WHEN COMPLETED IN 1949, THE HOUSE THAT Philip Johnson designed for himself in New Canaan, Conn., was the most resolute statement of Modernist principles ever set down in a leafy glade. An homage to the ideas of High Modernism developed in Europe between the wars, it consisted of floor-to-ceiling glass on all four sides, which was supported by eight steel piers on a brick platform. Not so much a house as the Platonic ideal of a house, it was also an affront to ordinary notions of domesticity and creaturely comfort, and this at a time when not many office buildings, much...
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