Ordinarily the renovation of a one-story, 7,000-square-foot office building in the Connecticut suburbs wouldn’t be a big deal. But several aspects of this meticulous preservation make it very special.
- The modest-scaled building was the first non-residential project completed — at the outset of his career in 1952 — by one of the leaders of the Modern movement in America, architect Philip Johnson.
- It is not just a typical example of building preservation, but includes the very rare — if not unique — restoration of historically significant office interiors, including overall layout, partitions and doors, wall surfaces, and lighting fixtures.
- The survival and preservation of the building involved recognition by the government of Ridgefield, CT (population c. 25,000) and its efforts to assure that the building be preserved — by occupants intent on its accurate restoration.
The building now houses the offices, studios, and showrooms of BassamFellows, designers and producers of elegant Modern furniture, as well as some personal accessories. Partners Craig Bassam and Scott Fellows had their eyes on the structure as their headquarters as early as 2010, when its fate was being publicly debated. Their enthusiasm and knowledge of mid-century Modern design had already been proven as they restored two exceptional houses in nearby New Canaan for their own occupancy: the Mills house, completed by architect Willis Mills for his family in 1956, then the house Philip Johnson designed in 1951 (with Landis Gores) for the Hodgsons.
The origin of this office building also involved exceptional appreciation and support for Modern design. It was built to house the top scientists and executives of a research center developed by Schlumberger (pronounced approximately “shlum-bear-zhay”), the world’s leading oilfield services company. The location in Connecticut, so far from any oilfields, was meant to appeal to those who would work there. In the 1950s, many of the country’s top research labs and corporate offices were moving to bucolic suburbs (leaving us today with many suburban corporate centers seeking new occupants).
The selection of Johnson as the building’s architect reflected an ongoing interest among Schlumberger’s leaders in Modern art and architecture. Annette Schlumberger and her husband, research chief Henri Doll, selected Johnson as the architect after visiting his 1949 Glass House in nearby New Canaan (now a National Trust property). Other members of the family commissioned houses designed by leading Modernists, established the Menil Collection museum and the Rothko Chapel in Houston, and developed the widely dispersed facilities of the DIA Art Foundation.
The research center was located on a wooded 45-acre tract near Ridgefield’s civic and retail core. The Johnson building was a relatively small but key element in what became a 130,000-square-foot complex of laboratory and service structures designed primarily by another nationally recognized Modern architect, Howard Barnstone of Houston.
Johnson’s office building embodied his early commitment to the example of Mies van der Rohe. Its regular structural bays were defined by steel framing painted graphite color and walls of a silvery gray iron-spot brick, infilled with windows and full-height glazing up to its 10-foot ceilings. Its private offices along the perimeter opened to a corridor surrounding a central glass-walled library-conference room, gardened courtyard, and open secretarial pool. Besides views of courtyard greenery and colleague’s activities, the corridor offered ample daylight from a continuous line of square skylights.
The interior benefited greatly from the work of lighting designer Richard Kelly (who made essential contributions to other landmark Johnson works such as his Glass House, Seagram Building — designed with Mies — and New York State Theater). As Bassam and Fellows point out, Kelly dispersed much of his lighting across the pale glazed brick walls, making them a kind of glowing light source. He also designed the corridor skylights as deep boxes, eliminating unwanted glare and directing diffused light — both natural and artificial — toward the reflective walls and light gray floors.
Abandonment and Opportunity
By 2006, Schumberger had moved its research activities to newer facilities elsewhere, and its activities here ceased, but the company maintained the complex until 2010. In 2012, the town purchased the property, in order to control its development, and a variety of proposed uses began to be considered. In 2016, the town sold off 15 acres of the site for residential development (recouping much of its $7-million investment). By then strong local support had grown both for public park uses and for preserving the Johnson building. (Even under Schlumberger management, it had been known as “the Philip Johnson building,” and the company’s discreet plaques at office doors, reading “PJB101,” etc., have been retained.)
Most of the other structures on the site — admirably designed by Barnstone but not adaptable for foreseeable uses — were demolished. But the building designed by him to house the center’s auditorium has been restored and put to good use by a non-profit theater company.
Neither this building nor the auditorium-theater structure were sold by the town to the current occupants. Instead they are occupied under long-term leases, with minimal rent for the initial years on the condition that the new occupants bear the costs of restoration, while the town remains responsible for landscaping, parking, etc., on the surrounding land.
Restoring Landmark Offices
BassamFellows functional needs corresponded so closely to the original design that it could be reused with very little functional change. The communal spaces at the core of the plan were readily adapted for collaborative work spaces, a lounge area, and the display of BassamFellows products. Kitchen facilities were installed at the back of a head-height wood partition that once shielded the secretarial area from a passageway to adjoining buildings. One original private office was reused for ADA-accessible bathrooms.
After years of neglect, the structure required extensive repair of deteriorated components and updating of the building envelope and mechanical systems. The roof had to be stripped down to the structural framing and entirely replaced. Removal of damaged roofing exposed the original fascia along its edges, now restored and painted the original graphite color. Insulating glass replaced single-thickness plate.
The building’s original air-handling systems had been innovative for circulating air through ceiling plenums and channels in the concrete floor and masonry walls, rather than through networks of ducts. Air supply and return was, and still is, largely through inconspicuous linear openings rather than conspicuous diffusers and grilles. But the building had previously relied on chilling and heating sources serving the entire research campus, so new mechanical equipment was required to make it self-sufficient.
Ceilings that had suffered extensive water damage were replaced; in the process facilitating the upgrading of electrical and communications services. In some areas, discreetly compact lighting in the new ceilings supplements original Richard Kelly lighting, which was carefully restored and reinstalled. Since the original light gray vinyl tile floors had long since been ruined, BassamFellows took the opportunity to repave the floors with light gray quarry tile, from the same French source that supplied the floor tile for the partners’ current house when Johnson designed it.
The oak interior millwork in doors, door frames, and mullions was hand-sanded and bleached to minimize evidence of water staining and refinished with a sealer that yields a “raw” effect. Much of the wood framing around the central courtyard had been damaged — in part by the bamboo growing unchecked there for years — and had to be replaced. To replant the courtyard appropriately, Bassam and Fellows discovered an old, asymmetrical pine of the right scale at a nearby nursery.
Parallel Examples?
The building’s restoration earned it a Citation of Merit in the 2019 awards program of DOCOMOMO US, our national component of the international organization for the documentation and conservation of Modern movement works. The jurors’ report observed that the building “feels as contemporary today as it was groundbreaking” in the 1950s.
Given the subsequent replacement of walled private offices with demountable partitions, individual cubicles, and now communal work spaces — effective as they have been — we’re unlikely to see many comparable restorations of office interiors in the future.