Saarinen's Miller House to be Preserved, Open to the Public

J. Irwin Miller House - More IndyStar Galleries

View this gallery at IndyStar: J. Irwin Miller House

Eero Saarinen's 1957 Miller House in the modernist mecca of Columbus, Indiana, is being donated to the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) and will eventually be open to the public. With the interior by Alexander Girard and landscape design by Daniel Urban Kiley, the Miller House and Garden was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000. The house will undergo an 18-month renovation, which will include careful restoration of many of the original period details. Once the renovation is completed, the IMA will work with the Columbus Area Visitors Center to offer public access to the house and gardens. Can't wait.

New Life for Saarinen's Terminal 5

Eero Saarinen's iconic Terminal 5 at Kennedy Airport moved a step closer to reopening. Closed since October 2001, the main terminal building, which was completed in 1962 for TWA, is being incorporated into jetBlue's new terminal at the airport. From Friday's New York Times story:

The [Port] authority’s board approved a $19 million project to perform the essential repairs needed to allow travelers to pass through the 46-year-old terminal on their way to the enormous new JetBlue Airways terminal that wraps around the T.W.A. building in a crescent shape.

Both buildings are known as Terminal 5. The hope is to open them simultaneously this fall, said William R. DeCota, the aviation director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. If not, he said, the T.W.A. building — an official landmark designed by the architectural giant Eero Saarinen — would reopen soon thereafter. Except for a brief stint as an exhibition gallery in 2004, the Saarinen terminal has been closed since T.W.A. ended operations in October 2001. The main terminal building, called the headhouse, and two tubular departure-arrival corridors have been preserved. Those corridors will connect the Saarinen and JetBlue terminals.

“When Terminal 5 launches in fall,” JetBlue says on its T508.com Web site, “customers will have the option of checking in at a JetBlue kiosk in the Saarinen building and taking in this landmarked architectural wonder’s exquisite modernist design on their way to our new terminal.” The airline has already adopted the gull-winged profile of the T.W.A. building into its Terminal 5 logo.

Celebrating Saarinen

I just bought a Eero Saarinen Tulip coffee table for our den and I was reading more about the history of the design. I found the fascinating 1956 cover story Time did on Saarinen (just five years before he died) in which he gave his famous quote that the goal of the yet unfinished pedestal was to "clear up the slum of legs in the U.S. home." The Tulip Collection, which is now celebrating its 50th anniversary, was released to public in 1958 and took 6 to 8 weeks for delivery. So why does it take 16 weeks today? Anyway, check out this Yale University database of nearly 1,300 Saarinen-related photos and drawings.

Warm Up at Jetsetter Lounge

With the cold and wind today, I was thinking about Florida--and the Jetsetter Lounge. If you plan on heading down to Palm Beach County this winter, check out Jetsetter in Lake Worth for some good food, cool MCM vibe and classic designs by Saarinen, Eames, Nelson and Noguchi. My wife and I had an especially good time hanging out after dinner in the lounge's Ball Chair by Eero Aarnio.