Philip Johnson meets Maurice Sendak, perhaps

This could be an all-good-outcome situation. The former headquarters of Schlumberger, Ltd in Ridgefield, CT is being considered to house and exhibit the works of Maurice Sendak. Although the combo seems a little incongruous – a corporate HQ for an oil and gas drilling equipment and technology company + the creative works of the author/illustrator of possibly the most moving and indleible children's books – it is great to think that the museum will be in the town where Sendak lived and that people will get to see this building, which is totally hidden from viewing as a drive-by.

After close brushes with being razed or bought by an art collector for his private collection, this seems like a very good fit for all. – GF

Man-made weather events for The Glass House

While this could be pretty cool to see first hand, my initial reaction in, "Why?". It's especially ironic that the first manufactured fogs are due to begin rolling in today, May 1, 2014, while Mother Nature has an intense fog show going on right outside my window, 8 miles away from PG's house . . .

Although I'm sure they've thoroughly researched the effect extra moisture can have on the building, I'll desperate, as usual, to keep humidity out of and away from my house this summer.

Let us know if you visit The Glass House while one of these fog events occurs, and what you thought of it. – GF
Images by Richard Barnes

A Few Days Visiting Philip Johnson Houses

We've had Philip Johnson on our minds for the past few days, first because of a tour of the Glass House on Thursday and then because of an open house held by the Damoras, who have put the Johnson-designed house that they own in Bedford, New York, on the market.

The Damoras held an open house yesterday. It was a busy event that featured a talk by John Johansen, a chance to see the house, and an exhibition of some of the late Robert Damora's terrific architectural photos. You can see more details about the house here.

Our tour of the Glass House was fantastic. One of our guests, an architect from Munich, told the tour guide that it was the best architectural tour she had been on anywhere.



We were there on Thursday, a warm, sunny late afternoon, spring turning into summer. Our guide emphasized that Johnson was a landscape architect as much as an architect of buildings, and the land was as beautiful as the buildings. A small part of the property is maintained as lawn but most of it is meadows, copses, streams, stone walls in a near-natural state that present different textures, shadows and shades of color where ever you look.

It was a beautiful way to spend a late afternoon. We thank Christy MacLear and the staff of the Glass House for accommodating us.

The photos here are of the Glass House from above, showing the swimming pool; the living room; the painting gallery; two shots inside the sculpture gallery, with its incredible shadows; and the Glass House from slightly downhill. - ta

Philip Johnson's First House is on the Market, in Bedford, New York

The first house designed by Philip Johnson for a client just came on the market, for $2 million, in Bedford, New York, the next town over from us. Built in 1946, it's called the Booth house but most recently it was the longtime home of Robert and Sirkka Damora.

Mr. Damora, an architectural photographer of note (Walter Gropius said of him, "I consider him the best the best photographer of architecture in this country") passed away at age 97 a year ago, and his family is selling the house.

Here's a description of it:

Unlike the Glass House, where Johnson shaped the landscape with carefully created vistas, the Booth House was set within an existing topography. Sited on the graded crest of a wooded slope, it takes full advantage of the towering trees that enclose the house. Nature enters into the house as an almost physical presence. While the Glass House has a temple-like quality, the Booth House strives to be only a comforting shelter for daily family life—a fact valued by the late architect and pioneering architectural photographer Robert Damora and his widow, architect Sirkka Damora, who acquired the house in 1955 and lived there appreciatively for 55 years.

The 36 acres next to the house are permanently protected as a nature preserve by Westchester Land Trust, my employer, and in fact on my first visit to the preserve, in 1997, I met Mr. Damora and chatted with him for a couple of minutes, and I remember thinking that he was someone Gina and I should visit. We never did, but last June we were invited to have lunch there with Mrs. Damora and the Damoras' daughter and son, Jesa and Matthew. It was a surprisingly cool, rainy day but the house was warm, and it gave me that sense that modern houses often do of being part of the outside world even when I'm inside and comfortable.

Here's the website with the real estate listing. There's a lot of good information and photos. And here's a website the Damoras' created to showcase Robert Damora's photographs (the photo above is by Robert Gregson). It's well worth looking at.

I should note by the way that the Booth/Damora house is listed for about $850,000 less than the much smaller, right-next-to-the-road Alice Ball House that Johnson designed about a decade later. - ta

For Sale

Judging from the real estate notices I keep getting, this doesn't seem like the most propitious time to sell a mid-century modern house in New Canaan. On the other hand, if you're a buyer maybe you can get a (relative) bargain.

John Johansen's Bridge House (shown at left; asking $5 million), Philip Johnson's Alice Ball House (asking $3.5 million), the house Victor Christ-Janer's designed for himself on Frogtown Road (asking a shade under $3.5 million), and a house designed by Taylor Gates ($1.9 million) are among those still on the market. And if you want to live in a 1966 modern/contemporary on the same road as the Bridge House, there's one listed for $1.375 million, down from the original asking price of $1.425 million.

Skip Ploss, by the way, reports that Cristina Ross, who owns the Alice Ball house, "has all of the permits needed to build the second home she wants to build on the site while still preserving the Ball House." - ta

A Bit More on the Tour in New Canaan

The New Canaan League of Women Voters' Peggy Dannerman was nice enough to get back to me this morning with information about their upcoming modern house tour, the details of which were, in true League of Women Voters fashion, discussed democratically among league board members until a consensus was reached about what they could say publicly. Here's what she told me:

I spoke with our League of Women Voter's Board yesterday about your question, and they agreed that we could inform the public about the architects of the homes, but not the names of the home themselves, a policy we have followed in previous tours. Suffice it to say that we have two homes by Philip Johnson, one by Eliot Noyes and one by John Johansen. There are two fairly "grand" homes and two smaller homes.

I'm not sure I'd shell out a hundred bucks to see four modern houses unless I knew what the houses were, particularly since I've been on two New Canaan Historical Society modern house tours that included two Johnson's and a Noyes and I wouldn't necessarily want to pay to see them again. Offhand I don't know how many Noyes or Johansen houses there are in New Canaan, but there are six Johnson's -- the Glass House, the Alice Ball House and the Boissonas House, all of which have been on the historical society tours; the Hodgson House, which was going to be on last year's historical society tour, I think, but was being renovated; and the Wiley House and Wiley "spec" house, which I'm unfamiliar with.

More Incremental Change in the Alice Ball House Controversy

Cristina Ross, the owner of the Alice Ball House (designed by Philip Johnson), was before New Canaan's environmental commission the other night, presenting her revised plans for the back section of her lot, behind the Ball house, where she wants to build a big house. The neighbors are unhappy because big houses are unheard of in New Canaan, where everyone lives in reasonably-sized, environmentally-pure houses and respects the property rights of their neighbors.

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating that last part. In any case, here's what one of the two local papers reported. And there's plenty of background about the Alice Ball House here.

For my part, I couldn't care less what Cristina Ross does on the back of her property, and I hope the town gives her plan the OK. That seems to be the only thing right now that will prevent her from exercising her right (her property right, although arguably not her moral right) to tear the house down.

Notes from the Glass House – yours and theirs

The Glass House sketchbook features quotes by Philip Johnson, blank pages for your own notes or sketching, and sketches inspired by the site by 29 architects, designers, and artists including: Yves Béhar, Michael Bell, Deborah Berke, James Biber, Mattia Bonetti, Constantin Boym, Seymour Chwast, Stephen Doyle, Steven Ehrlich, Rafael Esquer, Alexander Gorlin, Steven Holl, Christopher Huan, Rainer Judd, Maira Kalman, Chip Kidd, LOT-EK | Giuseppe Lignano and Ada Tolla, Mark McInturff, Richard Meier, Toshiko Mori, Michael Morris, Fred Noyes, Gaetano Pesce, Ron Radziner, Jens Risom, Yoshiko Sato, Denyse Schmidt, Alison Spear and Joseph Tanney.

All proceeds from this sketchbook will support the Glass House.

The custom edition Glass House Moleskine® sketchbook costs $25.95 can be purchased at the Glass House gift shop, or by calling 203.594.9884 - x 1. – GF

Heart of the glass house – it's definitely not a heart of glass

An interesting but perhaps overlooked part of The Glass House is its kitchen. Most people want to know how one uses the bathroom in a transparent house, and after they get over that, what about dressing and even just sleeping so exposed? Here is a short, sort of sweet story about the recollections of Raymond Girard, (88 years old), who spent a lot of time in that kitchen: he built it.

The story in the New Canaan News-Review says, "Girard's return to the Glass House marked the first steps in creating an oral history program at the Glass House museum. Christy MacLear, the executive director of the Glass House, said the staff plans to install an audio booth in the visitor's center."

The Glass House web site describes the Oral History Project thus: Artists from Robert Raushenberg to Frank Stella, architects and scholars from Vincent Scully and Robert A.M Stern, clients such as Gerald Hines, and close friends of Philip Johnson and David Whitney will be target of this Glass House project to capture and collect conversations, musings, and insight from people who frequented and contributed to the Glass House since it’s completion in 1949. – GF

Home again, home again in the Glass House

I've visited the Glass House a couple of times in my life, and passed by it since I was a child at school a half mile down the road, either on bike or in car, probably thousands of times. My most recent visit was in 2001, when it was included on the New Canaan Historical Society's Modern House Day Tour. It was a crystal-clear, deep blue-skied, but definitely chilly, day. It was October, and the trees on the facing ridge – High Ridge, in Stamford, CT – were just starting to turn color. In the G.H. itself, a small fire had been built in the fireplace which is a concave scoop from the only solid volume in the house - the cylindrical, dark brown brick bathroom enclosure. The fireplace was shallow and the fire was built of thin logs in teepee shape - converging at the top and fanned out at the bottom. The smell and the warmth of the fire and the way the house integrated with land and the brilliant day was such an inviting pull I didn't want to leave. . . But I did because we were allowed to walk all over the property, and go into the main house, the library and the brand-new visitor's center which Johnson designed and had built in anticipation of the property being turned over to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Library was completely enchanting, due to it's intimate size and situation, out in a field and reached by a path through the high grass. The conical volume on it's top with glass at the narrow top, funnels light right down onto the reading desk is also a bit like a thinking cap. . . really the perfect place for concentration, pastime and contemplation.

Well – OK. Thanks for putting up with my dreamy little digression . . . Here's what I intended posting about: In the house there is one painting. It is "Burial of Phocion," attributed to Nicolas Poussin (1599-1665), and it sits, because there are no walls to hang it on, on an easel in the middle of the living area. Here is a story from the New Canaan News Review that explains why a 17th C. classical painting was chosen and beloved by Johnson and his companion David Whitney, and how it lives so comfortably in the most iconic of Modernist houses. I can tell you first hand that although the easel is a little confusing and a bit of an obstacle to get used to, the painting is right at home. – GF

Friday morning note: Interesting story (and I don't say that just because you're my wife). There's a big and no-doubt mobbed Poussin show at the Met. The Times has a slide show of some of his paintings, if you're not familiar with his style, here.

On a related note, the Glass House has produced three short films giving people's impressions of the place. Most of it is very serious and solemn (the music is a giveaway that this is important stuff), and I watched it all and found only two things that were slightly funny (Frederick Noyes, Eliot's son, remembers visiting as an 8-year-old and wondering where you go to the bathroom, and someone else who I didn't recognize says that his impression of the Glass House was, "Nice wallpaper"). But they're worth looking at if you have an extra 20 minutes, here. -- TA

The Threat to Philip Johnson's Alice Ball House: A Further Explanation

An acquaintance in New Canaan sent us a long, thoughftul and, it seems, well-informed reply to our post about our visit to the Alice Ball House and our talk with its owner, Cristina Ross (here's the post). Here it is:

I have a couple of thoughts on the AB scenerio to pass on, where there may be confusion either on your or my part:

Asking Price: It is not considered a "Fair asking price" by many who otherwise appear to have been interested and have made inquiries. Owner paid $1.5 million in 2005 and two years later listed it at double that price; it's a tiny house - 1440 net sf living area including two small bedrooms. I believe it is smaller than many of the comps you mention.

I understand she would like to recoup her legal expenses and whatever she has put into the house, but now, especially in a "down" market, that probably is unrealistic. As I was told she had a permit for "cosmetic improvements" which I believe cap out at $2,500; if that is true, then the improvements could not have been very costly. I suggest you check out the permit.
Asking a lot of money for a house in New Canaan can also mean you are not really interested in selling it, sending a negative message to a potential buyer.

Environmental Commission: The letter that the Commission wrote to the owner clearly states the reasons her application was denied: too much filling of the wetlands, adverse impact of upland activities far greater than they need to be, and there are feasible alternatives that would cause little or no impact on the wetlands.

It then suggested she reapply, keeping in mind 12 points (some paraphrased):
1 Reduce the width of the driveway crossing the wetlands
2 Use grass pavers instead of gravel on driveway and parking areas
3 Straighten the driveway
4 Reduce the flare out of the driveway as it approaches the parking area
4 Rotate the garages in order to pull more of the parking area out of the wetlands and buffer area
5 Reduce the size of the parking area
6 Restore existing grass area currently located in wetlands for mitigation to offset some of the proposed wetland filling
7 Pull back the terrace and stone wall in front of the proposed house away from the wetlands
8 Reduce the amount and area of grading around the proposed house
9 Reduce the overall activity in the uplands in order to reduce the run off into the wetlands
10 Investigate whether adding onto or renovating the Philip Johnson house or otherwise building up front is a prudent alternative in lieu of a driveway crossing
11 Push the house upslope on the lot and further away from the wetlands

Only #10 would suggest that in order to "build up front" she might have to tear down the Alice Ball house, but it is not explicitly recommended.

You may obtain the letter from the Environmental Commission office in Town Hall. When I examined the plans, the recommendations all seemed quite doable and encouraging a re-application. I suggest you review the plans and the letter from the Environmental Commission.

I am certainly sympathetic to her, but is unclear to me why the owner did not reapply with a scaled back version, "that preserves the integrity of the Alice Ball House and respects the scale and character of the site" (as stated in a letter to Christina Ross signed by the Glass house, the National Trust and the New Canaan Historical Society Aug 17, 2007).

I do not believe anything has been heard before the Planning and Zoning Commission. I understand that the neighbors sued the Zoning Board of Appeals for giving a variance to allow the AB House to remain as a secondary residence on the property.

The neighbors are evidently going to object to anyone building a house on the rear of the lot, where there is more high ground than in front of the wetlands; and the wetlands, which cut across the width of the property, then curve around toward the road on the north side, eliminating that end of the front section as a build-able area. Not many options here at all!

Alice Ball

Architectural Record published a story about the Alice Ball House today on its website to coincide with the expiration of the demolition moratorium. It runs through the usual background and then makes a couple of worthwhile points that are obvious but not often mentioned, which allows me to make some inferences:

Given the resounding success of the Glass House’s public opening last summer—tours of Johnson’s compound are sold out almost a year in advance—and the increasingly mainstream appreciation of Modern architecture, the uncertain future of the Ball house surprises many observers. But Johnson scholar Hilary Lewis points out that other trends are at work.

“We’ve seen a resurgence of interest in Modern design, but there’s been a change in people’s attitude toward size,” Lewis explains. “Johnson’s houses are part of what makes New Canaan special, but they require a different kind of living. Philip [Johnson] was proof positive that you can live comfortably in less than 2,000 square feet.”

Size may indeed be part of the problem. The Alice Ball House has been on the market for six months, and while Parris notes that in the New Canaan market many houses take that long to sell, most buyers in the area are looking for “a five-bedroom Colonial.” With two bedrooms and tile floors, though, the Ball House isn’t exactly family friendly.

So here’s what I take from that:

 Modern houses are trophies, particularly in New Canaan (as I wrote here, on my other blog). http://thissphere.blogspot.com/2006/11/collecting-modern-houses-supply.html
 expensive houses, even in New Canaan, often take a long time to sell; the Alice Ball House has been on the market for less than a year.
 rich people with families want big houses; many of the houses near the Alice Ball House, on Oenoeke Ridge Road, are obscenely big; the Alice Ball House is less than 2,000 square feet; there are plenty of rich people with no families who could happily live in the Alice Ball House as a weekend place.

And then there’s this:

According to Stover Jenkins, the author of The Houses of Philip Johnson, Johnson’s design for Alice Ball, a single woman in the conservative 1950s, was influenced by Mies Van der Rohe’s unbuilt Resor House. It features 10-foot ceilings, glass-enclosed living areas, and private bedroom and service areas.

“It’s a very rationalist house,” Jenkins says, adding that that its massing and siting give the composition the feeling of a romantic garden villa. “It’s not one of Johnson’s masterpieces, but it’s part of a collection of houses he designed in New Canaan. That collection is unique. When you start demolishing parts of a group, it’s like taking apart a community.”

So…

 it’s a nice house but it’s not a great beauty.
 We tend to think of modern houses, or any notable works of architecture, as public cultural assets, and destroying them is an affront; but houses are owned by private individuals; few private individuals who buy a house would welcome the responsibility of owning something that is part of a unique collection of houses; it’s extremely unrealistic to expect any individual to be responsible for holding together a whole community of architecturally notable works.
 The obvious exception to that last point is a situation where the “community” is a historic district, with standards for renovation and external (or even internal) changes; there are scores and scores of these – Providence, Nantucket, Old Harbor on Block Island, even the hamlet of Pound Ridge, in my town – but I don’t know of any historic districts that encompass modern houses.
 Attitudes about modern houses are changing in New Canaan but it’s still virtually impossible to imagine the town creating a historic district of modern houses, of which there are about 80 still standing.
 But the town isn’t the only entity capable of creating a historic district, and maybe isn’t even the best; private groups are trying to do it (here) but this Philip Johnson Glass House webpage, which explains the project, doesn’t seem to have been updated for at least seven months.

Tuesday is D-Day (for Demolition) for Philip Johnson's Alice Ball House

The Alice Ball House, designed by Philip Johnson and standing for all to see on Oenoeke Ridge Road in New Canaan, might be demolished in less than a week on Tuesday, January 29.

That's when an automatic demolition moratorium expires (I had mistakenly reported that the moratorium expires on February 15). The house's owner, Cristina Ross, is in a dispute with the town over the use of the property and says the only way she can resolve it is to raze the house. Although many other modern houses in New Canaan have been destroyed, including at least one each designed by the other four members of the Harvard Five (Breuer, Noyes, Johansen and Gores), this would be the first Johnson house to be demolished.



The Alice Ball House continues to be on the market, but Gillian DePalo, who specializes in selling mid-century modern houses for William Raveis Agency, told me on Tuesday that there's no cause for optimism on that front.

Here's what the New Canaan News-Review reported today:

Provided that landowner Cristina Ross submits final paperwork, building inspector Brian Platz said he will hand out a demolition permit. Ross needs to give notice of Connecticut Light & Power shut off and documentation of an asbestos survey and any necessary abatement.

"When the 90 days is up and the owner gives me all the paperwork, then I'll process the application and issue the permit," Platz said in an interview with the News~Review. "Which doesn't mean she has to."

Read more here.

Time Running Out on Johnson's Alice Ball House

The Alice Ball House in New Canaan is featured in the In Focus column on the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation's website. The owner, Cristina Ross, has applied to the town for a demolition permit and, assuming a buyer doesn't materialize soon, can tear the house down on February 15. If it happens, Philip Johnson would join the other Harvard Five architects (Breuer, Johansen, Gores, Noyes) in the ignominious honor of having one of their New Canaan houses demolished.

Birth of the Modern

The world needs another blog. At last count there were only 39 billion of them in existence. So we’re starting this blog as a place to write about one of our enthusiasms -- modern houses, and the well-designed furniture and objects that fit in them.

We think that at their best, modern houses are beautiful, warm, inviting, and efficient in ways that are important in an era when energy consumption should be declining. And we think modern furniture and other objects are beautiful and functional, even when they’re not in modern houses.

What do we mean by “modern houses”? Generally we mean houses that were built from roughly the 1930s to the 1960s (our was built in 1939). Houses that are characterized by flat or gently-sloping roofs, an efficient use of interior space, a rejection of ornamentation for the sake of ornamentation, a connection (usually through large expanses of glass) with the natural world, and a sensitivity to the environmental conditions of the site they are built on – again, generally. But not always. Fantastic houses with a modern sensibility were built in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, and are being built today (although not many).

Unfortunately many more are being knocked down, to be replaced by cookie-cutter monstrosities. This is particular issue in our former home, New Canaan, Connecticut (the Alice Ball house, below, which was designed by Philip Johnson, is threatened now) but it's a problem elsewhere too.

Our goal is to write not only about modern houses that are threatened, but also about particularly interesting ones that aren’t, about the architects who designed them and, if we can, about the people who live in them – and also about the sensibility that informs them.

Modernism was a good model for domestic architecture in the middle of the 20th century, and we think it can be a good model for the early 21st too.