STEP RIGHT IN

Eero Saarinens Miller House

Welcomes Visitors
By

John

Gendall

For the first time since it was completed in 1957, Eero

Saarinens iconic Miller House, in Columbus, Indiana, is
opening to the public as one of the newest acquisitions of
the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). Built for Cummins
Engine Company CEO J. Irwin Miller and his wife, Xenia
Simons Miller, the house is a celebrated emblem of
American modernism, a distinction accomplished not
only with its form a single-story glass-and-steel pavilion, rectangular in plan, set in a geometric landscape
but also through the impressive roster of designers who
took part in its conception: Saarinen, who orchestrated the
design; Kevin Roche, a designer who worked in his office,
and later a luminary in his own right; Alexander Girard,
a celebrated textile designer and longtime Herman Miller

32 Summer 2011

The Miller House is a product of close collaboration. While Eero Saarinen provided an austere,
modernist setting, Alexander Girards interior
designs, like his concept for the built-in perimeter
storage, personalize and animate the space. In
the conversation pit, Girards colorful textiles
soften Saarinens geometry and materials.

modernismmagazine.com 33

Above Alexander Girards colorful fabric on Saarinens Tulip

dining chairs, designed for Knoll.
Above, left The houses details were refined down to the
monogrammed napkins here with an XSM for Xenia
Simons Miller.
Left Owners J. Irwin Miller and Xenia Simons Miller often
hosted dinners and large gatherings. Custom curtains
doubled as partitions, allowing the couple to scale rooms
more intimately for smaller groups.

furniture company collaborator, who oversaw the interiors;

and esteemed landscape architect Dan Kiley, who advanced a
modernist aesthetic in landscape design.
Not only did the Millers enjoy significant business and
social stature, they were also avid music and art enthusiasts;
they amassed an impressive collection of works by modern
masters such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall,
Wassily Kandinsky and Mark Rothko. In the 1950s and 60s,
thanks, in part, to Cummins-related prosperity, Columbus
became a hub of modernist architecture. It boasted the First
Christian Church, by Eliel Saarinen, Eeros father, the First
Baptist Church, by Harry Weese, and the John Carl Warneckedesigned Mabel McDowell School, which are all now, like the
Miller House itself, National Historic Landmarks.
The Millers first commissioned Eero Saarinen to design
their vacation house in Canada in the early 1950s. Pleased
with his work, they tapped him again to oversee the new family home in Columbus. As with the planning of any house,
the clients came to the table with several design criteria. At
the top of that list was abundant natural light. The houses
steel structure made it possible to line the perimeter with
34 Summer 2011

floor-to-ceiling glass, which the architects did on a few sides. But two
factors made daylight elusive: first, the 6,838-square-foot houses
great depth cut off daylight from its center, and, second, the clients
wanted a wrap-around covered porch for outdoor entertaining; its
roof would have blocked most of the suns rays.
To negotiate these competing goals, Saarinen turned to the rigor
of the house plan itself. He had laid it out in what has since become
a canonical modernist plan: the nine-square grid. He had used it
before, in the Irwin Union Bank & Trust Company, also in Columbus.
There he called for nine large skylights to illuminate each of the
nine grid units. With the house, he took a more nuanced approach,
connecting the cruciform steel columns with translucent ribbon skylights, incorporating the glass into the structural system of the roof,
and enabling ambient, natural light to flood the deepest recesses of
the house. To steer daylight through the exterior glass walls, Saarinen
inserted skylight strips in the porchs deep, cantilevered overhang,
along the perimeter of the house.
The Millers youngest child, Will, now 54, considers the natural
light one of the most memorable elements of his childhood home.
Everywhere you would want natural light, you have natural light,
even in the deepest parts of the house, he recalls. But everywhere
you dont want natural light, you dont have it. My sisters bathroom
vanity, for example, had this shower of natural light, but the bedrooms didnt have any from the roof. Growing up as a kid, I may not
have understood the quality of the materials or the structural sophistication of the skylights, but what I do remember was a wonderful,
light-filled house.
Without the skylights, the interior space would have been very
dull, says Roche. We chose to incorporate the skylights into the
structure to bring a certain amount of order into the house. That daylight system became the basis for the formal design of the building.
It remains one of its best qualities. According to IMA curator Bradley
Brooks, the quality of light is truly one of the most defining characteristics of the house. Its amazing. Its almost shadowless very soft
and diffuse.
Saarinen used the grid not only to open up possibilities for daylight, but also to generate a programmatic layout that the architects
called five houses in a house. The master bedroom, childrens area,
guest suite and service quarter, all situated in the corners, pinwheel
around the flexible living area. There, famously, sits the conversation pit, a sunken square with plush seating built into its sides. Its
really unusual, says Jayne Merkel, author of Eero Saarinen (Phaidon
Press, 2005). The space was meant to accommodate intimate family
gatherings and the musically-inclined Millers also used the space to
play instruments. Though it was to become a mainstay in midcentury
house design, the Miller pit was quite novel at the time. Although
typically attributed to Girard, Will Miller speculates that it was
inspired by the built-in, carpeted seating areas common in Saarinens
native Finland. But the novel feature undoubtedly grew out of the

Right, top and bottom Saarinen employed ribbon skylights, embedded into the structural system of the house, to bring diffuse daylight
into its deepest recesses. The exterior skylights mitigate the shade
cast in the interior by the porch overhang.

modernismmagazine.com 35

Above The deep overhang shelters the houses encircling patio,

enabling outdoor entertaining, while the ribbon skylight sends daylight
through the sliding glass doors.
Top Celebrated landscape architect Dan Kiley designed the houses lush
grounds, extending Saarinens modernist geometry into the garden.
Opposite, top The low slung house settles modestly in its grand, parklike setting, which includes this broad, tree-lined alle.
Opposite, bottom Dan Kiley divided the landscape into outdoor rooms.
Translucent panels, a translation of the houses translucent skylights,
create diffuse, painterly images of the flora.
36 Summer 2011

collaborative alchemy between the two designers. Girard devised

a palette for the conversation pits pillows, meant to change along
with the four seasons, that provide a vibrant burst of color in the
houses nearly neutral interior.
While the house itself, as a stand-alone object, is an important contribution to midcentury American modernism, much of
the projects significance (and a big reason it warrants a place
in a museum collection) is the remarkable design collaboration
that the Millers assembled. When Saarinen won the Gateway
Arch project, in St. Louis, he did it with Girard and Kiley, explains
Merkel. So his collaborators on the Miller house were people he
had been working with since he had come into his own as an
architect. The house is a very curious blend of Saarinens rigorous
grid and Girards soft palette, she adds. I think Saarinen understood that it had to be someone else to soften the interiors, says
Brooks. The house is very austere and Saarinen was content to
leave it to Girard to bring warmth and softness into the space.
Even though that marriage of rigor and warmth brought together aesthetic opposites, the close working relationship among the
designers defied those types of basic categories. Girard is listed as
an architect in some of Saarinens drawings, notes Brooks, and we
also know he was involved in some of the discussions long before
they ever stuck a shovel in the ground. As Roche remembers it,
Girard was involved in the design from the very beginning. He was
very savvy about house design because he had done several in
Grosse Point, Michigan. I actually went to Girards studio for awhile
to work there from time to time.

Above and top Xenia Miller was adamant about allowing the house to
change over time, so Girard included elements, such as cabinets, textiles
and this wall treatment, a metal grid, with which the Millers could
personalize the house. Floor-to-ceiling glass floods the master bedroom
with daylight.

38 Summer 2011

Above all, the designers were trusted collaborators, interested in each others contributions and able to transcend
the short-sighted boundaries of a particular discipline. It
is hard to say who did what since the roles overlapped
quite a lot, remembers Roche. Girard and Saarinen were
very good friends. The collaborations outcome was not
limited to aesthetics. The Millers, particularly Xenia Miller,
had a critical interest, at once analytical and aesthetic, in
the houses functionality. She understood that, to work as
both a family home and a venue for corporate entertaining,
the house demanded a complex balance of efficiency and
performance.
Business executives were expected to entertain this
was the Mad Men era, says Will Miller. They developed an
entertaining pattern over time, beginning with cocktails at
the fireplace, then moving to the meal in the dining area,
followed by coffee in the conversation pit. Girard-designed
curtains would temporarily partition these areas, allowing
the staff to set up and break down the spaces before and
after use without disrupting the party. A built-in closet stored
folding tables and chairs to accommodate up to 50 people
for dinner. While the design allowed for the seamless coordination of a dinner party, it paid equal attention to another
important role: the children, during one of these parties,
could be happily sequestered in their own autonomous corner of the house.
When they built the house, my mother didnt want to
move again, says Miller, quickly adding, but she didnt
want to live in the same house for 30 years. The SaarinenGirard collaboration provided the desired flexibility, with
the architecture an enduring backdrop to the malleable

Girards idiosyncratic patterns brought liveliness to Saarinens reserved spaces. At

top, several patterns for drapes; at center, J. Irwin Millers office, with carpeting
designed by Girard and molded plastic chairs designed by Charles and Ray Eames,
Saarinens colleagues at the Cranbrook Academy of Art; at bottom, Girard fabric on
sofa and cushions.

interiors. Theres nothing in the architecture itself that really holds color, Miller
points out. On the other hand, Girards cushions and rugs, along with the wallpaper
and art, could be changed.
The collaboration was not limited to the designers, however. The Millers, particularly Xenia Miller, were closely engaged throughout the process. My mother
is an uncredited fourth designer and I say that with all seriousness, says Miller.
I went to the Yale archives when Kevin Roche donated his plans, which included
our house, and everyone was saying, we wish we knew who made all these notations on these drawings, he remembers. As it turns out, they were his mothers.
As a young woman, working as a parts buyer for Cummins, she had learned to
read blueprints. Later, as an architectural patron, this skill enabled her to roll up her
sleeves and give detailed critiques of design proposals. She was a really sophisticated reader of architectural drawings, able to read the information and visualize it
into three dimensions, adds Miller.

modernismmagazine.com 39

Above The Millers son, Will, credits his mother as part of

the houses design team. She and Girard devised the idea
for the wall of cabinets, providing not only storage, but also
visual variability. The Girard-designed rug was customized
for the family, with playful references, such as to the Miller
family background in banking and the initials ES, for Eero
Saarinen, who had become like family.
Opposite The Millers kept the kitchen busy, putting it to
work for family dinners and large parties. Unlike the open
kitchens of many midcentury houses, the Miller kitchen was
partitioned from the dining and living spaces, to allow staff
to prepare meals while the Millers entertained. The kitchen
dining area, on the other hand, communicated in innovative
fashion with the food preparation area.

As she had done with Saarinen for the houses

program, she worked closely with Girard in establishing a palette for the interiors. If you look at some
of the patterns and colors they chose, removed from
their context, they dont make sense, quips Miller.
But the two of them knew how to put everything
together. She had an extremely strong color sense.
She and Girard loved each other,
To be sure, the process came with its challenges.
The Millers were demanding clients. The house
went through about eight versions, explains Merkel,
citing a conversation she had with Irwin Miller, who
died in 2004. Saarinen was amazingly patient. He
would show him something, and the Millers would
come back to say, you know, this just isnt right,
so Saarinen would go back to his studio and develop a different scheme. This back-and-forth never
strained what was to become a lasting and close
friendship. He loved Miller, who was this really
great patron and a really great friend, says Merkel
of Saarinen. Indeed, Miller eulogized Saarinen at the
architects funeral in 1961, and Roche did the same
for Miller in 2004. The Millers were wonderful to
work with, says Roche. Mr. Miller would lay down
the ground rules, but he would leave it to the architect. He wouldnt micromanage.
Significantly, the project did not end with the house.
The landscape, with its cleanly articulated geometric
plantings, is widely considered a seminal modernist
design. Its formal grid locks into that of the house, fitting, as Merkel says, like hand-in-glove. One of the
propertys borders runs along Washington Street, a
main Columbus thoroughfare. The Millers were particularly concerned about this edge, since they wanted
privacy and noise abatement without creating a walled

compound. My parents were part of the community and they didnt want to distance themselves from it, says Miller. Kiley came up with a staggered line of arborvitae hedges to create a screen without setting up a barrier. Throughout the garden,
carefully designed plantings create architectural spaces around the property.
Though it has been roundly praised for its formal inventiveness, the landscape
design has had its setbacks. There were aspects of Kileys design that failed and
he wasnt very interested in fixing them, says Miller. He wasnt the greatest
arborist. He picked species that died and he always planted things too close
together. He planted things that looked great the day they were planted, but he
didnt consider how they would look five or ten years later. The close bonds
that developed between the clients and architects did not develop between Kiley

modernismmagazine.com 41

and the Millers. The only relationship that didnt last was with
Kiley, says Miller.
The museums acquisition of the house was by no means a
foregone conclusion. When Mrs. Miller died in 2008, her five
adult children wrestled with the question of selling it privately, knowing that once they did, the property would exist at the
whim of future owners who would likely be burdened by staggering maintenance costs. But independent house museums,
Miller reasoned, were hard to pull off successfully. So he and
his four siblings decided to convene a symposium to tackle the
question of how to proceed with the house, bringing together
preservationists, as well as architect Robert A.M. Stern, landscape
architect Michael Van Valkenberg and, serendipitously, Maxwell
L. Anderson, the Melvin & Bren Simon director and CEO of IMA.
Anderson saw an opportunity to make the house available by
accessioning it as a work of art. Eventually, the members of
the Miller family gave the museum the house and a $5 million
endowment for its maintenance, stipulating that IMA fund its
programming.
The museum worked for three years to prepare the house
for its first round of visitors, who arrived on May 10. It was
in remarkably good condition, and the records show that the
Millers paid careful attention to the house and the landscape,
says Brooks. We have taken a preservationist approach to the
property, so people see it in very much the condition we received
it. Working with the Columbus Area Visitors Center, the museum
is offering twice daily tours of the house, limited to thirteen individuals per tour.
Though Will Miller seems somewhat reluctant about having
his childhood home set aside as a piece of collected art its
strange, that conversation pit is where I used to have sleepovers
he is entirely aware that his personal history is tightly bound
up with an important stage in the evolution of design. One thing
that probably distinguishes it from other great houses was that it
was a home, he says. It wasnt a weekend house or a summer
house. He will take that personal history with him, but thanks to
his generosity, and that of his family, the public can also experience the design history firsthand.
n
John Gendall is a New York-based architecture critic. He teaches
architectural studies at Pratt Institute and Parsons The New School
for Design.
All photos by Hadley Fruits, courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum
of Art.

Architecture critic and historian Jayne Merkel says the house

and garden relate like a hand-in-glove. The landscape provides
screened privacy without imposing a barrier between the house
and its surroundings.

42 Summer 2011

The Miller House and Garden is

open for scheduled tours:
TuesdaySaturday at 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm
Sunday at 1:00 pm
$20; no photography.
Information: imamuseum.org/millerhouse/tours
To buy tickets: ovationtix.com/trs/cal/30915

modernismmagazine.com 43

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