Glass House

Johnson built the Glass House as his own weekend retreat in New Canaan, on a wooded ridge he had bought two years earlier, using a steel frame he painted black and a single layer of glass held by the thinnest possible bronze-toned mullions; the only enclosed volume, a brick cylinder holding the bathroom, doubles from outside as a chimney. He had chaired the committee that brought a model of Mies van der Rohe's not-yet-built Farnsworth House to MoMA in 1947, and his own house, finished two years ahead of it, borrowed its language so directly that Mies is said to have been furious when he saw it. Johnson kept adding to the estate for the rest of his life — a windowless brick guest house across the lawn, an underground painting gallery, a lakeside pavilion at a fraction of full scale, and finally Da Monsta, a sculptural gatehouse from 1995 — until it held fourteen structures on the property. He gave the whole estate to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1986, retaining life tenancy, and it opened to public tours in 2007.