Philip Johnson Glass House Predecessor Booth House Needs A Buyer

Modernist homes are experiencing a Renaissance. In a new century increasingly defined by smartphones, the aesthetic of large windows that demand attention to the natural world has quietly surged in popularity. Design lovers the world over seek out mid-century modern (MCM) gems that are coming to market after 50+ years with the families who designed and cherished them, racing to preserve them against the 'modern farmhouse' construction sharks and painfully grey house flippers. Among these diamonds in the rough is the ultimate home on this path at the bargain price of $1.5 million: Philip Johnson, the designer of the Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, made Booth House in Bedford, New York in 1946.

Booth House was completed before his colleague Mies van der Rohe was able to conclude Farnsworth House in Illinois, and thus stands not only as the first major Johnson house project in America, but also perhaps the first major modernist residential structure altogether.

In 1955, Booth House was sold to Manhattanites Richard and Olga Booth, who in turn rented it to architecture lovers Sirkka and Robert Damora. They bought the home in the 1960s and lived there until Robert's death in 2010, making a few modifications and expansions. Sirkka sold the house for just $1 million in 2019 after 9 years on the market at double. Curbed reported it is currently owned by art advisor Thomas Rom through an LLC, but other sources have suggested legal title is in dispute.

Furthermore, Booth House is vulnerable, not protected as a National Historic site like the New Canaan icon. Rather, one prospective buyer after another has balked at the work that needs to be done. Even architecture afficionados have yet to be up to the task.

Johnson's troubled history as a Nazi sympathizer has occasionally come under fire as well. Real estate agent Melissa Marcogliese recalled a shrewd contractor going on about it as an attempt to bring down the price, just as he admitted he would probably bulldoze the property. But young Johnson, then a closeted gay man, was not so much enraptured with the hate that would become synonymous with Nazism as the beauty of a stylized future. He was taken with the jutting jaws and shoulders of the soldiers, whose uniforms were designed by Hugo Boss, with vehicles supplied by BMW. It was the lines and stripped down sense of belonging, a love of abstraction and energy.

In the end, however, modernist design and an eye towards the future were ultimately scorned by the Nazi party. Johnson's colleague Mies van der Rohe was forced to flee on the wrong side of Nazi aesthetics, and Johnson was apparently instrumental in facilitating his departure in the name of design. Van der Rohe would go on to design furniture used in his own projects as well as the Glass House.

Later in life, Johnson attempted to atone for his admitted political stupidity by designing a synagogue without taking a commission in Port Chester, New York, not far from the location of the Glass House in New Canaan. Kneses Tifereth Israel has not been so beloved, however, with Mark Lamster at DesignObserver calling it "ungainly" in 2011.

The iconic Farnsworth House, a comparison to Booth, was also fraught with ventilation and cost challenges. Today, the overhaul at Booth requires what Marcogliese called "a labor of love".

But the end result, a key piece of modernist history with stunning angles and lines, cannot be underestimated. Like the Abstract Expressionists who came to define an aesthetic century, this home had the power not just to strip away excesses in the aftermath of war, but to change how Americans lived forever with a vision for a cleaner, brighter future.

If this house were reconfigured appropriately, it could be used as a public testament to modernist aesthetic for generations, a museum, or even an artist retreat...until then, this Philip Johnson property really needs the right buyer.