Asian and Wrightian influences are strong in this singular hard-edged Expressionist house. Three one-story pavilions—house, natatorium, and studio—step down toward a lake in an arrangement simultaneously formal and organic. The house’s Y-shape incorporates a carport in the rear wing and has been likened to a bird because of the steel “beak” and brick prow at the facade’s center. A monumental stairway, disguised as a rambling hillside path, leads across a carp pond and up to the entrance porch. Drama unfolds in the exaggerated forms, slanted steel porch columns, glass walls contrasting with bulwarks of earth-colored textured brick, and ever-changing shadows playing across the building. Easley added the natatorium and studio twenty years after the residence was built.
Nearby are two churches designed by Tom Biggs. The steep-roofed gable-fronted sanctuary of Covenant Presbyterian Church (1965; 4000 Ridgewood Road) has a laminated-wood frame and a detached slender brick carillon rising to a spire. Hexagonal classroom units with slate roofs project from the facade of the transverse-gabled educational wing. The interior of the cross-gabled Northminster Baptist Church (1971–1973; 3955 Ridgewood) is a vessel of light from tall side windows and a clerestory in the transepts. Additions since 1985 by Eley Associates include an office wing to the south, with a courtyard behind it anchored by a bell tower.