Philip Johnson, a Harvard Graduate from the School of Design, chose New Canaan as the place he wanted to practice his art. He worked extensively in the town and is immortalized as one of the Harvard Five, a group of architects from the School of Design who, in the 1940s, designed about 100 modern homes in New Canaan.
Johnson, the first recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Founder and Chairman of the Department of Architecture of the Museum of Modern Art, co-author of The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 and the mind behind the famed Glass House in New Canaan, Conn., would be celebrating his 119th birthday today.
Today, we’re paying homage to one of the greatest of all time by highlighting two remarkable, Johnson-designed homes that we represent on the market. After all, we’re lovers of home design and the men and women who contribute so much to the art. Enjoy these truly exceptional homes.
218 Sleepy Hollow Road New Canaan, CT
Listed with Inger Stringfellow and John Hersam
One of the stars of New Canaan’s legacy of mid-century modernism is the Wiley House in New Canaan, a home Johnson designed in 1952. You can see the influence of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the elegant simplicity that helped characterize the International Style. Mies and Johnson both contributed greatly to the style.
The slope of the land allows the lower-level rooms with the light marble floors full views of the property.
Check out the pool house built into the hill.
The reconstructed barn/art gallery and the vintage pool with pool house form their own separate courtyard.
523 Oenoke Ridge New Canaan, CT
Listed with Tori-Ann Vittoria and Inger Stringfellow
This home designed in 1953 hearkens back to the Barcelona Pavilion, a structure designed in the International Style for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, Spain. The horizontal lines and planes of the residence are essential to the minimalist aesthetic.
It’s designed as a modest one-story house with a site plan that gives the house the feeling of a romantic garden villa or a little pavilion in the woods.
