Hidden Mid-Century Gem: A 1949 House Designed by Philip Johnson by the Hudson River | House Tour

What is really interesting about this house is that it is a kind of bastard glass house. Everyone knows the glass house, but no one knows the wolf house. 1. And we also didn't know until this house was available for sale, but this house shares the same date of construction as the glass house. My name is Jeremy Parker. My name is Jiminy Ha, and we are at the Wolf House in Newberg, New York. This house was built in 1949. The architect is Philip Johnson. Philip Johnson was a prominent American architect, partly responsible for bringing this international style from Europe to the Americas and was working alongside architects like M. van der Eeuw and developing this type of style. He built a handful of residential spaces in this area throughout the Northeast before moving to a more robust postmodern period. This style is not specifically Philip Johnson's, it is like a style of a great school and theory of architecture. Definitely, Philip Johnson was a joker in certain areas, I think, and inserted his own vision and interpretation of what a space could be. In fact, we were very lucky to meet the family when they saw some online press We were looking for the family many months after we bought the house. Unfortunately, the contact was lost and we were very grateful when the grandson got in touch with us, because his grandfather was the one who grew up in the house. So, he called us and said, it's my grandfather's 70th birthday, he grew up in the house, can we take him to make a surprise? He said, of course, and besides, they said something like, we have a lot of file materials that we would love to share with you. So, when they went to the house, Michael was his name, Michael Wolfe, and his mother, W. Ruth Wolfe, whom I hired, Philip Johnson. She was a socialite from New York. Her husband, Benjamin Wolfe, was an important owner of a department store. They were Jewish. She was really the one who led the kind of hiring of Philip Johnson. When they went to the house, they also gave us digitized images never seen of the house being built. So, you can see a special appearance of Philip Johnson himself. You see the house being built from scratch. We have photos of the family, some news clippings from the department store, the external department store, of which Benjamin Wolfe, the father, was the owner of the external department store in the center of Newberg when it was thriving. So, yes, just a really amazing background story that was really missing. And when we bought the house, we went to Facebook and approached all the wolves that we couldn't find anyone and we ended up giving up. Only two years later did they contact us. We are in contact with them and they entered in contact recently because they were going to spend a season on the east coast and they wanted to share the house with some relatives. They look for us from time to time. We offer the house to them because I think it's important to keep this conversation. The decoration of the house was very different. It was like federal-style furniture. There was a piano and it's in the corner. If you look at the original Zillow ad, you'll see that it's very confusing, right? The aesthetic shock. And, the way it was shown to us, there is a reason why many people were questioning whether it was really a Philip Johnson. The house itself had three owners before us. They took liberties with the exterior of the house. So, the original project of the house hadn't been kept until the date we bought it. This really compromised the original view, the original view of the low floor of Philip Johnson. So, what Jeremy and I discussed was that we really wanted to go back to the original projects. Jeremy, having a background in architecture, found the original floors at the Library of Architecture Avery in Columbia and obtained these digitalizations. All the digitalizations had exact specifications about the type of wood, how many boards, what were the measurements of each room. So, we really didn't have to guess much. It was already set for us. And most of our work was just restoring it back to its original design. Part of the restoration and preservation process came to light when we started working in the kitchen space and embarked on this restoration. Going back to what I was saying before about preservation, about how it was very important for me to ensure that everything in this house was represented in the way it was originally planned, as it was presented in the drawings, as close as possible. So, we spent about three years working on it, removing all the exterior and putting all the new cypress. We had personalized panels with fit and tongue exactly the same as the ones represented there, opening the ventilation system. When it comes to the kitchen, people know that, but modern houses from the middle of the century are not always known for their kitchens. It was another utilitarian space. So, we thought that maybe this was an opportunity to be a little creative and insert something that was a little contemporary. We felt that, as designers, creators and artists, it was very important for us to keep this narrative open and take it to the next chapter of dialogue and the next chapter of conversation about what it means to design a space or live in a space. And the kitchen was really exciting because we made a partnership with USM Modular, a Swiss company, in the system that was designed by Fritz Rohler in 1961. It is a truly modular system, designed to live and move with you throughout life. And I think this is such a beautiful approach for me, who work with architecture, and Jimine, who work with design, bringing us together in this space. We certainly didn't want to follow in the direction of this very standardized American construction system , which uses very toxic materials that are not even soluble in water in these spaces, which eventually, after 10 years, are simply thrown away. True sustainability comes from working with structures that already exist, perhaps modifying these structures, perhaps learning and using these materials that are already there. We really need to demolish everything and build and how these challenges end up influencing the final design. Right? I think this is really a beautiful process. We rent the Wolf House on different platforms, we are also trying to actively develop an artistic and cultural programming here, where we try to partner with different art and gallery institutions, if they are interested in doing adjacent programming in the state interior. We participate in the art weekend in the state interior, we do exhibitions here, we present discussion panels. So, we are really open to anything and how we can get involved. With the community, Jimine and I met in the art space and bought this house for the first time. We bought it with the intention of activating it for events and programming related to arts. So, we are excited to partner with many different people and work with many different artists, designers and collaborators, and present new and interesting ways to experience life at home. And also if we can challenge and make people think a little differently about how they can approach the construction of a kitchen or a bathroom, then I feel like we did our job. We would like to open the idea of ​​residences, but we are also super flexible and open to any proposals. So, we always ask people who are creators, artists or performers to look for us if they have ideas, because I think it's just about opening up space for these people and allowing these experiences to happen. It was like this that the house was when I was about 5 or 6 years old. My father was a practical man, my mother was a visionary. It is a Jewish family. He opened the Externe store in Newburgh, New York, an important store. This family was an important Jewish family in the community. So, anyone who came here would know that Benjamin, Victor, Wolf and Ruth Samuels were of Jewish descent. And if they knew that Philip Johnson, who they hired after the war, had Nazi beliefs before the war, they would never have hired him. But, obviously, they didn't know and, obviously, he knew who they were. And the fact that he wanted to order something that he thought would be a work of art for people who were Jewish says something about his own personal reform. They never want to leave me.