Walking north from Ground Zero on Church street one comes upon a construction fence painted with figures of walking men. Immediately recognizable as inspired by the iconic figures of a walking figure in urban traffic lights around the world, it was designed by Maya Barkai and is called “ Walking Men 99”

It’s part of the public art program Re:Construction produced by the Downtown Alliance.

This initiative channels the energy of Downtown’s rebuilding process by recasting construction sites as canvases for innovative public art and architecture. Each project uses standard construction barriers to embrace the ongoing nature of Downtown’s redevelopment with original and whimsical design. The Downtown Alliance works closely with public and private developers to produce each installation. www.downtownny.com/reconstruction

This entry is in honor of Mary Barnes, a woman I feel honored to have known. 2010 is the centennial of her birth. My first job out of architectural school was working for her husband Ed- otherwise known as Edward Larrabee Barnes ( 1915-2004) one of America’s great modern architects. The office was very much a Mom and Pop organization. Mary ran the interiors department, but more importantly, she was the heart and soul of the place. Possessed of a razor sharp intellect, she also loved to laugh. I can still hear bell like voice ringing through the studio, I still remember her total recall for details and people, I am still inspired by her exquisite taste- modern, pure, classical, unerring. When I met her, she was 73, and still a great beauty with startling blue eyes and she favored wearing that color from a Santa Fe turquoise work shirt to the chicest Armani navy. I treasured working under her and later- when she and Ed “retired” to Cambridge to live in a modernist apartment overlooking the Charles I adored visiting them …we discussed life and people and books… she recommended her favorite authors Tracy Chevalier and Alan Furst to me. Happy 100 years to Mary!
In Ed’s monograph he writes this acknowledgment:
“Finally there is Mary, whose sure eye, color sense, understanding of people, architectural sensitivity have underpinned all of my work”

The glass house is an austere symmetrical box handsomely articulated in black structural steel frame and firmly grounded by its low red brick base and brick floor paving. It is the masculine sibling to Mies van der Rohes’ elegant white Farnsworth House; it is also part of a family of modern rectangular houses built by architects such as Gropius, Breuer, and Edward Larrabee Barnes for their own use. While impressive for it’s forceful simplicity and total transparency, it is not an inviting or comfortable house by any means, yet Johnson lived there for almost five decades and died there in 1998, one year short of his 100th birthday.

As my historian friend pointed out, Johnson’s glass house is seminal because of its function as a salon with Johnson holding court to generations of architects who came to visit, sip martinis and discuss Architecture with a capital “A”. Before he died, he bequeathed the house and property the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a hugely generous gift to students and lovers of architecture alike.