Philip Johnson
Architect
Died when: 98 years 201 days (1182 months)Star Sign: Cancer
Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) was an American architect best known for his works of modern and postmodern architecture.Among his best-known designs are his modernist Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut; the postmodern 550 Madison Avenue in New York, designed for AT&T; 190 South La Salle Street in Chicago; the Sculpture Garden of the Museum of Modern Art; and the Pre-Columbian Pavilion at Dumbarton Oaks.
In his obituary in 2005, The New York Times wrote that his works "were widely considered among the architectural masterpieces of the 20th century." In 1930, Johnson became the first director of the architecture department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
There he arranged for visits by Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier and negotiated the first American commission for Mies van der Rohe, when he fled Nazi Germany.
In 1932, he organized the first exhibition on modern architecture at the Museum of Modern Art.In 1934, Johnson resigned his position at the museum, and, as the New York Times reported in his obituary, "took a bizarre and, he later conceded, deeply mistaken detour into right-wing politics, suspending his career to work on behalf of Gov.
Huey P.Long of Louisiana and later the radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, and expressing more than passing admiration for Hitler." In 1941, as the war approached, Johnson abruptly quit Coughlin's newspaper and journalism.
He was investigated by the FBI, and was eventually cleared for military service.Years later he would refer to these activities as "the stupidest thing I ever did [which] I never can atone for". 1978, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and in 1979 the first Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Today his skyscrapers are prominent features in the skylines of New York, Houston, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Madrid, and other cities.
