Joseph Irwin and Xenia Simons Miller.

Conversation Center, 3 January 1995, FF68, Miller House and Garden Collection.

So, the original materials are no longer present in the cushions, yet the cushions are authentic — I’ll return to this riddle in a bit. In early December I had the opportunity to have a rousing debate on the topic with one of my favorite colleagues, Joelle Wickens, the result of which was captured and presented in Glasgow, Scotland.

At the Getty funded conference, “The Real Thing? The Value of Authenticity and Replication for Investigation and Conservation,” Joelle and I compared the current state of the conversation pit at the Miller House to the conservation recommendations made by Joelle for the Globe chair, which was designed by Eero Aarnio in 1963 and is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V & A) collection. Ultimately, at the IMA it was decided that the current iteration of the conversation pit is the authentic moment to be preserved, whereas at the V & A it was recommended that the original profile and materials of the Globe were authentic and thus should be preserved. So how do museums arrive at these decisions? It comes down to context.

Museums establish context, or the interrelated conditions in which something exists, through referencing an institutional mission statement, a strategic plan, or a curatorial interpretation. In the case of the Miller House, the entire history of the property is the context in which the conversation pit is interpreted. The story the IMA wishes to preserve is the evolution of the interior of the home and the ongoing collaboration between the Miller family, artists, designers, and contractors. This story unfolds in the current condition of the house, where evidence of use remains and also within the rich holdings of the Miller House Archives.

Mock-up of the conversation pit cushions and fabric, 1995, 8/67, Miller House and Garden Collection.

Authenticity is dependent upon context. In the case of the conversation pit, the current condition shows evidence of use and function and is the true character that is being preserved. Yes, the original materials are not present, and yes, the profile of the cushions is not original, however, these are the facts that support the current context at the Miller House. The concept of authenticity is one of the core factors that drives the decisions made in conservation. At the Miller House, conservators focus primarily on preventive conservation or collections care. Moreover, there are no current plans to alter or restore the cushions, which were modified in 1995 to their 1953 profile. The house was and continues to be a dynamic space. Conservators, curators and registrars rotate the pillows and carpet in the conversation pit seasonally.

Winter rotation at the Miller House and Garden.

I have talked little about Joelle’s fascinating PhD research on the Globe chair; fortunately she has presented widely and published her research, including The Future of the 20^th Century: Collecting, Interpreting and Conserving Modern Materials.

I would like to thank the IMA Research Travel Fund and Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library for financial support that made my participation in the Glasgow conference possible.

If you want to know more about where I found these incredible historical images, be sure to check out the IMA Archives — this is just the tip of a gorgeous iceberg!

The importance of the Miller House and Garden to Modern design in the United States is clear: the house, named a National Historic Landmark in 2000, has been described as a paragon of mid-century modern residential design and its garden is considered to be among the most important Modern designs in American residential landscape architecture. And just as the Miller House and Garden is not your average residence, the Miller House and Garden Collection (MHGC) is not your average architectural archive.

What distinguishes the MHGC from other architectural collections? That’s easy. Size, multiple perspectives, time span, and types of materials.

How Big is Big?

For a collection about one house, the Miller House and Garden Collection is big. Very big.

View of Miller House and Garden Collection boxes.

Archival collections are often described in linear feet, but describing this collection as 333.5 linear feet means little to most people. Nor is it easy to picture 23,000 records. To break it down by other numbers – 51 boxes of files, photographs, samples, and drawings; 2 card file boxes; 12 oversize flat boxes of photographs and material samples; and 40 flat files of architectural plans – may provide a slightly better picture. As may analogies like this: if the records were laid out end to end they could lap the Indianapolis Motor Speedway twice or stretch the length a football field 88 times!

But what makes it so big is less about its physical size and more about its content – 50+ years of documentation representing hundreds of voices.

The Clients, the Architects, the Landscape Architect, the Contractor

A remarkable feature of the MHGC is the number of voices you hear: the clients, the architects, the landscape architect, contractor, suppliers, and engineers. Generally architectural collections present just the perspective of the architect. Sometimes papers from the client survive. Yet not in a single collection.

Correspondence in the Miller House and Garden Collection.

Over 50 Years of Documentation

While architectural collections typically document just the design and construction phases of a building (from the architect’s perspective), the MHGC contains correspondence from 1953 through 2008, documenting not only the design and construction of the House and Garden but also their maintenance.

Among the earliest correspondence are the letters J. Irwin Miller wrote on May 25, 1953 to Eero Saarinen and Alexander Girard, informing them that he and Xenia purchased land and wanted to begin preliminary planning for their house. Among the last correspondence is a letter from December 14, 2007 to Wes Kavanagh of Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates seeking input about fabric to recover chairs.

J. Irwin Miller to Eero Saarinen, 25 May 1953, 1/2, Miller House and Garden Collection.

Sheila Behrman to Wes Kavanagh, 14 December 2007, 11/109, Miller House and Garden Collection.

The architectural firm of Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates was the successor to Eero Saarinen and Associates after Saarinen’s death in 1961. Kevin Roche, who had been involved in the house’s design and had overseen its construction, was consulted regularly over the fifty years the Millers lived in the house. The projects he and his firm worked on at the Miller House ranged from large projects such as redesigning the Guest Wing to small tasks such as selecting fabric to recover chairs.

Drawings, Photographs, Textiles, and Chair Glides 

Architectural archives are generally rich with original drawings and photographs, but seldom contain material samples, such as textiles, marble, glass tile, wood, carpet pads, and chair glides.

A selection of material samples: carpet pad samples (90/44), chair glides (88/28), ADT security sensor (88/34), cherry wood wall paneling (88/35), swimming pool cover samples (95/110), exterior glass panel (95/104), exterior terrazzo (95/111), wood from Living Room firewood box (89/39), pebbles from Lake Champlain (95/106), and roof sample (95/108), Miller House and Garden Collection.

The MHGC contains more than 1,500 architectural drawings (originals and reprographic copies), including a complete set of 1955  blueprints from Eero Saarinen’s office and 1950s blueline prints of Dan Kiley’s plans for the landscape.

Also in the collection are drawings by Alexander Girard for items designed for the Millers including the den rug and brass candleholders.

Graphite and colored pencil drawing of brass candle holder by Alexander Girard, 21 June 1963, 5/52, Miller House and Garden Collection.

Among the 900+ photographs in the collection are some by prominent architectural photographers including Balthazar Korab who worked in Saarinen’s office while the house was being designed and built. Many of those photographs are now iconic. But there are some photographs not seen before like those of the house under construction and of magnolia trees selected by Dan Kiley.

Photographs of Master Bedroom Wing under construction (with notes by Larry D. Hoffman), 24 August 1956, 1/3, Miller House and Garden Collection.

The MHGC also has an array of material samples from when the house was designed to the final years the Millers occupied it. For the house’s original design, Alexander Girard selected fabrics for covering the pillows in the conversation pit, for upholstering chairs and sofas, and for making curtains throughout the house. The Millers continued to consult Girard for more than two decades after they moved into the house, and Girard continued to forward samples to them.

Textile samples for conversation pit pillows, 1955, 83, 93/87, 94/98, Miller House and Garden Collection.

From the material samples, it’s possible to see what Girard selected for the house’s original design and what was introduced later. The written documentation that accompanies the material samples sometimes includes Mrs. Miller’s comments about texture or color, giving insight into her own design choices.

It is difficult to convey the richness of the Miller House and Garden Collection in a blog post. That’s one reason for making selected materials available on the project’s Tumblr page until the project is completed in spring of 2014 when the entire Collection will be available online.

Typically at this time of year, I am planning April and May photography dates for our historic grounds and gardens, 100 Acres Art and Nature Park, and the Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Indiana.

The absence of any substantial winter weather in the state, combined with spring temperatures ten to twelve degrees higher for the month of March, has produced an accelerated blooming and photography season.

The transition to daylight savings time on the 11^th, in conjunction with the vernal equinox on the 20^th, and summer like heat of the past two weeks, has created a perfect storm of urgency for photographers.

The most pressing concern was the quick budding and blooming of our lovely magnolias on the east and south locations of the Miller House. A missed blooming season, albeit a short one, means waiting another year to capture these lovelies at their peak and the threat of a cold front or good spring rainstorm made my decision an easy one. April be damned, I’m all in.

Timing, patience, and good light are everything in photography, and my early morning visit to Columbus this week provided another uniquely pleasant experience to photograph a visually diverse residence, inside and out.

Each visit is more compelling and interesting than the previous and I can’t help but imagine how wonderful it must have been to live and flourish as children in these spaces.

These images of the magnolia blooms were captured on the first day of Spring. The Miller House and Garden is now open for tours, so get down there and experience this all-too-fleeting moment for yourself.

Doris Day and Rock Hudson – perhaps the most glamorous of mid-century pillow talkers.

Well not exactly pillow talk, you know, that is, not talk over a pillow or in the midst of pillows or under the pillows.  Rather, let’s talk about pillows, which pillows, how many pillows, what color of pillows…  It’s about pillows in the Miller House conversation pit, and what to do about changing them for the season as winter relents.

The interiors of the Miller House have a lot of eye-catching elements, to be sure, but the biggest crowd pleaser has got to be the conversation pit, a 15-foot-square, 2 ½ -foot-deep exercise in below-floor-level decorative decadence.  It’s been touted as the very first conversation pit, but that’s a pretty difficult statement to verify.  There are certainly plenty of antecedents, as well as related interior features in houses of the ‘40s and ‘50s.  Houses of the Victorian and Arts and Crafts eras had inglenooks and similar areas of built-in seating.  And it’s not hard to find mid-century houses that featured floor level changes that also incorporated seating.  Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames created such designs for the Case Study Houses in California in the 1940s.  Whether the Miller House conversation pit is indeed the first is something of an exercise in architectural hair-splitting, but if anyone knows of an earlier pit of the same completely enclosed configuration, we’d love to hear about it.

Interior, Case Study House #9.

The “pit” in the Case Study House above shapes the spatial flow of the interior – down to the embrace of the fireplace and outward at the same level to the landscape beyond.   With interior designer Alexander Girard in the mix at the Miller House, the pit concept does something different.  Functionally, it achieves the goal of providing significant seating without the clusters of furniture that Saarinen so detested.  Being below the floor level, it provided nothing to impede the view to the west through the allée of honey locust trees.  By enclosing the pit on all four sides, with entry by means of a short flight of seemingly-floating padouk wood steps, Girard made the pit into a huge, discrete decorative object that balances the 50-foot storage wall and the marble-topped dining table.  It shouts for the viewer’s attention, rewards it with a lush display of textiles, and offers the novelty of looking down to something other than the floor.

Your view from the Miller House conversation pit.

After this (purposeful) digression, we will return to the subject at hand: pillows.  From what we know of Mrs. Miller’s wishes, the house needed such an object.  She was interested in a means for decorative variety and change in an interior dominated by marble, travertine, plaster, and steel.  The conversation pit served this function.  Though constructed of Aurisina marble, the pit demanded seat and back cushions for comfort, all with slip covers.  And loose pillows – lots of them.  All these, as well as the rug on the pit floor, were changed seasonally to refresh the room’s appearance.

We are just embarking on changing the pillows for the first time.  Since the IMA acquired the house in 2009, the conversation pit has been wearing its winter garb of richly-colored pillows, many of them covered in woolen fabrics.  The summer scheme, carefully worked out in the original plan by Girard, employed fabrics lighter in both color and texture, many of them the striped Mexican cottons (Mexicottons) that he designed.

Drawing from cross-cultural inspirations, Girard designed fabrics with innovative color combinations.  Many of the Mexicotton pillowcases at the Miller House share a simple plain-weave structure and a cotton composition, but the placement of color separates each fabric as a unique and innovative design element.  Stripes were created by alternating colors of custom-dyed yarn as opposed to printing designs on the fabrics.  Below is only a small sampling of Girard’s many Mexicottons, which will soon be on display.  Below are details of two of the pillowcases created out of Mexicotton Stripe fabric.  The contrasting piping around the edge of each pillowcase is created out of Mexicotton Plain fabric:

For centuries, home furnishing fabrics have been changed with the seasons, which not only refreshed the room, but also contributed to the preservation of the color and appearance of some of the most significant, expensive, and vulnerable items that a family might own.  While conservation might not have been foremost in the thoughts of homeowners through the years, it is something we take very seriously at the IMA.  The seasonal rotation of the pillows at the Miller House allows us to realize two goals concurrently: it is in keeping with what Mrs. Miller originally intended and it will allow textile conservators an opportunity to assess the condition and needs of each unique pillow.

Before redressing the conversation pit in its vernal wardrobe, the curator and conservators teamed up and went to the Miller House to further discuss and implement the seasonal rotation.  The spring/ summer pillows were carefully removed from storage and placed on plastic close to the current display.  This facilitated curatorial decisions, such as which pillows, how many, and general placement.  While not yet in the conversation pit, the shifting palette of pillows from mulled wine to citrus spritzers can be observed easily.  And that red carpet on the floor of the conversation pit will be rotated out as well – but you’ll have to visit the Miller House to see the dramatic difference…

The conversation pit as it is currently installed, juxtaposed with the upcoming seasonal color scheme.

So, how does a seasonal rotation of pillows help preserve them for future generations?  Or more importantly – what happens to a pillow when it is not on display?  Once a textile is removed from display the conservators assess the current condition and address any need that the textile may have.  All of the textiles receive a gentle vacuuming as to not return them to storage with any dirt or dust that might have accumulated during display.  Each is then carefully packed and placed in a storage environment with stable temperature and relative humidity and away from light.  Protection from light is crucial in the preservation of textiles.

The Miller House is striking with its glass walls and skylight system; however, when textiles are struck by light some fabrics will fade (depending on the dyes used, type of light, and cumulative light exposure).  This orange pillow is slated for its public debut in the conversation pit.  When the side opening is gently pulled back one can observe that it has already faded from an electric orange to a humbler shade.  By rotating the pillows seasonally and placing them in dark storage for the time they are off view, we hope to extend the lush display of textiles in the conversation pit for years to come.

On the top is a detail of the inside of a pillowcase; below is the exterior of the same pillow case after years of light exposure:

Schedule a visit and be sure to experience the Miller House pillows for each season!

Holiday ornamentation at the Miller House will be minimal this year, partly due to the greatly reduced winter tour schedule, but also because the Miller House team is still inventorying the objects in the house and developing the program for collections rotation.

Nevertheless, visitors who have an affinity for Italian glass or crèche scenes will be pleased. Some of the pieces that were chosen to be on display at the Miller House this holiday season include two nativity scenes from Mrs. Miller’s extensive collection from around the world, and several small Murano glass Christmas trees.

An early 19th-century Ecuadorian crèche scene, displayed on the storage wall in a lighted enclosure designed by Alexander Girard, the talent behind the interior design of the home.

A Greek pottery crèche scene on the baker’s table in the main living area.

Several Murano glass Christmas trees in the living room and conversation pit.

A small enameled copper dish was discovered when conducting an inventory of the Miller House barn this past fall.

With the change of the seasons, we also decided to change some other elements of the interior that will remain on display well after the holidays are over.

Visitors can now see a new setting on the dining room table, which includes Alexander Girard’s “Carolus Magnus” dinner plates designed for Georg Jensen (adaptations are available for purchase at the IMA’s Museum Store), a set of colorful Venini drinking glasses designed by Gio Ponti, and Steuben glass candlesticks designed by Don Pollard. I particularly love how the playful designs on the plates complement the design on the rug!

Another newly displayed object  is a white Marco vase, designed by Sergio Asti for Salviati, which nicely accents the children’s play room.

In Mr. Miller’s handsome mid-century office, three Venini vases demonstrate the “incalmo” technique of glassmaking. Incalmo means graft, and is used in glassmaking to describe the seamless fusing together of two different pieces of glass by an expert glassmaker.

A tri-colored “doppio incalmo” tapering vase, designed by Fulvio Bianconi, around 1960.

Two mauve incalmo vases, designed by Ludovico Diaz de Santillana around 1968.

As we continue to inventory objects in the collection, we hope to discover more pieces to display in future holiday seasons. (We are still looking for the perfect pink aluminum Christmas tree!)  What is your favorite item of holiday decoration?

Be sure to visit the Miller House soon to see these beautiful pieces on display!

Alexander Girard, Interior plan (detail), Miller House and Garden papers, IMA Archives.

The opening of Miller House and Garden has been wildly successful, with sold out tours for five solid months.  The home where Cummins CEO J. Irwin and Xenia Miller raised their children illustrates the masterful skills of the renowned mid-century architect Eero Saarinen.  The garden, designed by Dan Kiley, offers a lush contrast to the stark structure.  But, the explosive colors, textures and folk art inspired by interior designer Alexander Girard give this house its soul.

Girard is perhaps best known as the textile designer for Herman Miller Furniture Company from 1952 to 1973. One of the pre-eminent designers of his generation, Girard’s work has experienced a surge in popularity in the last decade.  His spirited designs now can be found on Kate Spade bags, Electra bicycles and Urban Outfitters pillows.

In Columbus, Indiana, Girard-inspired designs have never fallen out of fashion.  His influence is a testament to the friendship he shared with the Millers, especially Xenia.

If you know where to look, you’ll see his handiwork throughout the city.  Start with North Christian Church, which is full of tell tale signs of Girard’s handiwork.  The church was yet another example of a collaboration between Saarinen, Kiley and Girard (Saarinen died three years before the church was completed in 1964).

North Christian Church.

Sitting at the center of the hexagonal sanctuary is a substantial communion table, ringed by 12 seats for the church elders. Throughout the year, the cushions on these seats will transition from green to red to purple to white, in step with the liturgical calendar. This mirrors an idea Girard incorporated successfully in the Miller’s home. Cushion covers and pillows in the conversation pit were changed with the seasons, featuring pale neutrals in warm months and deep reds in winter.  The interiors of both the Miller House and North Christian Church are clean, stark and neutral.  Girard switched out the textiles to transform the interiors with the changing seasons.

Girard added additional ornamentation inside the church, with elaborate rod-iron flower stands in the main sanctuary and candelabras of similar design in the baptistery.  Also in the sanctuary, one can sometimes see a brightly-colored “Tree of Life” appliqué, designed by Girard, although the piece is showing signs of wear and is rarely on display.

Clients of the Saarinen-designed Irwin Union Bank (now operating as First Financial Bank) in downtown Columbus enjoy the collection of George Nelson desks and Saarinen chairs.  Since all the exterior walls are made of glass, there is limited wall space for art.  Two interior walls are adorned with textiles from India.  In fact, nearly-identical textiles are on display in Girard’s collection at the International Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In 1964, Girard designed a streetscape plan for the Victorian-era structures that line downtown Columbus’ Washington Street.  Working with a group of downtown business owners, he recommended a color palette of 26 colors.  According to a brochure about the project, “One of the startling aspects of the proposal and one which was of immediate appeal to young people in the community was Girard’s use of bright accent colors for decorative details and windows, with the most popular being the bright orange bay window…” Over time, 80 percent of the downtown buildings repainted in Girard’s color scheme.  Today, infill construction and redevelopment of the area has minimized the impact of Girard’s plan from decades ago.  But one downtown Columbus building is vintage Girard.

301 Washington; photo by Don Nissen.

The former offices of Irwin Management are located at 301 Washington.  Locals know the building simply as “301.”   Joseph Ireland Irwin, J. Irwin Miller’s great-grandfather, operated a dry goods store in this building.  After establishing one of the city’s early banks, he remodeled the building in 1881.  His holdings grew and through the shrewd business dealings of his son and great grandson, the family’s business holdings grew.  They included partial ownership of Cummins Engine Company, the diesel engine manufacturing company founded by W.G. Irwin and Clessie Cummins.  Even after J.I. Miller guided the company to profitability, he continued to keep his offices at 301.  In 1973, he hired Alexander Girard to renovate the structure.  The building was recently sold to Cummins Inc. for offices and training space.  However, plans are in the works to open the reception area and Miller’s office, with the original furnishings, for public tours in the spring of 2012.

When thinking about glass houses, the first that leaps to mind of course is Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut – a shimmering glass pavilion without curtains or window coverings of any kind – a bold statement indeed.  But having no curtains did not mean that Johnson wished always to live in a fishbowl.  For those moments when even he desired privacy, Johnson retreated to the Brick House, a nearly windowless structure just steps away.

The more ordinary homes built for those of us with less-than-Johnsonian daring must accommodate our desire to have both light and views, as well as enclosure and privacy, depending on the hour of the day or whether one wishes to move about the house en déshabillé.  The Miller House was planned as a fully functioning family home, making privacy and control of light levels at the windows components of the program that architect Eero Saarinen had to accommodate.  One of the most memorable experiences that the house provides is impact of the views of the landscape and gardens through broad expanses of ceiling-height windows.

These, as well as smaller windows all required curtains.  In addition, two interior spaces, the den and the dining room, could be closed off from the main living area with curtains.

All the exterior windows have two layers of curtains – a semi-transparent “glass curtain” immediately adjacent to the window, and a denser curtain just inside.  In the bedrooms, the inner curtains are heavily lined and opaque so that the rooms can be darkened effectively for more comfortable sleep.  In the living areas, the inner curtains are denser than the glass curtains but have an open weave that further filters light without blocking it.  In the original scheme, the light filtering curtains were of textiles designed by Jack Lenor Larsen, while the bedrooms featured inner curtains designed by Alexander Girard.  The children’s rooms, for example, made use of his “Quatrefoil” design in several colorways.

The curtains on the smaller windows operate manually by means of cords and pulleys – quite straightforward.  At some point in the process of designing the house, someone – perhaps one of the Millers, perhaps Saarinen – decided that for ease, convenience, or drama some of the curtains should be motorized.  The curtains on the west side of the main living area, the longest expanse of glass in the house looking out to the most important landscape view, were among those chosen for motorization.  Here the motors help with the task of moving the heaviest and longest curtains.  The curtains in the master bedroom are also motorized, with the control switches located on the headboard of the bed.  What luxury to be able to open the view to the Dan Kiley landscape before one’s feet have even hit the floor!

Today, such systems integrate the drive motor with the traverse mechanism within the curtain track in a single proprietary package, such as those manufactured by Somfy.  The drive shaft of such a motor directly engages a belt inside the overhead track to move the curtain.  The motors are small and easily hidden by the draperies they control.  Simple, elegant, and easy.

In the 1950s, it was a little more complicated.  The integrated systems, it seems, were yet-to-be-designed things of the future and Saarinen’s office had to decide which components to select to build the motorized system they desired.  Correspondence suggests that they had worked on similar problems before, and rather than shop around or put the system out to bid, wished to use motors manufactured by the Draw-Matic corporation of Michigan because they had been less troublesome than others.  The tracks and traverse hardware appear to have come from Kirsch.  By all accounts, the motorized curtains in the Miller House were never trouble-free and required a fair bit of repairing and adjusting throughout the years.  The drive pulleys tended to be a particular problem – with wear they lost traction on the curtain cord and failed to move it.

Problematic though they might have been, the Millers retained the Draw-Matic motors through all the years they lived in the house.  The state of the art changed, but the Millers’ curtain system remained stubbornly fixed in the mid 1950s.  Obtaining parts to keep things going became more and more difficult.  While Draw-Matic exists today, the firm stopped manufacturing curtain systems a number of years ago, and the style of motor used in the Miller House is now completely obsolete throughout the industry.  Draws-Matic’s stock of old motors and parts is now exhausted.

Not knowing exactly the direction to take to try to repair the ailing curtain systems, I made a number of phone calls including one to Somfy, whose regional representative, David Towslee, patiently explained the nature of the business today.  He visited the Miller House to see the curtains and look at the Draw-Matic motors, many of which have been removed for repair. David brought with him a remarkable stroke of good luck; he confirmed that he had found a small cache of old Draw-Matic motors and parts in a drapery shop in Cincinnati.  Checking an image of the Cincinnati items against the Miller House motors, he determined that they were an exact match.  After a brief flurry of phone calls, we agreed on a purchase price.  The motors and parts are in Columbus now; with luck they will help us get some of the house’s gee-whiz curtain system back up and running.

Miller House & Garden.

The Miller House and Garden is a preservation project that has many blessings to count. I was reminded of this not long ago when I received a call from a gentleman in North Carolina who had become involved in efforts to preserve Richard Neutra’s Kronish House in Beverly Hills, California. Richard Neutra’s work is a defining element of California modernism – think of Julius Schulman’s photos of his Kauffman house in Palm Springs.  Unfortunately, the Kronish house is considered extremely vulnerable in Beverly Hills’ high-value real estate market and preservation-averse regulatory environment.

For the moment, it seems that the house has been granted a brief reprieve from demolition, which will allow Dion Neutra, Richard’s son, and others interested in the property to pursue a means to acquire the property and put it to a sympathetic use.  It will be a tremendous challenge, no doubt, but preservation is always a challenge, and each project presents its challenges in a unique fashion.

Richard Neutra's Kronish House (photo courtesy of Marc Angeles / Unlimited Style / August 1, 2011).

The Miller House and Garden project, in comparison with many others, almost seems to have had a charmed existence from the start.  While talking about the Kronish house with Dion Neutra, I became even more aware of the extraordinary alignment of stars that helped us along.

Early Planning

While imminent threat can galvanize efforts to save a property, hearing the bulldozers in the distance can be discouraging indeed.  Members of the Miller family were well aware of the significance of their home and had begun to think about providing for its preservation before its builders, J. Irwin Miller and Xenia S. Miller, had passed away. In 2007, a large group gathered in Columbus to discuss the futures of the Irwin Home (now a bed and breakfast)  and the Miller House and Garden. Among those present were representatives of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Indiana Landmarks, Yale University, Harvard University, Ball State University, IMA, and Columbus area civic organizations. Discussions quickly reached a consensus that the two properties would likely have to develop independently of one another. Possible uses, maintenance needs, and potential preservation partnerships were among the topics of the day. The IMA’s strong interest in the Miller House and Garden led to the museum taking ownership of the property as a gift from members of the Miller family in 2009.

Funding

Funding preservation costs money. Sometimes it costs tremendous amounts of money. Old buildings can be notorious money pits, and the care of historic landscapes is a lot more complicated than keeping the grass mowed. Almost no organization can afford to take responsibility for a preservation project without significant ongoing financial support. In cases in which preservation requires the purchase of the property as well as funds for its upkeep, the scale of the challenge is greatly magnified. The fact that members of the Miller family were willing to give their home to the IMA, and that they and the Irwin-Sweeney-Miller foundation gave $5 million to establish an endowment, made it possible for the IMA to accept stewardship of the property.

Strong Partnerships 

Changing financial environments have affected historic properties in numerous ways, but one positive result is the bringing together of partners to meet preservation challenges that individual organizations or persons could not address. For the IMA, the perfect partner has been the Columbus Area Visitors Center. Functioning in some ways like a garden-variety CVB – promoting tourism and interest in its community – it is almost unique among its peers in operating tours of the extraordinary modern architecture in Columbus, Indiana.  The Visitors Center already had and was willing to share (and expand where necessary) the infrastructure that existed for its architecture tours to make it possible to provide tours of the Miller House and Garden.  These included: a building in which to receive and orient visitors; gift and ticket sales; restrooms; recruitment, training, and scheduling of tour guides; recruitment and scheduling of shuttle vehicle drivers; administration of tour ticketing and scheduling…the list goes on. Partnership with the Columbus Area Visitors Center increased the value of the IMA’s financial resources tremendously. Had it been necessary for the museum to create what the Visitors Center was willing to share, the IMA’s resources would have stretched beyond breaking.

With the Visitor Center’s assistance in supporting tour operations, the IMA’s involvement could play more to its strengths. A 55-minute drive from Columbus on Interstate 65 and Indiana State Road 31, the IMA has on its staff deep resources of expertise in buildings and mechanical maintenance, horticulture and grounds maintenance, museum registration, curatorial areas related to the Miller collections, financial management, and historical interpretation.  The museum can deploy these as needed to support a small core staff to work on site.

Location 

The real estate mantra. It’s equally true for preservation projects. Columbus has attracted students, enthusiasts, and casual visitors for years, coming in to the city in the thousands annually to view its uniquely concentrated distillation of modern American architecture.  As a possible steward for the Miller House and Garden, the IMA knew that there would be a strong, established audience base for tours. Had the Millers for some reason built their home 50 miles from Columbus as a lone architectural outpost it would have been no less compelling as a work of architecture and design, but it would have been tremendously more difficult to get a viable audience for tours or other programs. Opening the Miller House and Garden to the public has strengthened Columbus’s range of offerings, which has benefitted the city’s architectural tourism generally.

North Christian Church, designed by Eero Saarinen. Columbus, Indiana. (Photo by Greg Hume).

Quality

The birth rate for historic house museums in America has been on the decline, and not without reason. Visitation levels have been declining at many sites, and many more struggle to find ways to survive and stay relevant for audiences in the twenty-first century.  Some have shifted interpretive emphasis, while others have ceased to operate as museums. Cities and towns across the country display the houses that tell the stories of their communities, usually through the histories of prominent families that built the houses that later (mostly twentieth-century) generations felt deserved preservation. While each is unique, when viewed in the aggregate there are areas of significant similarity that diminish many properties’ potential to stand out beyond local or regional interest, which makes the historic house museum option much less viable as a preservation mechanism today.

The Miller House and Garden is a property with exceptionally good aesthetic and historical genes, making it strong enough to stand on a national stage, and a good fit for an art museum as an adoptive parent.  Its architects and designers were outstanding talents who left little comparable work elsewhere:  Eero Saarinen, Dan Kiley, and Alexander Girard. The property was well maintained and retains a significant proportion of its original furnishings. The story of its builders, J. Irwin Miller and Xenia Simons Miller, touches on many interesting and inspiring subjects, especially those concerned with the Millers’ interest in civil rights and social justice.  Taken together with its location, it’s a property that has the right stuff to make it a successful historic house museum.

Timing

Who wouldn’t agree that the time to hit a trend is when it’s on the upswing? Interest in modernism is increasing, with mid-century expressions garnering significant attention.  Philip Johnson’s Glass House and Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House are recent additions to the list of attractions, both feeding the interest in modernist masterworks.  The Miller House debuted in the midst of this rising attention, just as the work of Saarinen and Kiley is receiving renewed interest, and as significant attention focuses on Girard for the first time.

Looking at the Neutra office website and seeing the ticking countdown clock for the demolition of the Kronish house is sobering indeed.  It’s an inspiration for preservationists to count their blessings where they can, plan their strategies, and support each other’s efforts.

One of the treasures in the Miller House and Garden archives is a collection of over 1,000 3 x 5 inch index cards stored in a small file box. In the upper right hand corner of each card is a handwritten number, and on the front is typed information about items the Millers purchased with Girard’s assistance for the house.

Last spring Bradley Brooks, the Director of Historic Resources, and Annette Schlagenhauff, Associate Curator of Research, asked if I might be interested in helping them and IMA Archivist Jennifer Whitlock to make sense of what the archives contained. I immediately said yes. The House and Garden would be open in the spring of 2011, and the race was on to learn as much about the history of the house as possible.

During the first few weeks of perusing the cards, Annette and I tried to decide on their origins: Girard or the Millers. We came to the conclusion that the Millers generated these cards using the information from the invoices sent from Girard’s office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The invoices are among the materials in the archives, and the cards contained much of the same information as the invoices, although in abbreviated form. Every invoice has a single item number which corresponds to the card’s item number.

We initially thought the cards provided a chronology until we noticed that the invoices are not organized chronologically. The earliest invoices are dated April 20, 1955 and correspond to Items 8 through 16 (there are no invoices for the first seven items). Invoices for Items 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, and 26 are dated April 23, 1956 – one year and two days later. And Item 24 was February, 15, 1957. With Items 29 and 30, we were back to April 1955. If the Item Numbers did not reflect the order in which items were purchased, what did they mean?

We hoped that by cracking the code of the Item Numbers we would better understand Girard’s design process and the extent of the Millers’ participation. We turned to the correspondence between Girard and the Millers for clues. After several long afternoons cross-referencing letters and invoices to the index cards, Annette and I were able to make sense of Girard’s code.

Our clue came in a letter from Girard to the Millers. He was arranging a meeting with the Millers in New York and wrote, “As I mentioned to you earlier, my chief concern is to have a good foundation on which to start building your interior furnishings schemes. The best way of achieving this is to try and make decisions on rugs, so I think we probably should concentrate our attention in that direction.” (AHG to JIM, 9-9-54; 32/380)

Many of the earliest item were rugs (14 of 28), and the number on each card seemed to correspond to a “to do” list of Girard’s making. In providing the furnishings for the house, Girard first found a rug for the living room in 1955 – Item No. 1. Item 24 is the entrance rug designed by Alexander Girard; its late invoice date of 1957 is easily explained: the design and fabrication of the rug took nearly two years.

Entering the house, the rugs do seem to be the foundation as they simultaneously define rooms and fade from consciousness. As Girard and the Millers selected furnishings for the house, Girard worked systematically to produce the house’s harmony of colors, shapes, and textures. Having made decisions concerning the rugs, Girard then turned to the pillows, and by June 1955 he had assembled the myriad textiles needed to make almost 100 pillows to be used throughout the house.  Fabrics for pillows came from Indonesia (Item 35), Peru and Guatemala (Item 38), Thailand (Items 47, 48, and 52), the United States (Item 61), and Persia (Item 94).  In July and August of 1955, materials for curtains were purchased (Items 36, 50, 53, 56, 60-63, and 65), and in August and December, all major decisions concerning textiles were made with the purchase of fabric for bedspreads (Items76–78, 161, and 179).

Having worked through so much material in the Miller House and Garden Archives has given me a much greater appreciation for Girard’s contributions.  His hand seemed to have touched most everything that, for me, makes the Miller House.

Time and time again, the Millers made generous gifts that would enhance the quality of life of the citizens of Columbus, Indiana. While their support of great architecture is widely known, their gifts of public art have made an equally profound impact on their hometown.

Henry Moore’s, "Large Arch," Columbus Indiana, 1971.

Mr. and Mrs. Miller were great fans of English sculptor Henry Moore (1889 – 1986) and his work was part of their personal art collection. In 1971, two years after I.M. Pei completed his Cleo Rogers Memorial Library, the Millers watched proudly as the five-and-a-half-ton Large Arch, by Moore, was lifted off a flatbed truck by a crane and set into place on the library’s plaza. It was commissioned and purchased by the Millers to provide a visual anchor to the plaza. Its organic form offers a perfect contrast to the geometric shapes of Pei’s library and Eliel Saarinen’s First Christian Church. Today, it is possibly the most photographed feature in all of Columbus.

Jean Tinguely and his work, "Chaos I" in Columbus, IN.

Chaos I is a 7-ton, kinetic sculpture by Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925-1991). The 30-foot high, motorized piece is the largest work by Tinguely in the United States. Since it successfully marries art and engineering, it is a fitting centerpiece for a city known for both its great architectural designs and its world-class manufacturing operations.
The architect of the original Commons Centre, Cesar Pelli, first suggested to J. Irwin Miller that a sculpture by Tinguely would be the perfect at the center of this facility that served as an urban park and a retail center in the heart of downtown. Pelli stated, “We would like a great magnet, a focal point such as the old town clock…a place for people to meet and greet one another.” The work was commissioned by Mr. and Mrs. J. Irwin Miller and Miller’s sister, Mrs. Robert Tangeman. Tinguely, a colorful character, took up residence in Columbus for nearly two years and completed the piece in 1974.

Jean Tinguely, "Chaos I," 1974.

For the past three years, it has occupied a climate-controlled box while the Commons was razed and rebuilt in the heart of downtown Columbus. The residents of Columbus are delighted at the return of this beloved sculpture. The sculpture returned to life when locals celebrated the grand opening of the new Commons on June 4 with a ceremonial flipping of the switch.

Dale Chihuly’s "Yellow Neon Chandelier and Persians"

Mrs. Miller was very involved in the operations of the Visitors Center, an organization that originated as the agency to host visitors and to provide tours of this growing architectural mecca. In 1995, Mr. and Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Robert Tangeman, and other local donors, funded the renovation and expansion of the center.

It was architect Kevin Roche who suggested that a work by glass artist Dale Chihuly would create the perfect focal point for the stairwell windows. The artist proposed a blue chandelier, but Mrs. Miller, who was known to have a great eye for color, was opposed to the idea. Blue light, she said, was not flattering to women. She requested the color yellow instead. The chandelier radiates gold light from its yellow neon center through 900 pieces of hand blown glass in four shades of yellow. The Persians, in sunny yellow and watery blue and green, cascade down the window. Today, visitors of all ages delight in these cheerful glass sculptures that greet them as they begin both city architecture tours and tours of the Miller House and Garden.

Bernar Venet’s "2 Arcs de 212.5°"

Positioned in front of the Commons is French artist Bernar Venet’s 2 Arcs de 212.5°, a red sculpture that is typical of his minimalist work in steel. It seems to balance precariously. This work, like his others, reflects his love of mathematics and his habit of investigating material, form, balance, and spatial perception. Mrs. Miller purchased the piece for her home, but gave it to the Columbus Area Arts Council in honor of the organization’s 25th anniversary in 1998. It was temporarily relocated during the Commons reconstruction but now is installed near the new main entrance of this sparkling downtown jewel.