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| From Hearth To Heritage |
From Eyesore To Icon
Patricia Eakins
10/01/2005
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in Plano, Ill., is an example of
how owners, preservationists and the community at large can collaborate to save
an architectural marvel from oblivion.
Mies designed the home as a weekend
retreat for physician Edith Farnsworth. She later sued
him—unsuccessfully—because she hated the completed house when it was unveiled in
1951. After making revisions to Mies’s plan to make it more livable—changes that
still make design purists shudder, such as screens to thwart
mosquitoes—Farnsworth kept the house. She sold it to Peter Palumbo in 1968. He
coddled Farnsworth House, even hiring the firm of Mies’s grandson, Dirk Lohan,
to restore the home to its original 1951 appearance.
In 2003, health
concerns forced Palumbo to put Farnsworth House on the auction block. Fearing it
would go to a private developer, the National Trust for Historic Preservation
and the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois announced a joint campaign to
save the structure. Each put up $1 million in seed money, and some 350 people
contributed funds, some as little as a few dollars. This alliance was able to
place the winning bid: $7.5 million. Today an organization called Friends of the
Farnsworth House, which helped create the endowment, runs the building as a
museum.
The small steel-and-glass structure, located along the Fox River west
of Chicago, is considered a Modernist masterpiece, but the residence and the
land on which is sits devour an annual maintenance fund of approximately 4
percent of its $5 million endowment. The expenses cover the staff, parking lot,
insurance and other costs to accommodate 50,000 visitors a year. Admission is
$20 per person.  Back
to main article: From Hearth to Heritage
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