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Restoring an Icon of the International Style.

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Restoring an Icon of the International Style

By Patrick O'Toole

The preservation of a 60-year-old icon of modernism offers insight into the process and meticulousness of a true historic restoration

Three years before the Farnsworth House was built, its drawings and a model were the centerpiece of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. On display at MoMA in 1947, the model inspired a then youthful architect, Philip Johnson, to design and build his now famous "glass house" in Connecticut. But the Farnsworth House, intended as a weekend retreat for a Chicago internist, Dr. Edith Farnsworth, was and is the genuine article -- a seminal work of architecture designed (and built) by a towering figure of 20th century architecture, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Now a museum, it is owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and managed by the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois, which took control of the building in a Sotheby's auction in 2003 for $7.5 million. In the custody of true preservationists, every piece of the building -- which is so simple looking as to leave an observer wondering how difficult it would be to preserve a structure that is mostly glass, steel and marble -- has been analyzed with an eye toward building a long-term schedule of restoration and preservation.

Whitney French, who manages the site for the Landmarks Preservation Council, says the schedule includes a complete rebuilding of the distinctive travertine marble decks, which are composed of several layers of gravel and porous vermiculite sandwiched between the tiles and a frame of precast concrete and steel. At issue, drains located underneath the outdoor decks have long since corroded and have become clogged. Basically, the decks need to be taken apart and rebuilt.

Other parts and systems of the home are also slated for various...

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