Public Tours of the Glass House

Philip Johnson passed away in 2005. I remember sitting at my old job in Portland and it was late morning during one of the many times I'd check the Times website between tasks. I believe that the first person I contacted when I read that was my friend Dora from home.

While it is insensitive, not to mention inaccurate, to say that Michael and I were waiting for Johnson to pass so that his Glass House would become open to the public, it was something we were looking forward to. I think the Glass House is beautiful.

I read this article in the Times this evening about the Glass House. As I was reading this, my first reaction was excitement: The Glass House Is Open To The Public! But as I read on, I was reminded that I actually don't like many of Johnson's buildings. Of his buildings that I am familiar with, I really only liked the Glass House and the Seagram Building, which was designed in collaboration with Mies van der Rohe.



The Lipstick Building:






















The AT&T Building:

The article is written as a sort of memorial to Johnson. A bunch of his friends complimenting him. The first little bit of it, I kind of was rolling my eyes thinking this is going to be another one of those articles where Philip Johnson's friends sit around and talk about how great he was. But as I kept reading, those thoughts kind of flew out of my head.

It was this quote that turned my eye-rolling around:

"MS. GORES I remember wonderful parties in the 50s. Mies was there with his mistress, who was beautiful. Henry-Russell Hitchcock was there, and the Rockefellers. Philip loved to give a good party."

Wow. How amazing would it have been to sit around with some of these people? I mean, the article also mentioned other artists, musicians, patrons, architects, etc. I am not trying to romanticize a particular moment in time by saying something ridiculous like "this particular period of time was the height of culture and everything beyond that is boring;" I'm just pointing out that it would have been amazing to socialize with some of these people.

The remainder of the article continues the celebration of Johnson's life and how much the Glass House meant to him. I must say that I am quite disappointed with the slide show of photographs, though. The images are really kind of boring and poorly composed.