Philip Johnson's Glass House
The Magnificent Landscape
The Glass House is set on a 47-acre picturesque landscape of rolling lawns and maple trees. (Photo by Carol M. Highsmith) Learn More
Philip Johnson's Glass House, a National Trust Historic Site
For fifty years, Johnson used this country estate to experiment with the relationships between art, architecture and landscape. (Photo by Carol M. Highsmith) Learn More
Philip Johnson's Glass House was a remarkable achievement when it was completed in 1949. Inspired by Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House (Ill.), its exterior walls are of glass with no interior walls, a radical departure from houses of the time. It began a fifty-year odyssey of architectural experimentation in forms, materials, and ideas through the addition of many new "pavilions"—Guest House, Lake Pavilion, Painting Gallery, Sculpture Gallery, Ghost House, Studio, and Visitors Pavilion—and the methodical sculpting of the surrounding forty-acre landscape.
Tours for 2009 are sold out.
Philip Johnson's Glass House is owned and operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
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