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Turtle Bay, Manhattan

Designed by Philip C. Johnson in 1948 and built in 1949-50, the former Rockefeller Guest House is one of the earliest buildings in New York City to reflect the influence of the modem movement in architecture and the celebrated German-American architect Mies van der Rohe. The house, which was described by the noted architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable as "sophisticated . . . handsome, unconventional," is remarkably intact.

Johnson's subtle and elegant design incorporates features borrowed from two earlier projects by Mies: his unbuilt "court houses" of the 1930s, and the elevations he designed for various buildings at the Illinois Institute of Technology (hereafter, IIT). Built without the use of traditional ornament, the striking two-story street facade is articulated with precisely arranged structural elements, including a symmetrical first story consisting of a handsome wood door and flanking polished reddish brown ironspot brick walls laid in Flemish bond, surmounted by a grid of six fixed translucent windows faced with four steel H-sections.

The house was commissioned by Blanchette Rockefeller, the wife of John D. Rockefeller 3rd and a major patron of the Museum of Modem Art (hereafter, MoMA), to display her collection of modem painting and sculpture and to entertain guests. The Rockefellers donated the house to the museum in 1955, and in the years that followed it had a succession of owners, many of whom were associated with the international art community, including Johnson who lived in the house from 1971 -79. A significant early work by one of the country's leading architects and his only private residential building in New York City, in May 1989 the Rockefeller Guest House became the first work of architecture in the city to be sold by a leading art auction house.

Design and Construction

In June 1948, the Empire Mortgage Company, acting on behalf of the Rockefeller family acquired a 25 by 100 foot lot on East 52nd Street, west of Second Avenue. It was an ideal location - midway between her home in Turtle Bay on Beekman Place and the museum. On the site were two vacant structures, both dating from circa 1870. Johnson later described them as "completely nondescript, [a] small house, wedged between brick walls, a gap and a weed patch, with a dumpy coach house."17 This sequence of spaces -closed, open, and closed-would shape Johnson's plan. Whereas most urban townhouses have gardens at the rear of the lot, the "gap" and "weed patch" would become an internal courtyard, filled with water and partly open to the sky.

An associate in Johnson's office, Frederick C. Genz, filed plans for the guest house in late 1948.18 Since the existing brick walls were retained, it was classified as an alteration, consisting of mainly plastering, plumbing, carpentry, and masonry work. The project's estimated cost was $64,000.19 Construction began in 1949, and the house was ready for use in 1950.

The Rockefeller Guest House was one the first buildings in New York City to reflect the influence of the modem movement in architecture and the celebrated German-American architect Mies van der Rohe. It would also be Johnson's first and only private residential building in the city. Located on the south side of 52nd Street, the simple two-story brick and glass facade stood in sharp contrast to the late nineteenth century buildings adjoining it, a tenement and schoolhouse.

Johnson's spartan design reflects two projects by Mies: the unbuilt "court houses" of the 1930s, where he explored the "flow of space . . . confined within a single rectangle formed by the outside walls of court and house conjoined," and the architect's elevations for the various buildings at HT which were notable for their "subtleties of detailing."20 In describing these facades, Johnson wrote in 1947:

Structural elements are revealed as are those of a Gothic cathedral . . . And whereas the medieval architect relied on the collaboration of the sculptor and painter for his ultimate effect, Mies, so to speak, had to perform the functions of all three professions. He joins steel to steel or steel to glass or brick, with the taste and skill that formerly went into the chiseling of a stone capital or the painting of a fresco.

Johnson followed Mies's example; rather than embellishing the guest house facade with traditional ornament, he articulated the street facade with precisely arranged structural elements. He divided the two-story facade into two visually-distinct sections. The lower portion of the first floor facade, which projects slightly in front of the windows, consists of a wood door at center flanked by polished reddish brown brick walls laid in Flemish bond. The brick, which resembled that used on the cylinder that enclosed the bathroom in Johnson's New Canaan residence of the previous year, was chosen to compliment the facade of the adjacent

inspired by Erte.