The mid-twentieth century glass and steel-framed house in Southern California challenged conventional ideas about domestic design and suggested dilemmas for modern domestic life. This study will analyze glass houses in Southern California---Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Ojai and Santa Barbara---built between 1945 and 1970 to better understand modernist space, the capabilities of building with steel and glass, and the ways in which home was defined at the mid-twentieth century. My historical study of architecture borrows methods from cognate fields of sociology, anthropology and women's studies to analyze exterior materials, structure, design, and spatial layout, the built landscape, domestic space, and the inhabitants who made the glass house into a home. The examples will be drawn from a study group of over one hundred glass houses designed and constructed in post-World War II Southern California from 1945--1970.