In some instances the story of the house is of as much interest as the import of the building and the Farnsworth House may be one of those cases. The story of the architect and his client has even been recently fictionalized into a play, “The Glass House” by June Finfer (
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) “Mies” was an architect and designer born in Germany. He reluctantly fled his Homeland in the late 1930s as he saw the Nazis growing in power. When Mies arrived in the United States, he was already a somewhat influential designer. He had been the director of the Bauhaus design school for several years and had won the commission for several architectural projects.
Famous for his sayings “Less is More” and “God is in the details”, Mies attempted to create contemplative, neutral spaces through an architecture based on material honesty and structural integrity. Mies settled in Chicago where he was appointed as head of the architecture school at Chicago's Armour Institute of Technology (later renamed Illinois Institute of Technology or IIT).
Mies designed this weekend retreat for Dr. Edith Farnsworth. Farnsworth was a successful Chicago physician with Northwestern University Medical School. A transparent box framed by eight exterior steel columns, the Farnsworth House is one of the most radically minimalist houses ever designed. It has been called an icon of the International Style of modernism. Its interior, a single room, is subdivided by partitions and completely enclosed in glass. Continuous visual space is the essence of the house. Eight steel columns form the structure, with interior and exterior floors of Roman travertine marble. The interior is totally open except for an interior rectangular structure containing two bathrooms, kitchen, and service facilities.
The house took six years to design and build, during which time Mies and the owner met frequently to consult on design and execution. When the house was finally finished, Farnsworth was unhappy with the cost and the result, and their relationship ended abruptly. Lawsuits resulted that ended in Mies' favor and unpleasant publicity followed. Mies never spoke about his rumored relationship, nor communicated with Farnsworth again. When she gained no legal victory, Farnsworth took to the popular press and a lot of negative print was generated about the house. Farnsworth was outraged. "Something should be said and done about such architecture as this," she told House Beautiful magazine in 1953, "or there will be no future for architecture." Even FLLW hopped aboard the antimodernist bandwagon, calling the practitioners of the International style "totalitarians."
Farnsworth continued to use the house for the next 21 years although she made some changes. She engaged Chicago architect William E. Dunlap to design removable bronze-framed screens to deter the insects attracted to the house. In 1968, the local highway department condemned a two-acre portion of the property adjoining the house for a new raised highway bridge over the Fox River. Farnsworth sued to stop the project but lost the court case. She sold the house to Lord Peter Palumbo in 1972, retiring to her villa in Italy.
Palumbo, a British property magnate, art collector and architectural aficionado, restored the house to its 1951 state, bought additional surrounding acreage and added furniture designed by Mies van der Rohe. Palumbo, who had first become enamored with the house as a schoolboy in England, removed the bronze screen enclosure of the porch, added air conditioning, extensive landscaping and his art collections to the grounds, including sculptures by Goldsworthy, Anthony, and Richard Serra. After owning the property for 31 years, Palumbo removed the art and sold the property at auction to a group of local preservationists with support from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in December 2003 for a reported $7.5 million. Palumbo currently owns the FLLW-designed I.N. Haugen House, also known as Kentuck Knob (
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Public building tours of the Farnsworth House are now conducted by the Landmarks Illinois. The house is listed in the National Register and is now designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior.
While elevated on beams over five-feet above the ground, the house is still vulnerable to flooding. The house sustained serious damage from flooding in 1996 and 1997. During the summer of 2007, the house was temporarily closed as floodwaters encroached within inches of the floor and emergency measures were taken to protect the contents of the house.
Resources:
Farnsworth House, Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois
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Isaacs, Deanna, 2007, If You Can Make It There, Chicago Reader, May 4, 2007,
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Goldberger, Paul, 2007, Sex and Real Estate, The New Yorker, April 30, 2007, (
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Lost and Found Productions, The Farnsworth House documentary, 21 min. (
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Mascolo, Frances McQueeney-Jones, 2004, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's
Farnsworth House, Antiques and the Arts On-line (
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Webb, Michael, 2001, Modernism Reborn: Mid-Century America Houses, Universe Publishing, New York, 223 pp.
Wikipedia (
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