Schwarz
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But the evidence of daily life has not been scrubbed from the house. The line of walnut cabinets that define the sleeping area are a little scuffed. The ceiling shows signs of the old, leaking roof. The kitchen, a simple open plan of cabinets and an almost antique electric stove, is a real estate agent's nightmare. You can hear the officious salesman: Just tear that out, put in some stainless steel and you're good to go.
Which, fortunately, will never happen. In 1986, when Johnson was getting into his 80s, he willed the house and its surrounding 47-acre campus to the National Trust, though he retained the right to live there until his death. A ribbon-cutting Thursday helped introduce the house to its nervous neighbors in New Canaan, once a center of modernist architecture, now a tony, leafy enclave with a distressing number of tacky McMansions.