Philip Johnson’s Brick House and Its Hidden Boudoir, Exposed
Christopher Hawthorne www.nytimes.com christopher-hawthorne
The Glass House in Connecticut has its 75th anniversary, followed by the reopening of its long-mute twin, “warmer and toastier and sexier.”
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Diptych, dyad, dialectic: The relationship between the first pair of buildings Philip Johnson designed for his estate in New Canaan, Conn., has taxed the metaphorical imaginations of critics and architectural historians since the structures were completed, just months apart, in 1949.

On one side, the Glass House, transparent and entirely self-possessed, a work of modernist daring framed in steel and inspired, as Johnson was only too happy to admit, by the designs of his hero, the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. On the other, the Brick House, sometimes called the Guest House, hiding behind its inscrutable exterior the bedroom Johnson called his “sex room,” as well as the mechanical equipment serving its more glamorous relative 105 feet away.