It Takes a Lot of Space To Make a Museum a Home

Taxi drivers, taking passengers to the high-domed, gleaming beige mansion on Washington, D.C.'s fashionable Foxhall Road, are apt to ask if it is an embassy. Pedestrians sometimes mistake it for a new museum, stroll in to peer at Bonnard's radiant Apres le Dejeuner in the foyer. The house is not an embassy or museum, but neither is it an ordinary home. It is the new, luxurious, $1.5 million-plus home of David Lloyd Kreeger, 59, and his wife Carmen, who built it as a sort of shrine to art.

David Kreeger, a Harvard-educated corporation lawyer and top executive with the Government Employees Insurance Companies, constructed the building over the past four years to house the Kreegers' international collection of 150 paintings and 50 sculptures. Their architect was Philip Johnson, 62, who has designed half a dozen museums and an underground gallery for his own soupcan-to-nuts art collection in New Canaan, Conn. In fact, it was the Kreegers' plight as fellow collectors that made Johnson forswear his resolve never to design another house. "Too bad," said Kreeger when Johnson first turned them down. "We had hoped you would help us with a dilemma." "What's that?" asked Johnson, perking up. "We like lots of glass, but we need wall space for our collection." "Interesting," said Johnson, who adds today: "I can think of nothing better than to live in a museum, as long as it's homey."

Bauhaus Byzantine. "Homey," it turns out, needs a fairly broad definition to encompass what the Kreegers wanted. Both music lovers, they are locally famous for their elegant parties and chamber music recitals, to which they invite politicians, diplomats and society leaders. So, while their specifications called for only three bedrooms, that did not include a servants' wing with three additional bedrooms, two baths and sitting room. And for the swimming pool, the Kreegers thought that it would be nice to have an extra pool-level kitchen, not to mention a Plexiglas-roofed inner court for tropical plants.

But the main problem was to combine glass, which frames views of the Kreeger's 5 1/2-acre lot, with hanging room for their art. To solve their problem, Johnson chose a style that he terms "Mediterranean modern," designed the house as a series of modular galleries topped with lifted cross-vaults. These give it a vague resemblance to Istanbul's domed Hagia Sophia, which has led some Washington wags to dub it "Bauhaus Byzantine."

Mistily Magnetic. In fact, the house is positioned more like a European town house than like the typical suburban American home. The exterior is handsomely faced with slabs of honey-colored Italian travertine. Sculpture by Maillol, Arp, Lipchitz, Moore and Noguchi is placed on a terrace at the back, overlooking the pool. Inside the house, Johnson created a neutral background for art by covering the walls with carpeting dyed to match the travertine.

The center of the house is the sparsely furnished, 67 1/2-ft.-long great hall, used for formal receptions and large cocktail parties. On its walls hang 16 prize paintings by impressionists and postimpressionists, including a voluptuous Renoir Bather, and a darkly rich, superbly foreshortened Degas Girl on a Cushion. For any other collection, these 16 would be more than enough, but the adjoining dining room is fairly aglow with the Kreegers' most spectacular collection-within-a-collection. Eight mistily magnetic Monets offer a wide range of insights into the painter's gifts, from the crisp precision of an 1881 Varengeville to the moist verdure of a late (1906-16) Water Lilies.

Room for Privacy. The Kreegers' collecting did not cease while construction was going on. Indeed, so many new pictures were added that Johnson and Kreeger wound up adding three new galleries on the level below the main floor. Picassos and Chagalls now hang in the recital room, where Kreeger plays his Stradivarius in string quartets with old friends, including Abe Fortas. A smaller chess room contains surrealists. Liveliest of all is the gallery that the Kreegers call their "trial and error room." Its walls display their latest contemporary acquisitions, including works by Thomas Downing, Charles Hinman, James Rosenquist, Milton Avery and Larry Poons.

At the moment, the only room in the house without paintings is the master bedroom. Carmen Kreeger has banned all art there so that when visitors come, there will be no excuse to invade their hosts' privacy. Civic groups and philanthropic organizations are already badgering the Kreegers with requests to send groups to view the collection. In time, says Kreeger, he may well make both house and collection into a museum. But for the time being, the Kreegers would like to keep it mainly for themselves and their friends.

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