, but they aren't mere copies. Few of Hyland's houses sport flat roofs, for example, which is a good idea, given the area's climate. Not that it ever stopped Wright, of course.