When I was twelve and living in Canada, my brother and my stepfather and I would Three Musketeers ourselves to the Edmonton Public Library every weekend that we spent together. We’d split off–David to the epic children’s books, my stepfather to the philosophy section, me to either the most salacious-sounding YA I could find (thank you, R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike), or to hide among the stacks of Cold War sci-fi–and reconvene three hours later at the checkout desk, armloads of books in tow. We loved the library - it’s hard to find things to do in a city that tends in winter towards thirty below (Celsius, without wind chill) - but as much as we went together, we tended to stick to what each of us knew.

Until, one day, Papa brought a modern architecture book home. I wish I could remember what it was or who published it, but all I remember is that it had Philip Johnson’s Glass House on the cover. And that I was in love. This was even better than Mary Gilliatt’s The Decorating Book, a volume I’d read cover to cover and back again, over and over, its advice on how to decorate everything from an octagonal dark kitchen-in a shabby chic style!-to a sunken living room-with a modern look!-and then the endless lists and illustrations of doorknobs in the back striking to some very core of my still-forming soul. Even better than microscopic people protecting their diabetic brothers’ blood streams from errant and injected air bubbles.

I used to draw plans of my room, move furniture around in the middle of the night, obsess over my future door handles. I didn’t put it together that this was because I loved architecture until I saw that glass house on the cover of that library book and realized that there were others who loved buildings as much as I did, possibly even more, and that they–shock of all shocks–actually designed them. That there were people behind these structures that graced my mostly graceless urban cityscape was something that had never occurred to me. Now, imagining this person–Philip Johnson, as mysterious a figure then as he is to me now–drawing and then building this house out of glass sparked what became a total obsession.

The Glass House was my gateway drug. It led me to Mies van der Rohe’s Illinois Farnsworth, then to a Richard Meier monograph, the Douglas and Smith houses seared into my visual cortex, the Islip courthouse a particular favorite. The Glass House was the mouth of a funnel of experience and search that led me to architecture school and then to write about architecture once I accepted the grave fact of my utter ineptitude as a designer. And the Glass House always stayed with me; it was the token in my pocket, the secret love in my brain, the reason I pushed myself through three semesters of painful studio, bullishly trying to stick with this practice even if it didn’t want to stick with me.

The only thing was, I’d never seen it.

And so, when my friends Yen Ha and Michi Yanagishita of Front Studio (and Lunch Studio) in New York posted on Facebook (of course) that they had an extra ticket to an upcoming Glass House tour, I jumped on their comments. I wanted to go, I said. Would they take me? I’d written first; they had to say yes.

We drove up, four of us (Yen’s husband came too) in a car, arrived in New Canaan, got Velveeta mac and cheese at the deli, sat outside the Starbucks, and waited until it was time to meet our official tour. We met at the visitors’ center, joined up with the rest of our group-to whom we had to awkwardly, painfully introduce ourselves and explain why we were there (how do you express the ineffable in a few cute introductions?)-and drove in an anodyne van through winding Connecticut countryside, pulling in through a stylized gate, two big plinths with a single beam that was raised and lowered through a simple pulley system. Johnson’s latest building was to the left, a postmodern almost-Gehry-esque collection of curves and shapes, but we deflected right, parked, and walked down another winding path. Past a circular Donald Judd concrete sculpture–mistake intact and rendered intentional–and there, just past the trees, I saw the familiar shape. It’s entirely possible we saw something else; I was so fixated I honestly can’t remember.

It was so familiar that I couldn’t process it. We made an angular approach, past the Glass House’s brick partner (the sex den to the Glass’ aerie of aesthetics, I’d heard), on a gravel path distinctly bounded from its neighboring grass with raised borders, like a frame. We were meant to approach on a diagonal, our tour guide said; that was part of the point of the design. And so we approached, and then straightened out at the last minute to face up against the Glass House, this house that had lurked and lived at the back of my brain, the simple rectangular box that had inspired me so many late nights when Paul Oakenfold on repeat just couldn’t compete with the horror of yet another 24 hours virtually bending toruses on our academic 3dmax version, and then I stepped through the threshold.

It was still so familiar I couldn’t process it. The circular brick-covered bathroom to the right the only non-transparent part of the house, the little pavilion of Barcelona chairs and the painting, not framed but on a stand. You’ve seen the picture a million times. And if you haven’t, just google “Glass House.” You’ll see it. I stood there looking at the ceiling and at the impossibly flat floor, rigidly supported by a pad underneath with just a crawlspace between floor and ground, and then I went over to the kitchen, just an L-shaped series of wood cabinets really, so much smaller than any kitchen you’d ever see now and perfectly compact. And then on the other side–if this box can be said to have sides–I  walked past the row of closets to the far end, to where his bed was. The bed that Philip Johnson died in, overlooking this rolling New Canaan landscape.

When you finally see something you’ve loved for years, it’s hard to understand exactly what you’re looking at. By that point, its representation has been so thoroughly mediated–both literally, by pictures, and metaphorically, by your own expectations–that it’s sort of like meeting up with your high school crush years after you first met and almost as many years since you last saw each other. You’ve had an entirely one-sided relationship with this person–with this house, in my case–and all of a sudden you’re faced with reality. The ceiling had some discoloration–since preservation-focused renovation, our National Trust guide was quick to point out–and the frame was wood, not steel as I’d imagined. I had to accept that I couldn’t accept anything about the reality of this house, that I had loved it for fourteen years in my imagination and would continue to love it in my mind. It’s not as if the reality doesn’t measure up; it’s that there’s just no room for it.

I refuse to be critical about the Glass House. I can’t be. I wish that I could step back, could look at it and say something about the angle of the light or the framing of the stone around it, that I could say something quick and curt like “Well, it’s nice, but this is no time for modernism,” but I can’t. I am powerless over the Glass House. And, as much as I die for the Glass House, kill for the Glass House, need the Glass House to exist so that I know why I do what I do, I don’t know if I can stand to go again.

Glass House Photo by Diametrik

Islip County Courthouse Photo by Diacritical