in 1938-1940. Carl Koch, later to gain renown as a pioneer in the use of prefabricated materials in construction, built a set of five houses called ‘Snake Hill” on steeply sloped land in Belmont, Massachusetts in 1940. In a nearby area in east Lexington, Hugh Stubbins, Jr. finished the first of a set of houses in 1947, just around the time TAC bought the land for the Six Moon Hill project. An indication of the cooperative nature of TAC's endeavor was that after house sites had been drawn up, they were all priced the same. The first twelve sites were assigned to participating families by drawing numbers from a hat. The egalitarianism of the neighborhood also reflected the philosophy of Walter Gropius and TAC. All members of TAC, including Gropius, had equal shares in the company, and he insisted that he not be looked at as the president. Of the original TAC founders, only Gropius did not have a house on Moon Hill, having already built his house (Gropius House) in Lincoln, Massachusetts. The group found the land in Lexington during a Sunday ski outing. It was purchased from an auto dealer of the Moon Motor Car, and the project was given the name "Six Moon Hill", a nod to the six automobiles found in a barn on the property. It turned out that one of the cars was a Franklin, but they liked the original name too much to change it. With a focus on collaboration rather than individualism, the TAC approach was applied to all aspects of the community: design, development, construction, and operation. TAC established a nonprofit corporation and bought on which to build, which were divided into 29 equally-priced lots of about one-half to three-quarters of an acre each. The neighborhood continues to run as an organized community in which each household pays dues and holds two voting shares. Architecture Although TAC members claimed that they were not trying to create a "style", the houses can be seen as reflecting many features of what is now thought of as the mid-century modern style: the houses all have flat, low-pitched, or butterfly roofs, narrow vertical siding, whole walls of glass, and a total lack of extraneous ornament. Among the design innovations employed in early homes were the use of radiant heating embedded in concrete or slate floors, use of bubble skylights manufactured originally as World War II