Visiting the Glass House, Part 1

So far I've put up a couple of posts about our trip up to Connecticut a couple of weekends ago - I still have a few to go, starting with today's post about the portion of our trip up to CT.  Mary arranged it with the goal of joining some of her college classmates for a tour of the National Historic Trust's Glass House, designed by architect Phillip Johnson.  And so, the trip up from DC had us arriving finally in New Canaan, where the house is located.

We had a great hotel stay, and spent Friday evening visiting with friends over dinner.  The plan for Saturday was to meet up at a cafe in town, and then walk over to welcome center for the tour.

Mary has a few classmates that live in the DC area, and one of them was with the group at breakfast.  We spent some time catching up - she'd been on a few trips recently, and her husband was just getting ready to depart for two weeks in India.

The welcome center was typical of what you might expect - plenty of books to peruse, some pretty wonderful design objects - including the George Nelson clock I took a photo of here.  Soon our tour guide joined us for an overview of what we could expect on the tour.

There was a wall of small video screens continuously running clips behind where she spoke - and she would refer to the clips from time to time.  They showed some of the "follies" that Johnson had built on the property, as well as an image of a party or two, and then, a fascinating clip of a person flipping through Johnson's rolodex.

As I watched that, the anachronism wasn't lost on me...I remember changing jobs a couple of times during the late 1980's and early 1990's, making sure that the rolodex made it into the little box I packed as I departed.  Of course, Johnson's file included a card for Andy Warhol, and then surprisingly, David Childs, whom I mentioned the other day in the post about the new World Trade Center building - he was the architect for the new tower.

At last it was time for our tour to begin, so our guide concluded the overview and we headed out to the vans for the short drive over to the property.  It was a beautiful fall day - sunny, crisp, and blazing fall colors on the trees, just past their peak.