Richard Neutra's Windshield House

In 1936, John Nicholas and Anne Brown commissioned Richard Neutra, the great Vienna-born architect, to design a summer house for them on Fishers Island, New York. Completed in 1938, Windshield (named for its large expanses of glass) was Neutra's most significant residential building outside Los Angeles and the only one on the East Coast. A striking example of International Style architecture that featured many modern innovations, including two of R. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion bathrooms, the house was severely damaged by a hurricane only weeks after its completion. The Browns rebuilt the house and continued to occupy it until 1959. The house was destroyed by fire in 1975. This engaging publication, written by prominent scholars of contemporary architecture and design, is the first to focus on the collaborative design process for Windshield, as revealed by the extensive Brown/Neutra correspondence, as well as on its role in modern American architecture. J. Carter Brown has contributed personal recollections about growing up in Windshield. This book will accompany an exhibition that opens at the Harvard University Art Museums in November 2001, and will then travel to the RISD Museum, the Octagon Museum of the American Architectural Foundation, and the Armand Hammer Museum at UCLA.