The Miller House and Garden is a historic house museum at 2760 Highland Way in Columbus, Indiana, United States. It was designed by Eero Saarinen as a mid-century modern residence for the family of the businessman J. Irwin Miller and his wife Xenia Simons Miller. The interior designer Alexander Girard, the landscape architect Dan Kiley, and Saarinen's associate Kevin Roche assisted with various parts of the design. The house and gardens, owned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) since 2009, are designated as a National Historic Landmark. Both the house and the gardens have been praised for their design over the years.
The plot of land, bounded by the Flatrock River on the west and Washington Street on the east, includes a meadow, two allées, and groves of trees. Kiley designed the landscape as an extension of the home, loosely divided into three sections extending from the house. The Miller House itself is a single-story house on a terrace, covered by a flat roof. It covers with six bedrooms. Inside, four zones branch off from a central living room that features a conversation pit. These four zones include rooms for parents, children, guests and servants, and service areas. Girard designed furnishings and furniture for the house, and the Millers displayed their art collection there.
After Miller acquired the site in September 1953, he commissioned Saarinen for the project, commencing a two-year design process. The Taylor Brothers Construction Company began constructing the house in 1955, and the Millers began moving into the house in March 1957. Over the years, the Millers hosted many meetings and social gatherings at the house. The Millers made several changes to the original design, including removing an interior wall to enlarge a room. Though the Miller children gradually moved out of the house, their parents continued to live there for the rest of their lives; Irwin Miller died in the house in 2004, followed by Xenia Miller in 2008. After the IMA acquired the house, the property was renovated, opening to the public in May 2011.
Site The Miller House and Garden are located at 2760 Highland Way in Columbus, Indiana, United States. The plot of land, bounded by the Flatrock River on the west and Washington Street on the east, is rectangular and measures . A meadow slopes down to the west, toward the river, which is about away. The house itself is situated on a hillside, where the land abruptly descends about . For privacy, the house was approached from a side street (Highland Way) rather than directly from the busier Washington Street, and the front door was positioned away from the street. A service passageway leads to Washington Street, which is one full block away.
Landscape features The garden around the house was designed by the landscape architect Dan Kiley, who had worked with the house's architect Eero Saarinen on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri. Kiley's design was a modernist adaptation of formal European gardens, which are generally symmetrical and geometric, and was inspired by the patches of farmland he saw on his flights to Columbus. The design continues the architectural elements of the house and was intended to provide privacy, color, and distinctive decorations to the property without intruding on the landscape or blocking off neighbors. Kiley used architectural terms to describe his design, for instance likening his allées to balustrades. Although the house was intended as a private residence, Kiley had intended the grounds as "an element of the greater assemblage of Columbus' modern architecture" from the outset. Gregg Bleam, who worked on the project with Kiley, described the design as "garden, meadow, and wood".
Allées
The main entrance allée, originally made of horse chestnut trees, lines Highland Way, the access driveway that extends south of the house. The horse chestnut trees were later replaced with yellow buckeyes. As visitors travel north along Highland Way, the house appears gradually behind the trees; a pathway continues north on the same axis, running east of the house. A west–east allée, with three rows of trees, runs westward to the river, originating on the southern facade of the house. This contrasted with traditional allées, which often led to formal lawns.
Yet another allée, composed of two rows of honey locust trees, runs along the west side of the house. This allée, which is intended to shade the house, separates the house on one side from the meadow and river on the other. For visual consistency, all of the trees in the western allée are typically replaced even if only a few trees die or are damaged. Crushed stone surrounds the trees in the western allée. In contrast to traditional allées, which terminate at a building, the western allée is bisected by the house, continuing north and south from either end. Art was displayed at each end of the western allée when the Millers lived there; the north end contained Henry Moore's sculpture Draped Reclining Woman, while the south end included a bas relief by Jacques Lipchitz.
Terrace and groves The house sits on a platform that extends outward from the house's footprint, creating a terrace garden. The platform measures thick. Within the platform, a outdoor terrace made of terrazzo abuts the house on all sides. Ivy plantings extend a further from the terrace, where a slate coping surrounds the terrace. Kiley's original plan called for the terrace to extend the platform's entire 25-foot width, but he scaled it back to 10 feet, allowing greenery to be planted closer to the house.
The garden's design emphasized the placement of the plantings over the actual species used there; the boundaries between zones were delineated by changes in the density and spacing between different plantings. The garden is arranged in several overlapping grids in a manner evoking Columbus's street grid. Hedges, bosques, allées, groves, and flat surfaces such as lawns were used to delineate the different parts of the grid. The three allées themselves divide the gardens around the house into four room-like sections. The sections are arranged in a spiraling or pinwheel configuration, similar to how the interior of the house is divided into rectangular zones. The north, east, and south sections of the garden respectively correspond to the parents' zone, the service area, and the children's zone of the house. The plantings were placed strategically to protect the interiors from the elements.
The house's primary gardens are surrounded by a pair of parallel arborvitae hedges, planted in the shape of offset dashed lines. East of the house are two rows of large oak trees. There are orchards both to the north and south of the house. The orchard to the north (adjoining the parents' bedroom) was originally planted with redbuds, which were later replaced with crabapples; these are interspersed with a multicolored checkerboard of stone floor tiles. In the southwest corner is a swimming pool and a recreational court, which abuts the children's bedrooms and is surrounded by a hedge. Tulips—among the favorite plants of Xenia Miller, one of the house's original residents—were also planted in the garden. Kiley re-graded the meadow west of the house so it descended at a constant angle, though he did not modify the landscape on the river, at the far western reaches of the site. A pair of weeping beeches delineates one side of the meadow, shading the house from the west.
Other structures After the house was completed, Roche-Dinkeloo (a successor to Saarinen's firm) had considered constructing a glass pavilion at the western allée's northern end. The pavilion plans were canceled when Draped Reclining Woman was acquired in 1971. During the Miller family's ownership of the house, in 1966, they also acquired a lot to the south, with a barn and another house for their servants.
Architecture The Miller House is one of the very few single-family homes designed by Eero Saarinen, as he typically specialized in larger buildings. Other figures involved in the house's design include the interior designer Alexander Girard, who worked closely with the Millers to furnish the residence; the landscape architect Dan Kiley; and Saarinen's associate Kevin Roche. S. R. Lewis & Associates were the building's mechanical engineers. Architectural drawings credit Saarinen and Girard equally with the design, and Kiley did not join the project until the house's blueprints were largely complete. The house's exterior, interior, and gardens were all designed in tandem, so the different parts of the design all related to one another. Like the gardens outside, the house's layout and materials deviated from architectural norms of the time. The Miller House, whose architecture followed the design philosophy of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is an example of the modernist International Style.
The Miller House is one of seven buildings in Columbus designated as National Historic Landmarks. The others are The Republic Building, the Mabel McDowell Adult Education Center, the Irwin Union Bank Building, the North Christian Church, the First Christian Church, and the First Baptist Church. Of these buildings, the Miller House is one of three designed by Saarinen, the others being the Irwin Union Bank Building and North Christian Church. The house was the third of four buildings that Saarinen designed for the family of J. Irwin Miller, after a 1952 cottage in Canada and the Irwin Union Bank.
Exterior
The house is one story high and has concrete-block perimeter walls clad in slate. Each slab of slate measures across, while the concrete-block walls behind it are thick. Large windows are interspersed throughout the facade, overlooking many of the rooms. There are loggias on three elevations of the facade. The main entrance, on the southern elevation, is shaded by magnolia trees and leads into one side of the house's living room.
The roof is rectangular and is cited as measuring across. It has several skylights, and it is pitched at a slight angle to provide adequate drainage. The eaves at the roof's perimeter protrude outward from the house, overhanging the terrace. The eaves are interspersed with a band of skylights, which continue uninterrupted along the perimeter of the house. The skylights helped illuminate the facade with natural light, since the facade would have otherwise been shaded by the eaves, and they also visually marked the transition between the exterior and interior.
Interior The Miller House covers , occupying much of a rectangle that measures roughly across. It has six bedrooms. The floors are made of travertine in the living room and terrazzo in other rooms. The interior walls are made of marble; they have few decorative elements, creating a background upon which the Miller family could display items such as heirlooms and art. Windows, doors, and panels are trimmed with aluminum, and a myriad of brass decorations is scattered around the house. The mechanical system initially included a boiler (which treated water from the water-supply system), air filter, air-handling unit, air-cooling system, and thermostat system. There was also a radiant heating system and an underfloor air distribution system divided into multiple sectors. These pieces of equipment have been gradually replaced over the years. There is a basement for mechanical equipment and storage.