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The cultural battle continues between the anti-Nazis and the "oh, he reformed himself" “Nazi apologists” in Madison, CT. This concerns the special exclusion zoning application by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation to transform a residential six-acre property into some kind of an art center and event venue with accommodation.
The property features an 18th century farmhouse with Modern additions by ex-Nazi agent-turned-architect Philip Johnson, a post-World War II favorite of some in the elite cultural left.
The structures of the Madison property became dilapidated and it fell into foreclosure in 2019. The Foundation purchased the property in February 2022.
Philip Johnson’s Nazi past continues to be slammed extensively in the American and international press with no end in sight, while some insist the disgraced architect later “reformed” himself. Among many allegations and documented facts, Johnson’s secretary told the FBI that Johnson wanted to become the American Hitler in 1933-34. He also travelled to Germany and attended Hitler rallies. (See Johnson’s FBI report.)
Right before the last meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission on August 1, former Chief Curator of Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Hilary Lewis, an MIT / Harvard graduate, curiously weighed in supporting the project via a letter drop.
Last Friday, resident and educator Brittany Bowdren BLASTED Hilary in the following rebuttal.
August 9, 2024
To: State Senator, State Representative, First Selectwoman, Planning and Zoning Commission and Town Planner
Re: Rebuttal to Hilary Lewis’s support of Tremaines’ Pro-Nazi designer Philip Johnson
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
I write in rebuttal to Hilary Lewis’s letter submitted to Planning and Zoning on 8/1/24. The resurrection of 6 Opening Hill Road—the Tremaine family’s paean to a dead age of glittering superficiality and their Nazi architect Philip Johnson—would hardly constitute an “asset to the town of Madison” (Lewis). On the contrary, it would be a harmful and embarrassing detraction from the character of our town. Esteemed institutions of art, higher education and cognoscenti have denounced Johnson‘s racism and rejected his name, and so should Madison.
Let us be clear: Philip Johnson was a Nazi. And the Tremaine family’s past patronage of the arts can not obscure their deep, personal and professional relationship with a man who supported Hitler. It is commonplace that Ms. Lewis minimizes Johnson’s unsavory past in her letter. She, along with too many other art experts and historians in the past, are complicit in whitewashing from the records Johnson’s zealous racism and active support of Hitler.
Philip Johnson’s own alma mater, Harvard University, has removed his name to demonstrate their condemnation of his white supremacy and anti-Semitism, “The Harvard Graduate School of Design will no longer refer to one of its houses as the Philip Johnson Thesis House in response to an open letter criticizing its namesake’s white supremacist views…The building…will now be formally referred to by its physical address: 9 Ash Street. [Dean] Whiting’s statement said removing the name was just one step in addressing Johnson’s legacy…what she called the ‘white supremacy of architecture…[Johnson’s] racism, his fascism, and his strenuous support of white supremacy have absolutely no place in design’” (Apollon and Teichholtz). What could be more damning than to be rejected by one’s own alma mater? Despite Johnson’s extensive contributions to art and architecture, Harvard was ruled by their conscience.
In like kind, Amale Andraos, Professor and Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture from 2014 to 2021, is among the many prominent architects and artists to have called for institutions to renounce and remove Johnson’s name from every leadership title, public space, and honorific of every form (Betsky).
Johnson plays a starring role in Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, Rachel Maddow’s New York Times #1 Best Seller. Maddow explains that “Johnson fully expected to be indicted…alongside his fascist fellow travelers” and “Although Johnson was summoned in May 1942 to appear before the federal grand jury investigating U.S. fascist and Nazi plots inside America, friends in high places appear to have intervened to keep Johnson out of the dock” (Maddow 311).
It must be emphasized: to claim that Johnson’s Nazi political views and activities are “irrelevant” is morally reprehensible. Art is influential not purely for its aesthetics, but also for the ideologies it represents. Art can not be conveniently isolated from the context of the artist’s character, beliefs and actions. To do so would be unethical and irresponsible.
Johnson fell in love with Nazism and the pageantry of its aesthetics. In his search for an American Hitler, he found Father Coughlin, the wildly popular antisemitic “Radio Priest” supported by millions. In 1936, approximately 80,000 Couglin supporters attended a Chicago rally, and “Coughlin stood…atop a stark white rostrum towering…20 feet over the heads of his listeners…behind him rose a five-story white wall topped by a row of enormous American flags fluttering from black posts…He commanded his thousands to ‘unsheathe the sword…and carry on.’ Philip Johnson had designed [Coughlin’s] platform, modeling it on the one from which Hitler spoke…at the giant Nazi Party rally…in Nuremberg” (Wortman). How could one possibly separate and ignore the Nazi ideology embedded in Johnson’s Radio Priest platform?
In addition, “Describing the inspirations that produced his Glass House, [Johnson] suggested rather disturbingly that the idea of an illuminated house at night came from ‘a burnt wooden village I saw once where nothing was left but foundations and chimneys of brick.’ Lamster…wonders whether [Johnson] ‘intentionally re-created the ‘stirring spectacle’ that was the burning of Jewish shtetls he had witnessed driving through Poland with the Wehrmacht” (Saval).
On a similar note, V. Mitch McEwen, Professor at the Princeton University School of Architecture, cautions us on the significance of Johnson’s Barn at 6 Opening Hill Road in Madison. Professor McEwen advised Madison Planning and Zoning “to heed the local concerns around the proposed rezoning of the Tremaine Barn…To address false claims of The Tremaine Foundation, Philip Johnson did not atone for being a Nazi. In fact, he quoted Hitler as late as the 1990s…As far as the Tremaine site, it is important to note the SS repurposed barns in Poland. Auschwitz was built on a stolen farm. Barns and farmhouses were repurposed for death chambers…Johnson had the humor of a sociopath…What the Tremaine Foundation proposes is not innocent. It may easily become a nationally recognized memorial to antiblack and antisemitic brutality, albeit a glamorous one” (McEwen).
There are too many institutions condemning Philip Johnson to list in this letter. Would the town of Madison inadvertently entangle itself in the ever rising controversy surrounding Philip Johnson by allowing the Tremaine Foundation to raise him from the dead at 6 Opening Hill Road? It would seem an easily avoidable embarrassment for our community.
American intelligentsia and leading institutions of art and education are awake, and they resoundingly reject Philip Johnson. Would it be in the Town of Madison’s best interests to go against this widespread, socio-cultural movement by embracing him?
Please do the right thing for Madison by rejecting the Tremaines’ application in its entirety.
Sincerely,
Brittany Bowdren
***********************************
Four residents expressed their support to the “Rebuttal of Lewis’s Support of Tremaine’s Pro-Nazi Architect Philip Johnson”.
It is still unclear to what extent Madison residents as a wider group are concerned about the Philip Johnson associations to the property, as some may be reluctant to state this publicly.
"His legacy is contested and fraught, for both [the Museum of Modern Art in New York], whose architecture department he founded, and, arguably, for Modernism itself in the US," wrote journalist Edwin Heathcote recently in The Financial Times.
Will the ex-Nazi agent design in Madison receive special exclusion zoning status?
That is the question. A final argument by the applicant is scheduled to take place on August 15. Then the Madison CT Planning and Zoning Commission has 45 days to make a decision.
Apollon, Audrey M. and Leah J. Teichholtz. “Graduate School of Design Strips Architect’s Name from House in Response to Open Letter.” The Harvard Crimson. (January 7, 2021).
Betsky, Aaron. “Why We Should Cancel Philip Johnson.” Architect Magazine. (December 11, 2020).
Lewis, Hilary. Letter to Town of Madison Planning and Zoning Commission. (August 1, 2024).
Maddow, Rachel. Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. New York, Crown Publishing,
(2023).
McEwen, V. Mitch. Letter to Madison Planning and Zoning Commission. (July 16, 2024).
Saval, Nikil. “Philip Johnson, The Man Who Made Architecture Amoral.” The New Yorker. (December 12, 2018).
Wortman, Mark. “Famed Architect Philip Johnson’s Hidden Nazi Past.” Vanity Fair. (April 4,
2016).
