Welcome to the Glass House

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One wonders, though, now that the Johnson glow has worn off, how inspirational would a stay at the Glass House be for a young designer? New Canaan seems awfully suburban today, the buildings a museum of twentieth-century architecture in the twenty first. When Johnson bought the land it was a great experiment, creative because of the friction generated between his country and city lives. Today it is neither here nor there.

Johnson left the house to the National Trust with an $8 million endowment; Whitney’s estate is estimated to raise $8 million−$9 million more. MacLear says the Trust will need to raise about $400,000 per year for operating expenses, and then between $300,000 and $700,000 annually for the next five years for capital restoration. “Certain buildings can handle patina and look good,” says William Dupont, chief architect for the Trust. “This site, as would probably be true for any International Style site, doesn’t really look good with patina. Things are supposed to be clean; paint is supposed to be crisp.”

In 1986 Johnson gave the site to the National Trust with a life estate. Marty Skrelunas has lived there since 1997, hired by the Trust as director of preservation to ensure proper (and constant) maintenance of architecture and landscape. But major capital improvements—fixing the leaking Sculpture Gallery, creating environmental control for the Painting Gallery, replacing the glass in the Glass House—lie ahead pending fundraising. The trust would also like to buy adjacent properties to preserve the site’s character—no McMansions in the view corridors.

Donors will also be found among the 300 people culled from Johnson’s birthday invitation lists, some of whom got a preview of MacLear’s plans in September at an event hosted by Gund and Jo Carole Lauder at MoMA. MacLear thought the architect’s friends should hear the news first (neighbors received invitations to tour the house later that month) and wants to maintain his extensive social network.

As news of the house’s reopening has spread, troves of archival photos and oral histories have be-gun to come out of the woodwork. Ibram Lassaw’s granddaughter, for example, called MacLear to reminisce about stripping off her clothes and jumping into the (rarely photographed) circular pool at age six, when she came with Lassaw to deliver the sculpture for the Brick House. MacLear hopes to get funding for an oral and photographic history of the site, establishing its historical role as incubator as well as landmark.

The site’s spring launch will incorporate elements of all these ideas. Intimacy will be preserved in a set of dinners for 12 to 20 guests—friends, neighbors, “thought leaders,” and potential donors. A larger fund-raising gala will be held in June—with a performance by Merce Cunningham—but in a tent, not the Glass House. To balance the pecuniary with the scholarly, there will be a lecture series and a symposium, planned for both New Canaan and New York, that might include a panel on preserving, renovating, and adding on to the Moderns. Other suggestions on MacLear’s list include the relationship of Modern architecture and paintings and design for the mass market. “Then there’s the idea of inspiration and cultivation,” she says. “Who are the next Harvard Five? It helps bring the place to life.”

Provided by Metropolis Magazine—The Magazine of Architecture, Culture, and Design