“That winter night showed very clearly how much more
would have to be spent”
was going up the tree while she stood on the ground
and said, ‘pick this one, pick that one.’ So I picked pears
for both of us, and when I got down out of that tree, my
clean dress was filthy.”
The house itself garnered the attention of archi-
tecture aficionados and local residents even as it
was being erected and the publicity of the trial only
increased people’s curiosity. Farnsworth did her best to
accommodate inquiring architects and their students,
but viewed uninvited gawkers with contempt. “It
was hard to bear the insolence, the boorishness of
the hundreds of persons who invaded the solitude of
my shore and my home, and I never could see why
it should have to be borne. It was maddening and
heartbreaking to find the wildflowers and the ground
covers, so laboriously brought in to heal the scars of
building, battered and crushed by the boots beneath the
noses pressed against the glass.” Still, she remained for
nearly two decades, ultimately making the house her
primary residence. Essentially a single room defined
by a steel frame and enclosed by large panes of glass
(a primavera-clad unit helps differentiate the various
living areas and houses mechanicals, bathrooms and
a galley kitchen), the Farnsworth House is a precise,
uncompromising expression of space. Transparent, it
engages the landscape remarkably.
In 1971, Farnsworth sold the house to British real
estate developer Lord Peter Palumbo and settled outside
Florence, Italy, where she spent much of her time
translating the poetry of Nobel Prize winner Eugenio
Montale. Palumbo restored the house, enhanced the
grounds and opened the property to the public in
1997. In December 2003, he put the house to auction
at Sotheby’s, where it was purchased by the Landmarks
Preservation Council of Illinois, the National Trust for
Historic Preservation and Friends of the Farnsworth
House for $7.5 million.
