Decades before McMansions and Johnson County beige, the area’s northeast suburbs birthed a bevy of midcentury modernism. We’re talking drugstores with zig-zag roofs, space-age bank buildings and atomic swing pads that make pockets of Prairie Village, Overland Park and Leawood look like Rat Pack movie sets.

If you should move into a 1940s, 1950s or 1960s Johnson County house — even one you may perceive as a no-frills ranch and a far cry from “Mad Men” — don’t be surprised if 59-year-old Scott Lane comes knocking at your door.

The former baseball catcher will play his favorite game, “Connect the Dots.” Sometimes wearing a tie, always a sport coat, he’ll fill you in on your house’s pedigree: who designed it, who built it, how its prior residents updated it, its place in history and how it relates to today.

“Maybe it seems nutty, but I find it fascinating these houses were built in what was once the middle of dairy land,” says Lane, managing broker and vice president for Reece and Nichols Realtors. “It’s exuberant architecture. I just want people to notice it and love it like I do.”

Lane has interviewed builders, architects and their family members, as well as homeowners who choose midcentury houses. He’s always asking, “Why?” His ongoing research includes videotaped oral histories and collections of photographs, drawings, magazines and each publication from the Greater Kansas City Home Builders Association Parade of Homes — 50 years’ worth.

Lane is one of the founders of KC Modern, an advocacy group for midcentury modern architecture. Johnson County boasts more of that type than anywhere in the metro. He also is president of the Historic Kansas City Foundation, a nonprofit group with a mission to promote and preserve the area’s built heritage. Since he took the leadership role, the organization successfully fought plans for a tall law office building many felt was out of character for the Country Club Plaza. Also under Lane’s watch, board members have expanded their outlook on what they consider historically and architecturally important.

“Before, the group really concentrated on just the city and mainly on houses and buildings that were more than a century old,” says Mindi Love, executive director of the Johnson County Museum, which is transitioning into the National Museum of Suburbia. “The group wasn’t as familiar with midcentury and its presence in Johnson County. Through his knowledge and his passion, he certainly has had a huge impact on changing their appreciation of it.”

Lane walks his talk. The only houses he’s owned are midcentury modern houses in Johnson County, all gems of local or national significance that spoke to his soul. During a driving tour, he talked about his life and his five homes past and present.

“I’m part of the new old.”

Bachelor pad on Roe Circle

During an unseasonably warm winter afternoon, Lane drove his white Volvo from the Reece and Nichols office he manages in Prairie Village a few blocks to a cul-de-sac of small modern houses. The 7300 block of Roe Circle setting looks and feels like sunny California.

“It had a swimming pool back then,” he says, parking and getting out of his station wagon to have a better look at the first house he bought. He was 25 at the time. “Talk about bachelor living.”

The house has an introverted front with small windows for privacy. But the back features larger windows facing Brush Creek. The interior contains an open staircase and a hallway balcony that overlooks the living room.

“There’s a lot of architecture packed into the tiny house,” he says, walking to the backyard. He knows the current owners and their neighbors, all families in their 30s and 40s who barbecue together and share enthusiasm for midcentury modernism.

When 30-year-old Jared Foster moved into a neighboring house more than five years ago, Lane played Connect the Dots with him.

“I had no idea about David Runnells or Don Drummond,” says Foster, who designs and builds furniture and does home renovation projects for his own company, Studiobuild. Lane filled him in.

Merchant builder Drummond constructed the house, one of 1,100 he built in the area, many of them modern. Runnells designed Drummond’s Roe Circle houses. The architect was influenced by the work of Alvar Aalto while traveling through Finland and Sweden on a scholarship to the University of Stockholm. Runnells’ daughter shared her father’s sketches with Lane, including one depicting Aalto’s iconic wavy vase design.

“I love this stuff,” Lane says. “This is hand-drawn. There wasn’t CAD (computer-assisted drafting) then.”

Runnells’ education reads like a who’s who of modernism. He was a student of Eliel and Eero Saarinen, studying city planning at Cranbrook Academy of Art, a hotbed of modern design education in Michigan. Other students attending at that time were Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll and Harry Bertoia. In 1941, Runnells settled in Kansas City as head of the industrial design department of the Kansas City Art Institute and went on to become the director of city planning. Then he became an architect.

Lane’s house was built in 1950 and was the first one built of Runnells’ “Revere” plan. Its exterior includes deep-red “Cranbrook brick” reminiscent of the school Runnells attended. When Lane moved to Roe Circle in 1977, he’d never heard of Drummond or Runnells. But one day a previous owner knocked on the door and gave him a 1951 issue of “House Beautiful.” The residence had been profiled in the national magazine.

“I thought it was inspiring,” he says. “It gave the house cachet and made me want to learn more.”

Lane remembers growing up playing baseball in a field near the house. He was 10 in 1963 when he, his older brother and his father moved to Johnson County. His mother had died from melanoma three years before. His dad was a railroad division superintendent, and the family was transferred often to different parts of the Midwest, including Oklahoma.

“My dad would point out interesting buildings in the dull landscape,” Lane says. “I learned to appreciate eye music.”

Lane’s maternal grandmother lived with them while his dad worked.

“I was always around older people, history and storytelling,” he says.

Lane didn’t go to college; his dream was making it to the major leagues. He played baseball with the Kansas City Giants, a city pickup team where he played catcher. Behind him in the bleachers, he could hear the constant conversations of his coach and scouts, including a man he thinks was Buck O’Neil, all sizing up the batters.

Baseball shaped Lane. His energy: he still has the physique and quick, fluid movement of an athlete. His sense of humor: he remembers his coach grabbing a head-cheese sandwich out of a car trunk and mustard squirting out of the pig snout when he took a bite. His competitive streak: each player was talented and wanted to make it into the big leagues. His ability to connect with people from all walks of life: only a handful of players were white, the rest were black.

Later he played for a competitive softball team, the Rebels, that won many leagues and tournaments throughout Kansas and Missouri.

To earn a living and pay the mortgage, Lane rode the rails like his father. As a Frisco engineer, he learned the landscape of the Midwest, urban and rural parts not many get to see.

“I was on the tail end of the romantic railroad era,” he says. “I was lucky.”

Lane’s bachelor pad became a wedding ceremony site when he married there. The groom wore a black tuxedo, the bride wore a white one. He and his wife had a son, Matt. Because his job took him away too often, he switched careers and became a Realtor in 1984.

‘Dean Martin’ in Leawood

Lane drives the Volvo to House No. 2 on 98th and Aberdeen in Leawood. The house carries the same vibe as his first one but is nearly double the size. Drummond built this one, too.

Lane was 33 when his family moved to this house with 2,500 square feet on one level, no basement and 75-foot horizontal views.

“This was Dean Martin living,” he says and laughs with a wide open mouth. His conversations are peppered with humor and digs at his own expense.

Lane started researching Drummond’s building history and even began having regular conversations with him by phone.

By then, Drummond had moved back to his home state of California. Famed California modern builder Joseph Eichler influenced Drummond. That’s why some houses in Johnson County resemble California minus the palm trees, Lane likes to explain during Connect the Dots.

“He became like a son to Drummond,” says Bob Myers, who has worked with Lane as a Realtor for nearly 30 years. With Lane, Myers is one of the founders of KC Modern along with Shawnee architect Robert McLaughlin.

“He knows more about midcentury modern houses — and probably commercial buildings — than anyone else in Kansas City,” Myers says.

With neighbors, Lane organized Drummond strolls to bring more attention to the prolific builder.

At work as a Realtor, Lane developed a niche market of selling midcentury modern homes. Other Realtors shied away from them because many didn’t have basements, something buyers were looking for following the Ruskin Heights tornado.

“I thought if I loved these houses, others would too,” Lane says. “The research I loved doing on them informed my work. It was selling the sizzle with the steak.”

Lane’s family grew with daughter Annie. The house was perfect for raising kids.

“I thought I’d be buried in the backyard,” Lane says in the driveway outside his former house. “I’ve said that about all of my houses.”

But then opportunity came knocking. Lawrence Hyde, a doctor, told Lane he was selling his Bruce Goff-designed house in Prairie Village.

‘Genie in a bottle’

Lane drives up to house No. 3 in the 5000 block of 67th Street in Prairie Village. To say you’ve never seen anything like this house, built in 1965, is an understatement.

Square green glass ashtrays are grouped together to form diamond shapes in the doors and railings. And that’s just the exterior.

Inside, the house has a 10-by-10-foot central skylight over the brick hearth. The skylight is penetrated by the chimney, featuring a purple mirrored triangular wall. Cellophane streamers of “rain” hang from the skylight. Surrounding the fireplace are concentric racetracks of five various shades of green carpet. With a fire burning, it represents earth, fire and water.

The interior is energetic since there is so much going on, yet it’s calming because of the windows and shiny accents that create a play on light on the carpet and walls.

“It was like being a genie in a bottle,” Lane says.

Connect the Dots. Lane knew about Goff and his ahead-of-their-time houses when he lived in Oklahoma. Like Frank Gehry and Frank Lloyd Wright, Goff is considered a “starchitect.” Movies have been made about his organic yet flamboyant site- and client-specific buildings. Lane felt that living in one of the late Goff’s homes was the chance of a lifetime.

But life there wasn’t always easy. Lane and his wife divorced. And making the home feel personal to Lane was a challenge.

“It rejected any rug you put down,” he says. “The only wall art that fit in were the drawings of it. It seemed to only like itself.”

Still, there were great memories. Daughter Annie’s teachers would give assignments for students to draw their houses. Her teachers didn’t believe the seemingly fantasy-like renderings of purple and green interiors. So Lane invited classes and teachers over to show them Annie’s depictions were real, and to educate them about Goff’s architecture.

Connect the Dots. Lane eventually married an Oklahoma native who played in a family friend’s Goff-designed house growing up. She and Lane share a love for home-improvement projects and an appreciation for the Prairie Village Goff house.

“It was fun and fantastic,” says Carrie Lane, Lane’s wife of 14 years. “I grew an aloe plant on the sunny fireplace and it actually bloomed. My brother-in-law in Arizona said he’d never seen a blooming aloe, even though they’re prolific in Arizona.”

Rod Parks, owner of Retro Inferno vintage furniture store in Kansas City, learned a lot about Goff after meeting Lane at his shop more than a decade ago. Since then, Parks has moved into a Goff house near the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus and has become one of Lane’s closest friends.

“His motivation comes from this sincere, genuine interest in what he thinks is cool and important,” Parks says. “He’s one of the rare people who advocates for these structures. Otherwise they become nonexistent as time goes on.”

Parks says Lane has made people care about overlooked midcentury modern buildings through his gift for conversation. Not only is he a good listener, but he’s engagingly colorful and funny when he speaks.

“I marvel at his language,” Parks says. “These words, catchphrases and metaphors just roll out.”

To understand what Park means, listen to this story. Lane was driving on Metcalf Avenue and pointing out adaptive re-use victories for midcentury modern buildings, especially the former King Louie bowling alley and ice-skating chalet that’s slated to become the National Museum of Suburbia. Lane interviewed its architect Manuel Morris, now deceased, about the unusual 1940s structure with its folded-plate roof influenced by the organic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Lane also pointed out the failures, too — midcentury pieces of Johnson County’s history that have been torn down.

“Without the White Haven, Metcalf is missing its front teeth,” he says. Lines like these are signature Lane.

At least the White Haven Motor Lodge sign will go to the National Museum of Suburbia, Lane says. In order to save other structures and the heritage of Johnson County, it’s crucial people understand their importance.

Which is why he’s been agonizing about a missed opportunity with the other Goff house in Prairie Village, just around the corner from his former house. Paul Searing commissioned Goff to build him a house, and Lane wanted to videotape Searing’s story. His house with its turquoise arrows and funky shape couldn’t get built in Leawood because of objections that involve key Kansas City builders. Searing was one of the last two surviving original Goff house owners in the nation, but he recently died from cancer. Though Lane is familiar with the details of Searing’s story, he feels he’s let so many people down by not capturing it on video.

“It’s like not recording Abraham Lincoln read his own speech,” Lane says.

Patio daddy-o

After living in a Goff house, Lane’s family moved in 2000 to what had been Bob Wendt’s personal house in Prairie Village. Connect the Dots. Wendt was an engineer, designer and builder who had worked as the first foreman for Drummond.

The house was built in 1958 and was named “Patio Home of the Year” at a home show in 1959. Its best feature is its 40-foot-sliding wall for a real indoor-outdoor connection.

“We ate out on the patio all the time,” Lane says. “The house was fabulous.”

The Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired dwelling served as a nice backdrop for Lane’s tribal rugs and other furnishings. The house felt spacious at 1,850 square feet on the main floor and the same square footage in the finished basement.

In 2004, Lane helped found KC Modern, inspired by other cities with similar organizations. The loft movement in Kansas City also spurred it on, Myers says. Old buildings were being reused, so why couldn’t older houses with yards? It’s a more sustainable solution than the wrecking ball.

Lane is interested in preserving ranch houses and has presented information about them.

“They’re the first true American home style,” he says. “But also the most underappreciated.”

Architectural historian and consultant Sally Schwenk got to know Lane during meetings for what is now the Broadmoor Ranch House Historic District in Overland Park, homes built between 1953 and 1959 in an area between Metcalf and Broadmoor Street, 68th Street to 69th Terrace. The designation means the homeowners are eligible for tax credits and grants.

Some snarked about the historical designation of ranches because the style is so ubiquitous, so many people grew up in them. The Kansas City Star’s Mike Hendricks wrote a column: “Now for a sign. Without one, you might not even turn your head while passing through Overland Park’s own version of colonial Williamsburg. Unless, of course, there was a garage sale.”

Schwenk nominated Lane to become a board member of the Historic Kansas City Foundation because he avoids the typical historical advocacy landmines of territory and egos.

“He’s not a bra-burning preservationist; he wants all sides to win,” Schwenk says. “Yet, he’s a tough little fighter who’s intelligent, strategic and proactive. And ethical.”

The Plaza issue was tough on Lane, although outsiders would never know it because he appeared calm. But there was lots of worry and sleepless nights.

“I hate public speaking,” he says. His palms sweated from nervousness. “I want people to like me. People said, ‘You’re in the real-estate business. Aren’t you in favor of development?’ Of course I am. It just needs to be the right development that fits the plan.”

Mystery in Merriam

This past July, Lane and his family downsized to a 1,450-square-foot house with a backyard butting up to Antioch Park. His son, Matt, and daughter, Annie, are grown and out of the house. Now it’s him, Carrie and their 11-year-old daughter, Parker. Their Wendt house sold within a few days.

“People are living smaller now,” Lane says. His “new old” house is just a little bigger than his first home on Roe Circle.

Lane and his family are making this house their own. They painted the kitchen orange, keying off a piece of midcentury modern wall art. They installed aqua blue holographic flooring in the hall bathroom. Their fence is made of translucent polycarbonate panels framed in metal; their surfaces are luminous like the Bloch Building exterior.

Connect the Dots. The house is modern, built in 1960, and packs a lot of architecture. Who built it? He’s still trying to find out. He’s scoured his Parade of Homes collection, the city has no record of a building permit, and there’s a neighbor who’s given him the name of a possible builder. The pedigree eludes him.

But Lane knows this: he loves the wooden paneling.

“You walk in and there’s this warm honeylike glow,” he says. “It feels like home.”