The Glass House

This past weekend, we visited the glass house–as in Philip Johnson’s 1949 little gem, not Billy Joel’s album circa sixth grade. Johnson lived to be nearly 100 (he died in 2005) and the house and its grounds have just been opened to tours this year by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Located in New Canaan, CT, it’s a great architectural field trip from New York, or if you happen to be heading that way.

Johnson’s other building experiments on the property aren’t as impressive–but he was a friend of Frank Stella, and so am I (figuratively, in my case).

Although the McMansions of the super rich have mostly devoured the town, there are still about 90 modern houses sprinkled about. Visit the Irwin Pool House (designed in 1960 by Landis Gores) in lovely Irwin Park for a complete survey of the modern homes in the area.

The Harvard Five in New Canaan: Midcentury Modern Houses by Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John Johansen, Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, and Others

5 thoughts on “The Glass House

  1. The grounds look lovely, too. I just read that the entire contents of the Eames living room were moved to LACMA–wish we still lived across the street!

  2. A very nice post. I love to read about the wedding related stuff across the net and came across your post. As I am also from same background and business, so I just subscribed to your blog and hope you will be posting quality stuff on weddings regularly. Thank You

    • Thanks for subscribing! We don’t post much about weddings, but we hope you enjoy reading about the crafts and our other interests. With the DIY trend in weddings, I bet there will be some ideas that would be great.

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