When Jiminie Ha, the senior director of graphic design at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and artist Jeremy Parker stumbled on a real estate listing for a house in Newburgh, New York, it cited, almost as an afterthought, that the property had been designed by controversial giant of 20th-century architecture Philip Johnson.

The home no longer resembled Johnson’s initial design of two stacked boxes—a smaller brick box with a larger cypress-clad box perched atop it, jutting out over a ground-floor patio and grassy slope overlooking the Hudson River.

Recent owners renovated and had all but forsaken Johnson’s original vision. The exterior wood paneling had been extended to reach the ground and obscure the brickwork on the first floor, and a porch had been added to the second-floor dining room. “They brought the exterior all the way to the ground,” explains Jeremy. “So you lose that first story kind of floating above the second story. And it was also painted—as I joke with Jiminie—a gender-reveal blue.

Nevertheless, “his ghost was haunting this place,” says Jiminie.

Jiminie and Jeremy were able to confirm that the house had indeed been designed by the prolific and influential architect celebrated as a champion of modernism—and later postmodernism—during his decades-long tenure in the architecture department of the Museum of Modern Art and now derided for his support for Nazism and American fascism early in his career. Every major catalog the duo consulted confirmed the home to be the Benjamin V. Wolf House, built in 1949—the same year as Johnson’s iconic pellucid Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. Jiminie says the (Jewish) Wolf family eventually came to visit them and share press clippings and photography from the time the house was built and even film footage documenting the construction of the home, featuring a cameo by Johnson himself.

Even though longtime friends Jeremy and Jiminie had never officially worked together before, they dove headfirst into the task of restoring the home to the original design.

“We did everything to the specifications of the original plans,” Jeremy says, “including using cypress for the exterior. I think we used up all the cypress in the Northeast. I’m not even joking—down to the last piece of wood. Our supplier was like, ‘We were able to find this one little piece. We have no more.’”

Today, the structure once again exhibits Johnson’s signature style: an open plan, clean lines, and plate-glass walls that provide views of the surrounding landscape. Upon walking up the steps from the entryway, you’re greeted by an expansive view of the Hudson River through enormous picture windows in the living room. From there, the house flows seamlessly, from the kitchen to a dining area and open office to a bedroom to an enclosed patio with terra-cotta tile flooring.

“We climbed up the stairs and all of a sudden these massive windows are revealed and we’re like, ‘Oh my God.’”
—Jiminie Ha, resident

But for the friends, the restoration was about more than simply turning back time. It was primarily a preservation project, which meant knowing when and, even more important, when not to build.

That meant furnishing the home with thrifted pieces (think Wassily and Cité chairs, an LC6 patio table, a Superstudio table Jeremy found and pushed on a dolly 15 blocks through Chinatown to his Manhattan apartment) as well as a new modular sofa from Hay. They also approached Swiss modular furniture designer USM to create a kitchen made entirely of repurposed components from previously owned shelving units.

“I don’t think anyone had proposed this to [USM] before,” says Jiminie. “That’s part of the reason why they were so engaged with the idea.”

“Literally, even the person who delivered and helped install the kitchen was like, ‘Thank you, guys, for getting this crap out of the warehouse,’” says Jeremy. “And just how beautiful a story is that?”

When it comes to Johnson’s politics, there is no easy takeaway—on the one hand it may feel impossible to promote an architect who campaigned for anti-Semitic and pro-fascist Canadian-American radio broadcaster Father Coughlin. On the other, the house exists.

In a short documentary produced by Jiminie and Jeremy, Michael Wolf, who lived in the house growing up and whose parents commissioned it, says that if his parents had known about Johnson’s history, they wouldn’t have hired him. That said, “The fact that Johnson would want to [design] something that he thought would be a work of art with people who are Jews says something about his own personal reformation.”

To that end, the friends say they’d rather preserve the past consciously and use what has been built to serve artists and their own community going forward. They plan to use the space as an incubator and a venue for art as well as an educational resource for Newburgh students and residents. (The two share the house part-time and open it up for rentals and events to pay the bills.)

“How can we give voices to artists that have been neglected?” says Jeremy. “How can we use the house as a platform?”

Project Credits:

Designer: Jiminie Ha and Jeremy Parker, Wolfhouse

Cabinetry: USM Modular Furniture

Editor’s Note: The original version of this story referred to the kitchen as having been made of dead stock components from USM shelving. It was actually made from previously owned components.

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A Forgotten Philip Johnson Home Gets a New Lease on Life