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<\/div><\/div>Eero Saarinen had been experimenting with the idea of conversation pits for a few years when he received a commission from industrialist J. Irwin Miller to design a family home in Columbus, Indiana, in 1953. Saarinen was interested in the potential for sunken living rooms to create productive divisions in open-space floor plans\u2014informal, intimate spaces within large expanses, which would solve \u201cthe problem of furniture, with its inevitable \u2018slum of legs\u2019\u201d\u2014and the Miller House provided an opportunity to test his solution.\u00a0
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\nIn 1959, the house appeared in a twenty-page feature in House & Garden<\/em>, where the conversation pit was described as a \u201cbrilliantly cushioned well\u201d\u2014the back cushions made thicker than standard to help people get in and out more easily, the steps angled so sitters couldn\u2019t see up women\u2019s skirts, and the underside of the piano painted pillar-box red\u2014an intimate, low-profile setting where guests could lounge and look at nothing but each other. Creating a dedicated space for conversation might have been less unusual at the time than it would be now, particularly considering current suspicion around technology entering the home, but it was undeniably decadent and challenged ideas around social decorum and propriety. In a 1963 edition of TIME<\/em>, an argument against conversation pits, and their many dangers, was published:
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\n“At cocktail parties, late-staying guests tended to fall in. Those in the pit found themselves bombarded with bits of hors d\u2019oeuvres from up above, looked out on a field of trouser cuffs, ankles and shoes. Ladies shied away from the edges, fearing up-skirt exposure. Bars or fencing of sorts had to be constructed to keep dogs and children from daily concussions.”\u00a0\u00a0
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\nIn an April 1964 edition of the New York Times Magazine<\/em>, writer Sylvia Wright described them as an \u201canti-chair,\u201d a \u201ctransitional device backed by many architects who lack the courage openly to advocate lying down.\u201d She argued that, rather than too radical, they could go further to accommodate modern America, a \u201cuniquely non-chair sitting people,\u201d who \u201conly sit when engaged in activities of great importance, those which identify them as men of position and substance\u201d and prefer lying down or standing. \u201cThere seems to this writer, however, to be overwhelming evidence that [. . .] the United States is gradually ceasing to be a chair-sitting nation,\u201d she writes. It \u201cis becoming instead a nation where one of the most characteristic positions is a state of collapse.\u201d
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\nConversation pits appeared at a time of broader cultural shifts and upheaval, when \u201cthe vogue for suntans brought the freedom to lie down in places our parents wouldn\u2019t have thought of,\u201d and with so much up in the air, rolling down or climbing over seats seemed just as plausible as any other future. They featured in various homes, in projects by Saarinen, Girard, Goff, and Paul Rudolph, both domestic and in the exciting new realm of the airport\u2014such as Saarinen\u2019s TWA Flight Center at JFK. However, by 1960, Saarinen decried them as a clich\u00e9, fearing they were overdone and lamenting that he hadn\u2019t come up with a better way to restructure the formal parlor. And so, for a while at least, they disappeared. Then, in the 1980s,\u00a0conversation pits had a resurgence amid New York\u2019s boom in Midtown lofts and bachelor pads. When architect Janusz Gottwald designed a loft interior for a wealthy consultant who \u201cwanted to be freed from the limitations of ordinary seating,\u201d Gottwald realized the versatility of the form\u2014\u201cyou can even lie on it as if it were a grassy knoll.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\nIn 1959, the house appeared in a twenty-page feature in House & Garden<\/em>, where the conversation pit was described as a \u201cbrilliantly cushioned well\u201d\u2014the back cushions made thicker than standard to help people get in and out more easily, the steps angled so sitters couldn\u2019t see up women\u2019s skirts, and the underside of the piano painted pillar-box red\u2014an intimate, low-profile setting where guests could lounge and look at nothing but each other. Creating a dedicated space for conversation might have been less unusual at the time than it would be now, particularly considering current suspicion around technology entering the home, but it was undeniably decadent and challenged ideas around social decorum and propriety. In a 1963 edition of TIME<\/em>, an argument against conversation pits, and their many dangers, was published:
\n
\n“At cocktail parties, late-staying guests tended to fall in. Those in the pit found themselves bombarded with bits of hors d\u2019oeuvres from up above, looked out on a field of trouser cuffs, ankles and shoes. Ladies shied away from the edges, fearing up-skirt exposure. Bars or fencing of sorts had to be constructed to keep dogs and children from daily concussions.”\u00a0\u00a0
\n
\nIn an April 1964 edition of the New York Times Magazine<\/em>, writer Sylvia Wright described them as an \u201canti-chair,\u201d a \u201ctransitional device backed by many architects who lack the courage openly to advocate lying down.\u201d She argued that, rather than too radical, they could go further to accommodate modern America, a \u201cuniquely non-chair sitting people,\u201d who \u201conly sit when engaged in activities of great importance, those which identify them as men of position and substance\u201d and prefer lying down or standing. \u201cThere seems to this writer, however, to be overwhelming evidence that [. . .] the United States is gradually ceasing to be a chair-sitting nation,\u201d she writes. It \u201cis becoming instead a nation where one of the most characteristic positions is a state of collapse.\u201d
\n
\nConversation pits appeared at a time of broader cultural shifts and upheaval, when \u201cthe vogue for suntans brought the freedom to lie down in places our parents wouldn\u2019t have thought of,\u201d and with so much up in the air, rolling down or climbing over seats seemed just as plausible as any other future. They featured in various homes, in projects by Saarinen, Girard, Goff, and Paul Rudolph, both domestic and in the exciting new realm of the airport\u2014such as Saarinen\u2019s TWA Flight Center at JFK. However, by 1960, Saarinen decried them as a clich\u00e9, fearing they were overdone and lamenting that he hadn\u2019t come up with a better way to restructure the formal parlor. And so, for a while at least, they disappeared. Then, in the 1980s,\u00a0conversation pits had a resurgence amid New York\u2019s boom in Midtown lofts and bachelor pads. When architect Janusz Gottwald designed a loft interior for a wealthy consultant who \u201cwanted to be freed from the limitations of ordinary seating,\u201d Gottwald realized the versatility of the form\u2014\u201cyou can even lie on it as if it were a grassy knoll.\u201d<\/p>\n