Inside the Most Iconic Glass House in America: Edith Farnsworth House, Mies van de Rohe | House tour

People thought Dr. Farnsworth was a man and we wanted them to know that Edith Farnsworth was obviously a woman and that she was a patron of not only this house but of Meese's career. She was more than a client and in some ways really changed the course of American architecture because she gave Meese a start. She gave Meese really his first opportunity to explore, learned a lot in the hands-on construction of the process of this house that he was then able to sort of course correct other projects at the time. It was a living laboratory in the sense, you know, that he and his students really were hands-on, you know, during the construction, the design detailing and construction of this project. I'm Scott Mahaffey, Executive Director of the Edith Farnsworth House located 60 miles southwest of Chicago near Plano, Illinois. The architect for this house was Ludwig Meese van der Rohe and was designed in 1945 to 1947. Construction started in 1949 and continued through 1952 and it's one of three single-family houses in the United States designed by Meese. Meese was born in Aachen, Germany. His father was a stonemason and he worked on a number of buildings that still exist in Aachen including the cathedral. Meese's oldest brother was always in line to inherit the business. Meese knew from his childhood that he would have to make his own way in the world and he did. When he was really in his late teens he moved on, worked for an architect who was also an interior designer. He didn't go to school to learn architecture, he apprenticed. Then he worked for Peter Behrens and he really learned a great deal of architecture. He was an educator as well and a writer. We really have learned a lot over the years about Meese's early career which is fascinating because it parallels a lot of what young architects do today. They don't just instantly become architects, they're interested in graphic design, they're interested in set design, industrial design and Meese did all of those things. We were doing a photo exhibition a couple years ago and learned that Meese applied for the first photo wallpaper patent in the 1920s so he was definitely a multi-dimensional person. Dr. Farnsworth was one of three children born and raised in Chicago. She studied at the University of Chicago. She was always interested in history and never interested in design until she had the opportunity to work on this house. Her family homes were always historic homes. When she made the decision that she wanted to build a cabin, a cottage, a very simple house, she started buying magazines and books and studying modern architecture and she first landed on Keck and Keck. They were the go-to modernist residential architects in Chicago at that time and so through mutual friends she gets introduced to Meese Vanderohe. He agrees to design a weekend house for her but little did she know at the time that it would become the Edith Farnsworth House, an international icon of modern architecture. The relationship was very good at first. Meese was preparing for his 1947 retrospective at MoMA, working closely with Philip Johnson. The slow pace actually suited Dr. Farnsworth because she could think about things, she could pop into, so she was very involved in the design process. Toward the end of the construction process, the project was far over budget and so it was very tense and so she sent a letter to Meese saying I'm not going to authorize any further expenses. He was the general contractor, he wasn't just the architect, it was a design build project and contractor I should say loosely because it was never a written agreement, it was just a verbal agreement between the two of them as friends. When he took this commission, you know, in 1945, well winter of 44-45, he really didn't have an office. His office was at IIT, at Armour Institute, and he thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for his students. Meese would send the young architects out to Plano on the train with pieces of wood, a camera, you know, surveying rods, whatever, and get the information and come back. I don't think he really looked at the billable hours and so when he finally had an office and he had all this debt, he had all these employees and he's having to make payroll, Meese agreed to put a lien against the house. Well, it was at the same time that Dr. Farnsworth was just moving in and there was a long punch list of things that were wrong with the house and so she basically countersues. There were lengthy depositions for both sides and the case got drawn out over several years. They settled out of court for a very kind of measly sum, I think it was something like four thousand dollars, because the Master of Chancery and the lawyers agreed that there was no contract, there was no design agreement, and the only money that Edith really owed Meese at that point, because she had given deposits and payments on the design services, but there was never an actual contract, as I say, but Meese did pay some of the out-of-pocket expenses to finish the house or he was awarded that as basically a reimbursement. When the house was built, it was just a nine-acre parcel where we are and Meese basically put the house in the center of the parcel but off to the south against three large existing trees, which shaded the house because there was never air conditioning until 1997. The house was always designed with a screen porch from the 1944 or 45 sketches that was removed by Peter Palumbo, the second owner. Peter Palumbo, who is still with us, he runs Kentucky Knob near Fallingwater. He basically bought the Farnsworth House, Kentucky Knob, and Maison Joule in Paris by Le Corbusier and had incorporated all three of them as a for-profit house museum corporation in the 90s, and then unfortunately he fell ill, he wasn't able to, he had a lot of commitments, he was chairman of the British Arts Council, he was chairman of the Pritzker Prize in Architecture, he was just super busy and they didn't get here at one time for two or three years and they decided we got to sell it. So they sold it at auction in 2003, the National Trust on Landmarks Illinois were able to quickly put together an international fundraising campaign to buy the house for 7.5 million dollars. So we opened in May of 2004 and have been open ever since. Peter Palumbo is really kind of the person who saved the Farnsworth House and really was the perfect owner because he loved architecture and design, furnished the house as Mies would have intended, working with Dirk Lohan, Mies' grandson. He actually added a wonderful collection of modern art, then contemporary art, this is in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. He would send his painter over from England to repaint the house. I mean he was just so fastidious, he cared about every little detail, so I don't think in some ways the house would be here if he hadn't bought it, especially after the devastating floods of 1996 and 97. There was almost six feet of water in the house in 1996 and then while the house was under restoration in the spring of 97, there was three feet of water. So it flooded, and this is kind of the history of flooding here, there won't be any flooding for 10 years and then the weather patterns change and there are you know two floods in a row. The last time there was water in the house was 2012, there was two inches but it kind of went in and out. The more serious flood before that was 2008, there was about 14 inches of water in the house and it was probably in here for a couple of hours. And so you see the damage on both bathroom doors of course 96, 97 before that, but the house has flooded as I say about seven times in 75 years. The house is essentially a one-room glass pavilion. There's a wood clad core in the middle which contains a galley kitchen on the north side and then two bathrooms, a guest bathroom and Edith's bathroom. And the sleeping area is at the far northeast corner of the house and the dining area is at the far northwest corner of the house. The living area is separated by a wardrobe at the east end. The wood core is set back almost like a giant toe kick space under a counter and Mies does that to create actually two counters within the bathrooms, but it also helps give a sense of space so the room doesn't feel like a bowling alley essentially. That's not cabinets, the primavera panels that are on the core, they are actually marine grade plywood with a primavera which is a tropical hardwood veneer. So people often think they're cabinets, storage cabinets, but no it's just the design, the panel design. The house, because they made the decision, as I said Dr. Farnsworth loved all things Italian, she and Mies were very fond of travertine and it was even then an expensive material, probably more so. So there really are only ironically two custom designed pieces in this house. Everything else is kind of lower grade materials but designed very well, very cleverly. The house was definitely designed to be durable, there's no doubt about it. I mean it's glass, concrete, stone, steel. So quality materials, very minimalist but very luxurious, a very stunning house when it was completed in 1951-52 and it looked a little different than it does today. If you look at the early 51 photos, the house is just this shining glass box by the river and I have to thank that Mies, you know, all those decisions were very intentional. Over the years we've got a much softer effect, matte finish draperies, matte finish paint, the wood veneer as I say is like a matte finish now. It's a very lovely home now but it's a much softer feel than it would have been originally. We're open for tours Wednesdays through Sundays, March through November, then we decorate the house for the holidays and have special holiday tours and modern merry annual cocktail parties in December and then in January, February and March we're only open on weekends, so limited hours, that's our quiet season. We do fundraising. We are always explaining to visitors that percentage of their ticket price is a donation, especially for our fundraising events, that we would like them to give an additional gift at the visitor center or round up their purchase in the gift shop. We do a spring appeal, an end-of-year fundraiser, we try to do at least one big fundraising event every year. We want to make sure that all of our educational programs are profitable, there aren't any fundraisers, but we have to make a little money. But yeah, grants are a big source of income for us and the state of Illinois, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity has a private sector tourism grant program which has been wonderful for us. We're repainting the entire house for the first time in 20, I don't know, 21 years or something, so that's really great. Well, and Mies advised, and you can you see this in his writings, you know, he was interviewed in the late 60s and was saying that how important it was for the Farnsworth House to keep the interior neutral because he didn't want anything to distract or detract from the natural colors that were happening throughout. The Palumbos write in their memoirs of the house that the coolest time to be in the house, well two times, Hyatt liked, Peter liked to be in here when there was a big thunderstorm. He thought it was just like being in the rainstorm, but you were protected, you were sheltered, so he loved that, and the glass would rattle. Hyatt liked to be in here on a summery evening with the lights turned down and to watch the fireflies all around the house, so it's, you know, you should think about these experiences in a glass house that you just can't have in a normal house, which is kind of cool. The first 15 years after we opened to the public in 2004, our focus was it's all about Mies, and that really limited our audience. I mean, we're really relying on architects and architecture students, and there are a limited supply of them in the world, and once they've seen the Farnsworth House, they tend not to come back or not come back for five or ten years, so we had to have a broader perspective, so we really looked at, this is a site-specific design response to the, to living in nature at that time, so that's really kind of our larger focus, so it's really history, architecture, the arts, and nature now, and so we do a lot of family programming, kids programming, design programming that is outside of architecture, so we have a broader perspective these days.