Built in 1948 and 1949 in New Canaan, Connecticut, the Glass House was Philip Johnson's weekend retreat, and The New York Times has called it his signature work. Johnson lived there for 58 years, for 45 of them with his longtime companion, the art critic and curator David Whitney.
The house is a single room 56 feet long, with walls of glass held by a frame of charcoal-painted steel. Low walnut cabinets divide the space, and a brick cylinder holding the bathroom is the only element that rises from floor to ceiling. It looks out from a crest over a pond, so the landscape becomes its walls. "I have very expensive wallpaper," Johnson joked. It was inspired by Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House, a model of which Johnson had shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947.
The estate holds other buildings by Johnson from across his career. Now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it is open for guided tours.
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