Our tour of the Farnsworth House on Saturday took us inside its floor-to-ceiling glass walls, where photography isn’t permitted on weekends. We heard about the mechanical aspects of the house — all those pesky practical items like electricity and water — the guest bathroom, Dr. Farnsworth’s bathroom, the kitchen zone with its long stainless steel prep area, the history of the curtains, the placement of the few lights, and the back-and-forth between client and architect about whether there ought to be at least one closet. Architect said no, client said yes, so ultimately a freestanding wardrobe was fashioned by one of Mies’ employees for the house.

Previously I hadn’t bothered to find out much about how the house came to be. Not to worry, a video at the visitor center and the guide filled us in on some details, such as initially warm (maybe very warm) relations between the unmarried Dr. Farnsworth and the free-with-his-affections Mies, which eventually grew acrimonious. Especially when Mies presented her with a bill she considered inflated. Less might be more, but not when it came to his fee.

Outside again we went to the “back” of the house, that is, the side facing away from the river.

This is a fuller view.

The row of kitchen-counter-like shapes under the brown interior structure are in fact kitchen counters, with the “bedroom” off to the left. The black cylinder-like thing under the main level — the other columns are white — is where water goes in and out, and electricity comes in.

Got a good look under the house, too.

Another bit of the house’s history involves the land to the west. Lord Palumbo built a boathouse there, and just beyond it is a road: Fox River Dr., which crosses the river within sight of the house. In the late 1940s, the road and bridge were small. In the late ’60s, Kendall County took two acres by eminent domain to widen the road and build a bigger bridge. Dr. Farnsworth fought it, but lost. With the increase in population over the decades since then in this part of the state, the road’s now pretty busy, at least on a Saturday afternoon. Quiet isn’t something you get on the Farnsworth grounds these days.

From the back of the house, the property slopes upward to a small hill, which would have been the rational place to build a dwelling, considering its location above the flood plain. But as suggested about some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s works, perhaps it’s best to think of this Miesian creation as a work of sculpture rather than a house. And a right interesting sculpture it is.

I can’t say that I know architecture, but I know what’s interesting. The Farnsworth House is definitely that. Built over 60 years ago in rural – and now exurban – Illinois, it’s a glass-and-steel, but most notably glass, house designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, famed Chicago architect (which he became later in life, another unwitting gift to America from the Nazis), and one of the panjandrums of Modernism. It’s also hard for amateur photographers like myself to get a good image of the place.

This is the “front,” facing the Fox River, illustrating the fact that the house is all about the horizontal: a “deck” (my term) accessible by stairs, a main level accessible by more stairs, and then the flat roof, presumably accessible by ladder. The deck is wide open to the elements, though shaded by trees in our time, and the main level is either outside or inside, as delineated by glass walls. Except that, as I understand it, one of the purposes of the glass walls was to help obviate the distinction between exterior and interior. Unless you close the curtains, which I understand the residents did with some regularity, and which the National Trust does when it isn’t giving tours.

For a while we stood in front as our guide filled us in on the building’s origin and other details of the site, such as its propensity to flood. Mies knew that, of course, and raised the structure to avoid the worst of the Fox River’s periodic rampages. Turns out that because of development upstream, rainwater and snowmelt drain faster into the river than they used to, so the river rises higher than it did in the early 20th century. Oops. Such torrents flooded the house in 1956 and 1996. Not sure that’s what Mies had in mind when he talked of integrating the built environment with the natural one.

Apparently the ’96 flood was especially vicious, popping one of the floor-to-ceiling windows and washing away some of the artwork belonging to Lord Palumbo, the property’s second owner.

We went up the stairs to take in the view from the deck…

…and then to main level. Both levels are floored with Italian travertine, a wonderful stone hand-picked by Mies. According to the guide, so far the National Trust hasn’t been able to locate any exactly like them, so there aren’t any replacements. It’s wonder we were allowed to walk on them at all.

Up on the main level’s “porch,” (my term again) our guide gave us the rules for going inside: no photos, no shoes, and no sitting around on the furniture. We were free to take pictures of the interior through the window-walls which, of course, offer an expansive view of the inside.

Something you appreciate after standing around for a few minutes on the main level, at least I did, is the lack of handrails. That is, in fact, a code issue that would prevent the house from being built in our time exactly as it was in the late ’40s (among a few other things). The drop is only a bit more than five feet, of course, but even so it could be an injurious crash to the ground, or worse, into the narrow space between the deck and the main level. I don’t know if the matter of rails ever came up between the original owner, Dr. Edith Farnsworth, and Meis, but I feel certain any such thing would have been ruled out for aesthetic reasons.