Philip Johnson Glass House

The Philip Johnson Glass House, a National Trust Historic Site, offers its 47-acre campus as a catalyst for the preservation and interpretation of modern architecture, landscape, and art; and as a canvas for inspiration and experimentation honoring the legacy of Philip Johnson (1906-2005) and David Whitney (1939-2005).

The Philip Johnson Glass House was completed in 1949. Inspired by Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House (Plano, IL, 1951), its exterior walls are of glass with no interior walls, a radical departure from houses of the time. The Glass House began a fifty-year odyssey of architectural experimentation in forms, materials, and ideas through the addition of many "pavilions"—the Brick House/Guest House, Pond Pavilion, Painting Gallery, Sculpture Gallery, Ghost House, Library/Study, and DaMonsta—and the methodical sculpting of the surrounding forty-acre landscape.