Intro
This is a bit of a shaggy dog story. One association leads to another. But mostly it's a story about family, architecture, and World War II. My father left Czechoslovakia in 1938 to escape the Nazis, though not all of his family got out. He later became an engineer and passed his life-long interest in architecture on to me. I was recently reading Alex Beam's Broken Glass about the Farnsworth House in Illinois designed by Mies van der Rohe. It made me think of my family's unique house in California where I spent part of my childhood and which my father helped design. I also began to think about the influences on my father's taste in architecture, including the use of glass, from his own childhood in Brno, Czechoslovakia.
Dream House
My father, a self-made man, immigrated to the U.S. in 1940 to escape fascism in Europe. After finishing his studies and serving in the Navy, he became an engineer and, in 1963, moved our family from New York to California for his job with IBM. A year later, he and my mother bought a plot of land in the hills overlooking the Santa Clara Valley and built their dream house made of redwood. My father worked closely with the architect and the resulting design included large glass panes, a flat roof, and expansive views of the surrounding countryside.
I always appreciated my father’s aesthetics. But I only began to understand the inspirations for this house in California, where I was lucky to spend part of my childhood, when I inherited his parents’ 1937 modernist apartment building in his birthplace of Brno, Czechoslovakia. That led to a multitude of discoveries and an appreciation of the many other examples of modernist architecture in Brno and around the world.
Farnsworth House
I have been thinking about my parents’ house because I just finished Alex Beam’s Broken Glass, about the celebrated Farnsworth House. The architect, Mies van der Rohe, was already famous when he immigrated from Germany to the U.S. in 1938. One evening, at a dinner party in Chicago in 1945, he met Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a physician and medical researcher. She subsequently hired him to build her a weekend home on land she owned in Plano, about an hour southwest of Chicago. This remarkable house, which was completed in 1951, would become known for its glass frame, rising platforms that seem to float above the earth, and an elegant entrance announced by wide and gently graded steps in stone. But what is particularly interesting is the fact that Mies van der Rohe designed the house as a glass box with little consideration for privacy or comfort. He also insisted on placing it on a flood plain near a river bank with predictable consequences.
This lack of practicality stands out in part because Mies van der Rohe was one of the foremost practitioners of modernist architecture, often called “functionalist” and associated with attention to the needs of daily living. There was little that was “functional” about the Farnsworth House. In fact, as Alex Beam describes in his book, the owner found it “unlivable.” Yet it is justifiably world-famous for its beauty.
And here is where the story gets a bit shaggy. The American architect, Philip Johnson, was an admirer of Mies van der Rohe, and built a house in New Canaan, Connecticut (www.theglasshouse.org), that very much resembles the Farnsworth House but was completed earlier, in 1949. According to Broken Glass, Johnson was a frequent visitor to Mies van der Rohe’s studio and was well aware of the plans for the Farnsworth House before he built his house in New Canaan. In fact, in 1947, Johnson organized an exhibit of Mies van der Rohe’s work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibit includes the model for the Farnsworth House.
I have not yet visited the Farnsworth House which is available to the public (www.farnsworthhouse.org). Instead of a photo, I offer this very rough schematic:
The title of the book, Broken Glass, is a metaphor for the damaged relationship between architect and owner, who had an affair during the building of the house and ended up suing each other. The title also suggests, more concretely, the damage to the house related to faulty flashing and other construction problems.
But the title also reminds me of something more sinister: Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, that took place in November 1938, when Nazi paramilitary and civilians destroyed Jewish property and murdered Jews in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Although my father had left for London a few months earlier, his parents were still in Brno. They finally escaped in April 1939 after the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia.
Villa Tugendhat
Back to Mies van der Rohe who was not Jewish but who had had a series of encounters with Nazi authorities before he left Germany. One notable example occurred in 1933, when the Nazis closed down the Bauhaus, the iconic German design school, while he was director. Previously, he had designed the 1929 Barcelona Pavilion and the 1930 Villa Tugendhat in Brno, for which he was particularly known. The latter likely influenced my father’s taste in houses. In his 1990 memoir about growing up in Brno, my father mentioned “a glass house designed by the famous architect Mies van der Rohe. We looked at it quite frequently, but only over the fence.” Clearly that style made a big impression on him.
The Villa is famous for, among other things, its engineering innovations, open space living area, and floor to ceiling glass panels that look out onto the park-like setting and city beyond. The owners of the Villa Tugendhat were a Jewish couple who fled Czechoslovakia in 1938, and whose story was fictionalized in The Glass Room by Simon Mawer. The house was renovated and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
I have visited the Villa Tugendhat several times (www.tugendhat.eu). This house was featured prominently in the 1932 exhibit, “Modern Architecture: International Exhibition,” organized by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
A Sense of Continuity
And here is where the story gets even more personal. The Villa Tugendhat was built by one of the largest construction companies in Brno at that time, owned by the Eisler family. My grandparents later hired that same construction company to build their apartment house which was completed in November 1938, the month of Kristallnacht. My grandparents were still in Brno at that time but fled to England shortly after the Nazi Occupation.
The architect of my grandparents’ apartment house in Brno is believed to be Otto Eisler, who worked closely with his brothers’ construction company and whose training included a stint in Walter Gropius’ studio in Weimar during the early days of the Bauhaus. Eisler was introduced to Philip Johnson in Brno in the early 1930s, and Johnson included Eisler’s home as well as the Villa Tugendhat in the 1932 MoMA exhibit in New York. Johnson became a Nazi-sympathiser. Eisler was Jewish and despite harsh persecution and internment during the war, managed to survive and return home to Brno.
These connections to my grandparents’ building have provided layers of meaning to their history and my father's background, as well as to my understanding of Czech and world events during their time.
There are countless structures around the world that utilize glass and other materials to create a sense of continuity between house and setting. Here is one more which I love. It is from the same era as the Farnsworth House but in a much different environment: Georgia O’Keeffe’s home and studio in Abiquiu, New Mexico. This house, renovated by O’Keeffe and Marie Chabot from the original 18th century building on the property, uses glass to great effect. The renovations were completed in 1949 (www.okeeffemuseum.org).
O’Keeffe added modernist touches such as skylights and large picture windows, which allowed for natural light and spectacular views. These details are not typical for pueblo style adobe houses in that area.
All of these famous houses are still around and worth a visit or two. Sadly, the house in Los Gatos, California, no longer exists. The owners who bought my parents’ labor of love in 1998 immediately tore it down, including my mother’s terraced rose garden, to build their own vision of home. But its legacy—lessons in the importance of architecture and the pleasure and good fortune of living in a house in harmony with its surroundings—will always be part of me.
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