The Glass House, that one-room marvel of the International Style, rests serenely on its grassy slope here, behind a six-foot wall of boulders, while controversy–yet again–swirls around it.
The tiny house was built on Ponus Ridge Road almost 50 years ago, designed by its owner, Philip Johnson, lauded by most critics and denounced by a few neighbors.
Over time, the architect gathered up acreage and built a spate of accessory buildings, an assemblage Johnson, 92, has deeded to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Now the Glass House has been swept up by a tempest in a parking lot. There is no place to park, an increasing problem for many of the country’s historic sites. And with this particular parking problem, the trust walked into something it could have never predicted: a kind of a bi-state Freudian feud.
The house, where Johnson still lives, will be open to tours this fall, by invitation only. But first the trust must find somewhere for the visitors to park.
The trust, the architect and the Town of New Canaan agree that there’s no place for tourist parking on the Glass House property, and the town won’t allow it along winding Ponus Ridge Road, home to a string of million-dollar estates.
Last year, the trust withdrew a plan for a parking lot in the heart of New Canaan, near the train station; Daniel Foley, the town’s planner, says the trust “ran into a buzz saw with the neighbors.”
But in neighboring Pound Ridge, N.Y., only four miles away, the trust found a site that seemed ideal: a burned-out beauty shop on three acres on a commercial street with 15 empty storefronts. It planned to build the parking lot first, followed by a peaked-roof stone visitors’ center that will be built after Johnson’s death, with a bequest from the architect.
The trust was not prepared for the fury that greeted its proposal at a public hearing on June 25 and continues to ripple throughout the town.
“Why don’t you tell that illustrious architect to design a visitor’s center for his own property–and not inflict the buses and the traffic and the pollution on the people of Pound Ridge,” said Helen Mayrbaurl, who has lived on the road near the proposed parking lot since 1962. “They should put it in their own state.”
One of the sticking points was the trust plan to build the 39-spot parking lot first, reserving the construction of the visitor’s center until after Johnson’s death. Residents worried that the trust might never build the center and they’d be stuck with the parking lot–or that New Canaanities would change their minds and want it back.
To the Pound Ridgers it was a classic case of the bigger town–New Canaan, with triple the people, 30 percent more median income and double the shops–dumping on the smaller town, Pound Ridge, with its 5,000 residents.
The feelings of anger were occasionally tinged with a kind of envy.
Mary Lee, a photographer, said she thought it was a case of New Canaan’s looking down on the neighboring New Yorkers. Others said New Canaan was “dumping” the “bus depot” on Pound Ridge.
“New Canaan has all the posh shops, plus they’ve got the Gap, the CVS, the nice jewelry stores,” said Tina Rohrer, who lives near the Pound Ridge site and vehemently opposes the proposed visitor’s center and parking lot.
While some of the town’s business owners argue that the proposed National Trust visitor’s center would help the local shops, Rohrer pointed out that the site was on the edge of Pound Ridge’s shopping area, and not connected by a sidewalk. She argued that visitors would drive to New Canaan–where they had more variety–to shop.
The trust disagrees.
“Why would they do that?” said Susanne Pandich, who is directing the trust’s opening of of the Glass House museum. “They start in Pound Ridge. They come back to Pound Ridge. They won’t even see the center of New Canaan.”
In response to the community uproar, Pandich said the visitor’s center would stay open from November to March, when the Glass House is closed to the public. During that time, she said, the trust would put on exhibitions and lectures, which would draw people from surrounding towns.
Even the most vociferous opponents of the parking lot concede that Pound Ridge could use some business.
Pound Ridge’s Pharmacy moved out about a year ago, and the windows are still stickered with advertising signs for sale items. There are several vacant shopfronts on the main street.
New Canaan also has the tony antiques and flower shops, but Pound Ridge residents proudly point to two draws: a popular hardware store named Chubby’s, and DiNardo’s pizza restaurant, universally cited as the town’s best-known business.
Letters protesting the plan are piling up on the Pound Ridge supervisor’s desk. And at the public hearing in June, attended by about 50 townspeople, Pound Ridge’s attorney made his position clear: there would be no parking lot without a visitor’s center.
Parking at historic houses is increasingly being debated, according to preservationists and bureaucrats, and they say there’s no easy solution.
At the Frank Lloyd Wright House and Studio in Oak Park, Ill., where 73,553 sightseers traipsed through last year, parking is on the streets.
“We work very closely with the local community in terms of keeping the residents happy,” said William A. Dupont, the trust’s architect. At Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate in Tarrytown, N.Y., and at Monticello, in Charlottesville, Va., visitors are driven up to the houses in minivans like the ones proposed for the Glass House.
At the Glass House, admission will be limited to three or four tours a year–“200 or 300 people”–invited by Johnson or by the trust, and approved by the architect.
This fall, for example, the trust is opening the house to a group of its “upper-end donors” and last year, there was a tour arranged with the Museum of Modern Art.
