Philip Johnson

At 98, groundbreaking architect Philip Johnson announced this week that he is retiring from his architectural practice, Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects. During Johnson's six-decade career, he designed the AT&T Building (now the Sony Plaza Building) and Seagram Building (with Mies van der Rohe), both in New York. Closer to home, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect and his firm designed the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove.

THERE'S a story about Philip Johnson that his friends like to tell. The celebrated architect was entertaining at his Glass House estate in this bucolic suburban town. At one point, a female guest, obviously impressed with her surroundings, said, "Mr. Johnson, I would live here if you'd ask me to." The architect turned to her and coolly replied, "Madam, I didn't ask you."

With Philip Johnson, architecture's ingenuous icon, as the featured guest speaker, the annual Dean's Council dinner of the UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning held last Sunday on the Westwood campus was a sellout. Nearing 80 years of age, the elegant, winsome Johnson has become the profession's leading superstar, gathering in coveted commissions and, in partnership with John Burgee, turning out, not surprisingly, elegant, winsome structures.

The Pennsylvania Academy of Music broke ground this week on the last project designed by architect Philip Johnson, a $21-million facility that will anchor a burgeoning downtown arts corridor in Lancaster, Pa. The four-story glass-and-granite building, slated to open in two years, was designed by Johnson and Alan Ritchie. A spokeswoman for Philip Johnson Alan Ritchie Architects said that the academy is the last project to be built that was designed by Johnson. He died in January 2005.

A disgruntled armored car driver believed to have taken $22 million in the biggest heist in U.S. history was arrested Saturday when he crossed the border into Texas, using the name of a former roommate, the FBI said. No money was recovered and authorities do not know where it might be. Philip Noel Johnson, 33, was stopped by U.S. Customs agents and asked for his identification as he was crossing from Matamoros, Mexico, into Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas.

Philip Johnson is the wicked old man of American architecture. At the age of 88, he has not lost the capacity to shock. Although he will never again do anything so outrageous as crowning the AT&T Building in Manhattan with a huge broken pediment resembling a Chippendale highboy, it will not be for want of trying.

That was a lovely piece on the Deconstruction boys and girls. Thanks. The characterization of Philip Johnson's spotted career was right on target. JIM BURNS San Francisco

The Pennsylvania Academy of Music broke ground this week on the last project designed by architect Philip Johnson, a $21-million facility that will anchor a burgeoning downtown arts corridor in Lancaster, Pa. The four-story glass-and-granite building, slated to open in two years, was designed by Johnson and Alan Ritchie. A spokeswoman for Philip Johnson Alan Ritchie Architects said that the academy is the last project to be built that was designed by Johnson. He died in January 2005.

"What's really hurt the guy in terms of turning it into a PR coup, another D.B. Cooper, is his name's so dull. Philip Johnson. Even I can't remember it," says Al Wells, who wrote a song about Johnson's heist for a Jacksonville, Fla., radio station. Twenty-six years ago, Cooper parachuted from the airliner he hijacked with exactly 1% of what Johnson stole. Cooper struck on Thanksgiving eve, dropping into a stormy night with his $200,000 ransom somewhere between Portland, Ore., and Seattle.

I read Allan Temko's review of the Philip Johnson biography by Franz Schulze (Dec. 25) with a good deal of discomfort. How did Johnson's homosexuality "complicate" his political and artistic attitudes? The matter is raised but left unexplained. Instead, there is something in the reviewer's handling of Johnson's homosexuality that verges on castigation and exploitation. Though PC mentality is often overbearing, I wonder if a discussion of a person's race or religion or sexuality does not require a degree of sensitivity about the words used to describe such characteristics.

Philip Johnson, who reigned for much of the 20th century as architecture's leading taste maker and designed some of America's most recognizable buildings, including the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, has died. He was 98. Johnson died Tuesday night at the Glass House, his masterpiece of unadulterated International Style Modernism in New Canaan, Conn., said Terence Riley, chief curator for architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The cause of death was not announced.

At 98, groundbreaking architect Philip Johnson announced this week that he is retiring from his architectural practice, Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects. During Johnson's six-decade career, he designed the AT&T Building (now the Sony Plaza Building) and Seagram Building (with Mies van der Rohe), both in New York. Closer to home, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect and his firm designed the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove.

Nicolai Ouroussoff's love affair with the works of architect Frank Gehry is misplaced ("A Messiness in Creating Masterworks," May 18). Gehry's abandonment of function in the interest of sensational forms, best described as Tin Can Modern, owes more to the school of architecture that gave us the Brown Derby, Googies, the Tail of the Pup, the Chili Bowl and other now-gone architectural novelties than to the more substantial works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip...

Amother was charged in Long Prairie, Minn., with murdering one of her daughters and trying to kill the other by deliberately driving into a lake. Lisa Patchen, 28, was spotted wet and shivering on the shore of Lake Latimer in northern Minnesota on Sunday. Emergency crews found her daughters, Amber Johnson, 6, and Allysha Johnson, 7, floating unconscious about 300 yards from where the car was submerged in 5 1/2 feet of water. Amber was pronounced dead a short time later.

Now 92, Philip Johnson has reigned as the undisputed dean of American architecture for nearly three-quarters of a century.

A disgruntled armored car driver believed to have taken $22 million in the biggest heist in U.S. history was arrested Saturday when he crossed the border into Texas, using the name of a former roommate, the FBI said. No money was recovered and authorities do not know where it might be. Philip Noel Johnson, 33, was stopped by U.S. Customs agents and asked for his identification as he was crossing from Matamoros, Mexico, into Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas.

Nicolai Ouroussoff's love affair with the works of architect Frank Gehry is misplaced ("A Messiness in Creating Masterworks," May 18). Gehry's abandonment of function in the interest of sensational forms, best described as Tin Can Modern, owes more to the school of architecture that gave us the Brown Derby, Googies, the Tail of the Pup, the Chili Bowl and other now-gone architectural novelties than to the more substantial works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip...

Amother was charged in Long Prairie, Minn., with murdering one of her daughters and trying to kill the other by deliberately driving into a lake. Lisa Patchen, 28, was spotted wet and shivering on the shore of Lake Latimer in northern Minnesota on Sunday. Emergency crews found her daughters, Amber Johnson, 6, and Allysha Johnson, 7, floating unconscious about 300 yards from where the car was submerged in 5 1/2 feet of water. Amber was pronounced dead a short time later.

"What's really hurt the guy in terms of turning it into a PR coup, another D.B. Cooper, is his name's so dull. Philip Johnson. Even I can't remember it," says Al Wells, who wrote a song about Johnson's heist for a Jacksonville, Fla., radio station. Twenty-six years ago, Cooper parachuted from the airliner he hijacked with exactly 1% of what Johnson stole. Cooper struck on Thanksgiving eve, dropping into a stormy night with his $200,000 ransom somewhere between Portland, Ore., and Seattle.

"Twenty million? And he's still out there?" marvels Mark Young, U.S. editor for the Guinness Book of Records, from his desk in Stamford, Conn. "These are the kinds of records that don't get broken," he says. Johnson has set the new domestic robbery mark by a country mile. His take dwarfs the $11 million five robbers stole from an armored car vault in New York City 15 years ago. (Four of the five were caught, but only $1 million was returned.