4:30 - 4:45pm - Shuttle returns visitors to the visitor center. 

The Glass House, built between 1949 and 1995 by architect Philip Johnson, is a National Trust Historic Site located in New Canaan, Connecticut. The pastoral 49-acre landscape comprises fourteen structures, including the Glass House (1949), and features a permanent collection of 20th-century painting and sculpture, along with temporary exhibitions.

The Eliot Noyes House is the one of the very best houses of the Modern era. It is seminal, incorporating the principles of Modernism interpreted with Noyes' unique touch of understated elegance. To this day the house is highly provocative--even controversial. Noyes, making a statement about organizational clarity, divided public and private areas in separate enclosures– with no internal connection.

The house melds seamlessly with its surrounding landscape. Long unbroken stone facades mimic typical New England stonewalls. And the open courtyard brings nature into the center of the house. Natural materials—just a few, stone, wood and glass--give the house its tactile quality. The juxtaposition of the heavy stonewalls to the transparent glass walls emphatically contrasts the solidity of the first with the fragility of the latter.

The house is historic with references to Greek, Roman and Chinese courtyards. Yet it is sublime, specifically designed to accommodate the turmoil of everyday family life. Few buildings touch so many bases so clearly in so direct a structure. Simplicity and a rigorous adherence to design principles – Eliot Noyes’s trademarks– are both evident here.