Philip Johnson and John Burgee’s Crystal Cathedral, a giant megachurch in California.
Philip Johnson’s Nazi past was probably the worst-kept secret in New York, but it wasn’t the only piece of the superstar architect’s character that was reprehensible.
His Nazi affiliation “was certainly the most outstandingly galling of all of his transformations, and the most morally inexcusable,” says Ian Volner, author of a new book on Johnson published by Phaidon, Philip Johnson: A Visual Biography (July 22, $150). “But they’re all on a spectrum. Some involve personal betrayals that were certainly not savory. When he turned his back on a given mode of architecture, he didn’t just turn his back on that sensibility, he turned his back on the people he’d previously advocated.”