Philip [Johnson] was always a perfect gentleman of the old school. But once I saw his wit and grace take an almost grandfatherly form.

It was at the end of a splendid fall day that I had spent with him at New Canaan, reporting an article I was writing for Vanity Fair. My wife and children arrived to pick me up. As he came out of the Glass House to greet them, casting long shadows in the golden, late afternoon sun, my then-four-year-old daughter surveyed the Empyrean scene and its ancient, white, wizard-ish lord.

He welcomed her, and she looked up at him and earnestly asked, “Were you here when the world first started?”

“At last,” he replied, taking her two little hands in his, “someone who ‘understands’ me.”

Told by Kurt Andersen at AIA NY