Block Party

After doing its time in trend jail, this building material is back in fashion

-  HANNAH MARTIN

When the French architect and designer Pierre Chareau conceived Maison de Verre in 1928 for the Parisian Dr. Dalsace and his wife, the home's glass-block façade, which allowed light to pour in by day and glow from within at night, was radically modern. At that time, Saint-Gobain, which produced the vitreous bricks, couldn't even guarantee that the still-new building material was weatherproof. But nearly a century later the house-and its namesake verre-has shown its staying power in more ways than one.