Tuesday, January 24, 2012

WHAT: The Guest House, 242 East 52 Street, by Phillip Johnson, 1950



“This sophisticated town house, remodeled from an old stable, retains little of its original structure except for party walls.  Actually, it is a new and completely contemporary building – a handsome, unconventional house designed within the limitations of the conventional city lot.  The exterior façade is formal and closed, the symmetrical arrangement of its structural elements handled with a classic, geometric simplicity.  Unlike earlier modern houses… which were instantly radical, cubistic compositions in stark white stucco, the materials of this house – brick, glass and exposed steel – are familiar and urban.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.
Image via David Cobb Craig.

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