Elly and Henry

In 1939, Elly Glass, a Viennese woman, traveled to Berlin in an effort to free her Jewish husband from Buchenwald. At only 23 years old, Elly obtained an audience with a high-ranking Gestapo officer. By the end of that meeting, the officer said, Your husband will be released in 10 days. After his release, the couple fled Vienna and came to the United States. With no money, no fluency in the English language, and no friends to help them, they overcame extreme obstacles. In less than a year they worked their way out of the rat and bedbug-infested boarding house they were forced to live in. By 1948, Henry Glass became the architect of one of the first solar houses in America, an early advocate for living green, and a legendary industrial designer. His design innovations included the use of alternative materials such as plastics and Masonite and were often collapsible to a volume so small it could hardly be imagined. These are the designers that brought us from the 20th century and into the 21st. This is their story: a portrait of a pioneering inventor and the woman who made everything possible throughout their 66 years together.