Philip Cortelyou Johnson was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1906. Following his graduation from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1943, Johnson designed some of America’s greatest modern architectural landmarks. Most notable is his private residence, the Glass House, a 47-acre property in New Canaan, Connecticut. Other works include: the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at The Museum of Modern Art, numerous homes, New York’s AT&T Building (now Sony Plaza), Houston’s Transco (now Williams) Tower and Pennzoil Place, the Fort Worth Water Garden, and the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. An associate of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the 1950s, Johnson worked with the modern master on the design of the Seagram Building and its famed Four Seasons Restaurant.

Before practicing architecture, Johnson was the founding Director of the Department of Architecture at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. His landmark 1932 exhibition, The International Style, introduced modern architecture to the American public. Johnson continued a relationship with MoMA throughout his life as a curator, architect, trustee, and patron. He donated more than 2,000 works of art to the Museum including works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg. Johnson was also a singular tastemaker, influencing architecture, art, and design during the second-half of the twentieth century. He referred to the Glass House site as his “fifty-year diary.”

The Glass House is best understood as a pavilion for viewing the surrounding landscape. Invisible from the road, the house sits on a promontory overlooking a pond with views towards the woods beyond. Each of the four exterior walls is punctuated by a centrally located glass door that opens onto the landscape. The house, which ushered the International Style into residential American architecture, is iconic because of its innovative use of materials and its seamless integration into the landscape. Philip Johnson, who lived in the Glass House from 1949 until his death in 2005, conceived of it as half a composition, completed by the neighboring Brick House.

Since its completion in 1949, the building and decor have not strayed from their original design. Most of the furniture came from Johnson's New York apartment designed in 1930 by Mies van der Rohe. In fact, Mies designed the iconic Glass House daybed specifically for Johnson. A seventeenth century painting attributed to Nicolas Poussin graces the living room. The image, Burial of Phocion, depicts a classical landscape and was selected specifically for the house by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the first directorof The Museum of Modern Art. The sculpture by Elie Nadelman is a small version of a marble sculpture that is found in the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center designed by Johnson in 1964