I don’t tend to do too much on high-end design of the 50s, but I do have a fascination with Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, CT — and will be planning a visit for this summer! This is great story about his St. Charles Kitchen.

Remembering A Kitchen Unlike Any Other
Staff Reports - New Canaan CT News

Raymond Girard hadn’t been back to the Glass House in decades, but there was a time, in the late 1940s, when he’d visit every week. That’s when Girard was building out the kitchen in the iconic modern house. Girard’s return to the Glass House marked the first steps in creating an oral history program at the Glass House museum. Christy MacLear, the executive director of the Glass House, said the staff plans to install an audio booth in the visitor’s center.

Girard, 88, accompanied by his granddaughter Carrie Deane Corcoran, visited the Glass House recently to look at the kitchen and share his memories.

In 1947, when architect Philip Johnson was finalizing the designs for the modern house, Girard worked for St. Charles Kitchens in New York City. St. Charles was considered the cabinet to have in a modern house (and indeed, as mid-century modern design has become trendy again, a market has emerged for the used retro cabinets.) Most of the St. Charles cabinets were made of metal, but during World War II, when metal was scarce, the company began making wood cabinets, like the ones Johnson chose.

Girard got into the kitchen cabinetry business after he returned from active duty in the South Pacific theater during World War II. (He fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. “We would have gone into Japan, but they dropped the atomic bomb,” he said.) He commuted to the St. Charles offices from New Canaan.

“I got this (Glass House kitchen) job because I lived in New Canaan,” Girard said.

He lived on East Maple, not far from the site. And it was just a site when he first visited. Johnson broke ground in 1948.

“It was just a barren piece of land,” he said. Today, the artfully manicured “natural” landscape (47 acres of tree-filled hills and fields bordered by stone walls and punctuated with architectural follies) is considered to be as significant as the house itself.

The kitchen was designed by Peter Blake, a Modern architect who in 1948 was named curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, where Johnson also worked.

“They presented me with a rough sketch,” Girard said. “Most of the design work was done out of the New York office.”

Girard would visit Johnson and present the blueprints.

“He made his corrections and sent them back. In those days everything was drawn by hand and blueprinted,” he said.

The “kitchen” in the Glass House is unusual by today’s standards and probably was even more unusual when it was built.

“It was definitely very different,” Girard said, “This was one-of-a-kind.”

In the open plan of the Glass House, the kitchen consists of a galley of two banks of lower cabinets. A small stainless-steel sink, an apartment-sized electric stove and half-size refrigerators are set beneath a gray Formica counter.

The cabinets are made of light-colored walnut, with simple stainless-steel pulls.

“He wanted a cabinet with no hardware except for the handle,” Girard said.

Girard opened the drawers, examined them, and pronounced them to be original. He said a dishwasher had been added later and then replaced with a freezer, “because they liked having ice cream.”

The cabinets are empty now, but they once held a set of white Limoges plates. MacLear said the plates were typical of Johnson’s taste plain and simple, but of the best quality.

The most unusual and coolest thing about the kitchen is the walnut counter that can be folded to cover the sink and stove. The counter rests on brass legs that fold when the counter is in the open position.

“He wanted the fold-down so if they were having a party they wouldn’t see the kitchen,” Girard said.

“The folding counter is particular to the Glass House,” said Gwen Reiss, a Glass House tour guide, who was conducting the oral history interview.

Save some discolored blotches on the front of the stove, the kitchen doesn’t look like a place that saw a lot of cooking. Brendan Tobin, who was the manager and groundskeeper during the last years of Johnson’s life, and has continued in that role since the National Trust for Historic Preservation took over, said that was the case.

“Mr. Johnson ate eggs in the morning,” he said, “The nurse would prepare them.” The spare look of the house was always maintained. “Occasionally there would be a dish in the sink,” he said.

“Mr. Johnson used to go to lunch every day at the Blue Dolphin,” he said. The Blue Dolphin used to occupy the space where Harvest Supper has opened on Elm Street (see story in Business).

On a recent sunny winter morning, Girard sat in one of the Mies Van de Rohe leather chairs, answering Reiss’s questions. He said that some things that happened all those years ago are hard to remember.

“But I do remember the man and I liked him very much. He was a gentleman and very precise. Not too much humor. Every once and a while he’d crack a smile.”

At the time, Girard didn’t know the Glass House would end up being so famous. It seemed like “just another job,” he said.

“I thought it was just the whim of the architect,” he said. “At the beginning it seemed experimental.”

Then, as the building progressed, “You could see the vision the man had.”

He said that having worked on the Glass House was “good for sales, to tell everyone I knew Philip Johnson.”

And, he says, he learned from the project. “The ideas Philip Johnson had, it wears off on you. If you like it.”

In 1961, Girard opened St. Charles Kitchens by Girard in Pound Ridge, N.Y.

“In 1963 I hired my son-in-law Peter Deane,” he said, “I figured it was the best way to get him out of my hair. We sent him to St. Charles design school. He was a hard-working boy.”

Today, Girard’s grandchildren Peter Deane and his sister Carrie Deane Corcoran run Kitchen’s by Deane on Elm Street and in Stamford. It is one of New Canaan’s oldest family-run businesses.

“Carrie and Peter have done an excellent job,” he said.

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Pam adds: St. Charles cabinets also were used in Mies van der Rohe’s house for Edith Farnsworth — steel ones here!

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