Architecture
Solid travertine drum and slab; lunette frame and
window beyond. Photo by Eileen Wold, 2003
The Building
Designed in 1963 by Pritzker Prize winning architect Philip Johnson with Richard Foster, the Kreeger residence was built for David and Carmen Kreeger on five and a half wooded acres. David and Carmen Kreeger were pillars of the city’s arts and cultural community and asked Johnson to design a house with them that would, among other things, accommodate their growing art collection and provide good acoustics for classical musicales in the Great Hall. In a letter dated July 18, 1963, David Kreeger wrote to Johnson and invited him to their Washington home on Fessenden Street for “our exploratory talk” and to see “our [growing] art collection – the source of our problem!”
The Kreeger’s design requirements included: 1) space to display their collection of 19th and 20th century paintings and sculpture, 2) a large recital hall for music 3) residential living spaces that would provide privacy, views and light, 4) family recreational areas to include a swimming pool and tennis courts. The completed building was 24,000 square feet.
Johnson's personal travel to Italy, Greece, Turkey and Egypt influenced the design, scale, proportion and materials of the building. The approach to the Kreeger Museum is via a grand and circular forecourt. Here Johnson provided a clearly defined vista of the building's entry while concealing the south garage and private gardens to the north of the site. The Museum is clad in travertine from Italy. Above the entrance is a balustrade composed of a slab of travertine supported by solid travertine "drums".On the either side of the entrance there are two-story walls (travertine or glass) capped with arches that provide a rhythmic movement across the site.
The Great Hall of The Kreeger Museum.
Photo by Robert Lautman, 2004
Once inside, the travertine continues and surrounds the Great Hall. A module system of 22 x 22 x 22 feet becomes evident throughout all of the internal spaces. Within the Great Hall, three modules in length and two modules in height, three sail domes are elevated over the lunette windows to a ceiling height of 25 feet. These windows are filled with cork balls to help filter light, provide acoustical qualities; they reference latticework (mashrebeeyeh) that Johnson has seen in his travels in the Middle East.These modules are repeated throughout the building and on the Sculpture Terrace. Outside on the Sculpture Terrace, Johnson removed the infill of the travertine and glass to reveal the building's structure; it also opened to views of the sloping site and a magnificent pool (now a reflecting pool) surrounded by a colonnade.
Throughout the building Johnson employed light, movement and procession in his design.
Image: Bronze stair railings and atrium. Photo by Robert Lautman, 2004
Johnson included a bronze stair railing that extends from the main staircase of the lower level through the second level of the building. These molten bronze screens were designed by Edward Meshekoff, the artist who also designed a similar promenade for Johnson's New York State Theater (now Koch Theater) at Lincoln Center.
The interior finishes provide a seamless refinement throughout the building. The walls of the gallery spaces are beige cotton carpet panels secured over plaster. The carpet providing ease of installation of the art work and also enhances the acoustics within the Great Hall. The main level floors are teak, set in a herringbone pattern. The flooring on the lower level is composed of 9x9 oak tiles.
Image: Garage domes looking south. Construction photo by Stewart Bros., November 30, 1965
The building's structure is achieved with poured-in-place concrete which is then clad in travertine. The structural engineers for the Kreeger were Lev Zetlin & Associates.
The mechanical system is recessed throughout the building. In the Great Hall, thin horizontal slots, behind the carpet panels provide supply and return for the building. Jaros, Baum & Bolles were the mechanical engineers for the building.
The Architect Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson was in his late fifties when he designed the Kreeger residence in 1963. Prior to that time, Mr. Johnson was the first Director of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). During his tenure at MoMA, he was co-curator of the "Modern Architecture—International Exhibition" (1932) which highlighted for the first time such notable architects as Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius.
In 1943, Philip Johnson received his degree in architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and looked to the works of Mies van der Rohe for inspiration. According to Benjamin Forgey, Mies was “the avatar of the honed modernist aesthetic Johnson had labeled as the ‘International Style’ back in 1932. One of Johnson’s first buildings, a cubical, glass-walled house he built for himself on his spacious estate in suburban New Canaan, Connecticut, was a straightforward act of homage to the master, and most of the designs he would produce well into the 1950s – for private homes, museums, universities and corporate offices - were strongly Miesan in flavor.”
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Philip Johnson talked of how “his arches represent the breaking” from the influence of Mies van der Rohe. These projects, including the Kreeger project, included prominent arches within their design and at varying scales: the Kneses Tifereth Israel Synagogue, Port Chester, NY 1956; the Philip Johnson Pavilion, New Canaan, CT 1962; and the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln 1963.
Richard Foster, Johnson’s colleague at the time of the Kreeger residence design and construction, was heavily involved in the building’s construction documentation and construction administration. He traveled to Italy for the selection of the travertine and completed change orders until the building’s occupancy in July 1967. In Philip Johnson’s monograph entitled Architecture 1946-1965, he dedicated his book to Richard Foster.
