Frank Lloyd Wright and Me

Frank Lloyd Wright died when I was eight years old, evidence that I am not his reincarnate. However, I would love to have invited him to dinner, something wholesome as he preferred, and spend hours asking him questions about his design process. Exploring the similarities in our views about the home. Reign in my ego, if you will, but I like to fantasize that I, too, would have been a great architect, building out from his influences.

When I was a child, I did not play with dolls but entertained myself with my imagination –reading and drawing. Most of my drawings were houses and house designs, places I dreamed of living. I created villages on winding paths drawn with a stick in the sand by the side of a pond while my mom fished with her sister.

In high school I signed up for the drafting course, instead of home economics, but the school administrators denied me enrollment because drafting was for boys. When I insisted that I was sincerely interested, they told me that the course had only a small portion devoted to home design, the rest was on general drafting and blueprint production, of which would be no interest to a girl. I said, “I’m interested in that. I am not interested in learning to cook.” They looked at me with skepticism and made their power move – home economics; no more discussion; one day I would thank them. But I didn’t thank them for depriving me of the option to see that my doodles in the sand might have been the seeds of an architect.

As an adult I subscribed to the journal, Architectural Digest. I recall an issue that had a feature of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Falling Water.” I studied every picture, read the text, and was swept away. A few days later I walked into the bedroom of our two-year-old son, Chas.  Like Frank Lloyd Wright’s mother, I provided Chas with a set of geometric blocks, and he built with intensity beyond attention span for his age. Lying on the floor, beside a stack of blocks, I found the architectural digest. It was opened to the double spread photo of Falling Water. Sure this was a sign; I put all my energy into shaping his trajectory toward architecture.

According to Wright's autobiography, during his mother’s pregnancy, she declared that her first child would grow up to build beautiful buildings. Not only did she provide wooden blocks for young Frank, but also decorated his nursery with engravings of English cathedrals torn from a periodical to encourage the infant's ambition. Her son became America’s greatest architect (self-proclaimed). In his autobiography, Wright described these influences, "For several years, I sat at the little kindergarten table-top... and played... with the cube, the sphere and the triangle – these smooth wooden maple blocks... All are in my fingers to this day... "

Alas, my son evolved from playroom block building, not to architecture, but to building computerized kinetic sculptures. Perhaps that’s another form of block building. His own vision of where to take a Lego legacy. Blocks run through his fingers to this day, as well.

I am fascinated with building styles and love to tour old homes that signify a period in history. Also modern ones that tantalize with a cocktail of form and function, like the arts center in Melbourne Australia that I visited in 2011. Combining art exhibitions and performances, one semi-circular wall of the Performance theater rolled back like a pocket door so that office workers and shop keepers could stop in their busy day and listen to the symphony practicing for an upcoming performance. An example of democratic architecture, art for the masses, culture free of charge.

While I appreciate many styles of architecture, I discovered a soul mate in Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright and I love the colors terracotta and golden amber.

We love deep porches with over hanging eaves to keep out rain and walls of windows that blend interior and exterior. When a client requested that Wright eliminate a porch due to rising costs of the construction, Wright responded that the porch “is a necessary luxury, we must cling to that, too, with the strength of despair.” I couldn’t agree more.

FLW and I like our windows open to views without coverings and where privacy is needed the sunlight splashes through prisms of colored glass. Wright fully embraced glass in his designs and found that it fit well into his philosophy of organic architecture.

According to Wright's organic theory, all components of the building should appear unified, as though they belong together. Nothing should be attached to it without considering the effect on the whole. To unify the house to its site, Wright often used large expanses of glass to blur the boundary between indoors and outdoors.

Glass allowed for interaction and viewing of the outdoors while protecting from the elements. His windows, using hundreds of glass prisms are one of his most significant design achievements.

Wright once described organic architecture in this way: “Organic buildings are the strength and likeness of the spider’s spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.”

FWL and I love the serenity of Asian art. Hiroshige was his favorite Japanese block printer. My first two paintings purchased while in college, choosing art over food, were an original Hiroshige Woodblock from the 53 Stations of Tokaido Road series, and a modern Japanese-style print from the artist Stephen White. Wright’s homes and mine include the Buddha, Asian carpets, and textiles. (Painting by Sally Anger)

Frank Lloyd Wright and I believe that the sound of water – a fountain, a stream, a waterfall- should be enjoyed from the terraces, and if possible, running through the house, as they do in the Balinese cottages where I love to vacation.

Below:

Our favorite cottage @Taman Sari Resort Bali

Buddha on a turtle fountain in our back garden. Charles built new fountain out front that enables us to hear the sound of water.

FLW and I like handcrafted pottery in earthy colors, like this one from Shipubu culture of the Peruvian Amazone and lamps hanging from hand-crafted bronze hangars.

FLW and I ask the question: why make functional things that are not also beautiful- door hinges, door knobs and pulls?

We both believe a kitchen should be an inviting space for the cook’s inspiration including panels of windows to bring in light and nature.

We both demand concinnity in a room’s décor- furniture pieces, art, and colors fitting together to create a coherent whole.

True confession, each morning when I wake in the early hours, I travel with my mug of coffee through all the common spaces, the porches, and private spaces to be sure that nothing is out of place disturbing my visual pleasure. Then I proceed to my garden with the same purpose.

FLW was renowned for popping into the houses he built, unannounced, walking around, moving furniture and deriding the owners for straying from his preferred furniture placement.

He solved much of that problem with built-in stylized furniture that could not be moved and free-standing furniture designed for the space. He provided furniture plans to show the placement of each piece of furniture, checked in from time. He was agitated if something was out of place and freely moved the furniture back to where he thought it belonged. Owning a FLW home was a joy and a burden.

Wright had a flare for fashion and designed some of his own clothing as well as those of his wives. He chose his outfits as if he was costumed for a stage set. I could also be so accused.

Frank Lloyd Wright spent lavish amounts of money to build a house for clients with limitless funds to spend. But he also believed that housing should be affordable.  He declared that everyone should be able to afford a house. He thought that a house can be inexpensive while also being sophisticated, and modifiable in such a way that the buyer could make changes in the layout to suit their style and family’s needs.

He built many of these Usonian designs during the depression using modular blocks and designed inexpensive kit houses, also made popular by designers Gustav Stickley and John and Henry Greene. In the late 1800’s, Sears and Roebuck also began to produce kit houses from its Chicago office, including Craftsman homes.

I always believed I could have made a beautiful home even on a Peace Corps Volunteer budget, using local fabric for wallpaper, adding textiles, pottery, and baskets from the village. 

Case in point: Alison and Jim enjoying furniture made from river rock and Carol shopping for decorative baskets. Both in Tanzania.

Until recently I had never stepped into a Frank Lloyd Wright home, and I am lucky that my first sighting was the Darwin Martin House Complex in Buffalo, thanks to Buffalo Architectural Tour led by my friend, Adeline Talbot of Studio Travelers. Adeline curates small group cultural tours around gardens, art and architecture. (Website: WWW.studiotraveler.com).

This architectural tour was co-hosted by Benjamin Briggs, Director and CEO of Preservation North Carolina. Preservation Buffalo also played a significant role in setting up our specialized tour experiences, including a hard hat tour of the Richardson Insane Asylum (our hotel) and our culminating tour and cocktails at the McKinney home.

I was lured to this tour because it featured a Frank Lloyd Wright urban home complex and a summer home and buildings both designed for the same client, Darwin Martin. Having traveled with Adeline Talbot before, I knew that she would arrange insider showings, led by passionate guides, not often available to the public.

The Darwin Martin house 1903-1905) is considered one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most important early works for multiple reasons which I’ll mention later in this blog. However, it is my perception that its true significance lies in the fact that Darwin Martin gave Wright full reign to design as he wished and with no limits on cost, and because the project includes a vast archive of letters between architect and client.

In one letter Wright wrote this: We simply must recognize that if we are going into art in architecture that money is too gross a subject to take into account. The cost of the house was initially estimated at $7,800 but eventually the complex and furnishings came to $300,000, compared to other houses he built during that period, ranging from $7,000 to $9,000. 

When we walked into the Darwin Martin house we viewed a home as a work of art, designed and furnished by Wright, with little concession to the client’s wishes. Letters detail occasions where Martin asked Wright to make a change. Instead of honoring the request, Wright would simply persuade Martin that he would eventually see that what Wright wanted was also what Martin wanted. Martin might not see it at the time, but should trust the artist.

Martin became one of Wright’s closest friends for 30 years, and frequently bailed him out of his financial shortfalls due to Wright’s lavish spending and the baggage of having three wives and a mistress.  

Martin recognized Wright’s genius and spent time with Wright during all the construction phases, always enthusiastic as a child at Christmas. They wrote letters to each other about every detail, sometimes three times per day. This archive of correspondence between Wright and a client has been valuable to historians in understanding the mind and process of Frank Lloyd Wright in designing homes, interacting with clients, and addressing his nagging money problems.

The only hiccups in the Darwin Martin design and construction came from Martin’s wife, Isabelle. Not only was there no closet for her extensive wardrobe of gowns and lighting too dim for her poor eyesight, but also, she found the furniture to be extremely uncomfortable. While her husband did not complain that the bed designed to fit the space was too short for his body, he simply laid cross-wise, without a word of complaint. He played interception between Wright and his wife.

Here’s an example of a letter by Wright to Martin regarding Isabelle’s complaints about an exterior porch:

I am sorry that Mrs. Martin is still unhappy over our exteriors. If she has not seen enough to assure her of a certain capacity and versatility in creating beautiful homes I can say nothing to comfort her unless she might be pointed to the fact that each client is finally satisfied and our enthusiastic advocate…Many saw things which were as distasteful to them as the things you mention are distasteful to her…But if Mrs. Martin could not feel in the atmosphere of the work, something as true and simple as it was broad and capable, she would be a very foolish woman to entrust me with the designing of her home. She would be wasting the opportunity of her life…

Later, there were other disagreements over the furniture that Wright designed. Not only was it uncomfortable, she declared that the 3-legged dining room chairs were dangerous.

In a letter, she told Wright this: We do not want chairs that will cause even one per cent of our guests to wildly clutch the air and ejaculate, as this design would surely do…Please do not hug this child (the chair design) you have invented so close to you that you cannot see with others the impracticality.

Frank Lloyd Wright claimed that he constructed houses as a portrait of the client, that each house was as individualistic as the owner. In reality he bent the owner to his will, and ignored the wishes of other family members who would live in the home. One way that Darwin Martin persuaded his wife to trust Wright with free reign on the urban home complex was by promising her that he would commission Wright to build her a summer house, Graycliff, in which Wright would be required to work closely with Isabelle on design and furnishings.

Visiting these complexes allowed a unique opportunity to study two homes built for the same family, one with Wright having full control over every interior and exterior aspect, and the other where he gave into Isabelle’s demands, such as a large walk-in closet, window coverings, some comfortable chairs in the living room, and extensive gardens.

We also saw other elements of Graycliff, such as the stream that cascaded from the front portico, which Wright built against Isabella’s will and which she promptly covered up once Wright left the construction site.

The more I learned about Frank Lloyd Wright, the less I respected him as a person, while my adoration for his work remains.

Darwin Martin House Complex

The pinnacle of the Buffalo Architecture Tour occurred on the first afternoon, with an in-depth tour of Darwin Martin House Complex followed by a private cocktail party for our group in the Barton House, which was built on the property for Martin’s sister and her husband. Wright designed six structures for the 1.5-acre lot in the Historic Parkland District, which was laid out by noted landscape architect, Frederick Olmstead. (Photo taken by Elizabeth Gould)

Wright completed most of the design and construction between 1903-1905. Additions and changes were made over the next two years with Wright signing off the completed project in 1907.

The Barton House above was designed for Martin's sister and husband.

We enjoyed a private cocktail party in the Barton House and were allowed to sit on FLW original furniture. Whoopee! Isabelle was correct. His furniture was beautiful look at and uncomfortable to sit upon.

The property includes the main dwelling, a secondary house, a gardener’s cottage, and a series of interconnected buildings woven together within an integrated landscape. Art glass, furnishings, and other creative design elements—all conceived by Wright—make this home a total work of art.

Thinking about the 1.5 years it took my husband and me to renovate our modest home in Beaufort, NC, it was hard to believe this brilliant work of art and design could be built in two years.

Given full rein by an admiring client with an open purse, Wright was able to hire an army of construction engineers, craftsmen and landscape architects.

Beyond the structures, he added many flourishes, including 50 pieces of furniture designed for the space and function of main rooms, oriental carpets and Japanese prints and screens, at a whopping cost over-ride.

The house is considered to be one of the most important projects from Wright's Prairie School era and one of the great achievements of Wright’s career, resulting from a remarkable partnership between client and architect. Wright was especially fond of the Martin House design, referring to it for some fifty years as his "opus", and calling the complex "A well-nigh perfect composition.” Wright kept the Martin site plan tacked to the wall near his drawing board for the next half century. (Photo: Daniel Martin standing left back. Isabelle is looking at a book, flanked by the two children shortly after they moved in to the home.)

Darwin Martin (1865-1935) was an accomplished business leader in the city of Buffalo. A self-made millionaire, he was a top executive for the Larkin Company—a rapidly expanding soap and mail-order operation. Tasked with finding an architect to design the firm’s new administrative headquarter, Martin’s attention was drawn to Wright whose works and reputation at the time were limited to Illinois and his native Wisconsin.

Martin was also interested in having a new home built for his wife Isabelle and their two children. In the end, Martin was pivotal in engaging Wright for both projects—two of the most important commissions of the architect’s early career.

Upon arrival to the Martin complex, our gracious guide led us into the entrance and gave us permission to take photos, a rare treat, not usually allowed. There was an intimacy in the narrow entryway with tantalizing views in all directions (axial construction) to lure the visitor out into the main areas.

The first was a long view down the length of a glass-walled pergola opening into a greenhouse with cathedral glass ceilings and a marble statue with fountain.

Standing in the entrance hall, I noticed prism glass doors above wooden cabinets on each side of the entrance.

These opened for ventilation and heat from the radiator hidden below.

Exit left from the entrance foyer led into a large open reception room with a stunning semi-circular fireplace that can be seen from the entrance. No mantles. Wright avoided any ledges or shelving where owners might put nick-knacks. He demanded clean surfaces celebrating the spectacular beauty and variety of materials and workmanship.

There are no conventional walls on the first floor yet the spaces felt intimate. The diaphanous rooms were open to the outside with 394 windows but they also seemed private, shielded from passers-by with shrubs. The Martin’s preferred homey intimate gatherings rather than lavish showy spaces. It was fascinating how Wright captured openness and intimacy.

The rows of colored glass windows were magnificent, each a tree of life design, made of 750 individual pieces of glass. Some of the windows designed for the house are missing, currently replaced by clear glass panels. During the years of abandonment, some windows were stolen but a surprising number remain.

While under renovation, several neighboring home owners realized that some of the Martin House windows made their way to their homes and were returned once the restoration project began. When original glass or furniture is returned to the Daniel Martin Preservation wing, a replica of the window or furniture is provided in exchange for the piece.

On the tour, we went from the reception area to the large kitchen area made beautiful by a wall of clear windows looking out to the gardens and stables.

A wall of ice boxes and elegantly crafted cabinets for dishes filled the large space. Our guide told us that, one day a person touring the house realized that a pink cabinet in her house was part of this kitchen set and returned it to the foundation. The eight burner stove is still missing, and the preservation society remains ever hopeful for its return. 

We wandered on through the dining room, which had an innovative, if impractical dining room table. Wright cleverly installed lamps on each corner with wiring up through the base.  Electric lights were a new concept and when the servants accidentally touched one while serving they received a shock. It was an awkward shaped table that held six people, not enough spaces when their entire family convened. In addition, it was not possible to fit a table cloth on the oddly shaped table.

Wright was so enamored by his design that he pushed hard not to make changes. However, he did make an additional leaf, and the extensions for lamps to be removable.

Daniel and Isabelle were avid readers with a large book collection. Wright did not like the clutter of books so he built hidden bookcases in pillars throughout the home so that the Martins’ had quick access to their reading material.

He made one concession. Martin loved his handsome set of encyclopedias and took one to work every day. Wright built a case for these, the books positioned horizontally, their bindings exposed. The only books in sight in a home that held a vast but concealed library.

Near the entry hall, stairs wrap upward to a small covered light-well opening. This floor provides eight bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a sewing room.

The identical children’s rooms opened to a balcony with a floor of glass that provided coverage and light to the verandah below. Some of the moms in our tour group were alarmed at Wright’s negligence to the safety of the children, but Martin's two children grew to adults with no major mishaps on their glass-floored balconies.

Our guide told us colorful stories about the back and forth between Isabelle and her husband, who then had to negotiate with Wright, usually without success. After returning home, I ordered a book, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House –Architecture as Portraiture by Jack Quinn (2004 Princeton Architectural Press) and was delighted to find many letters between builder and client on these matters. The correspondence quoted in this blog is taken from that book.

One letter concerned the number of windows in the house, and in Isabelle’s mind, lack of privacy. Wright designed fifteen distinct patters of stained glass windows for the home, but other windows were clear to access the view.

The principle bedroom had two walls of windows, one facing the busy street in front and another looking out to the neighborhood to the east. Wright argued that privacy was created by the art glass, but it certainly did not control the flood of light. She won the argument by sleeping in another room.

The Martin house windows are considered one of its most distinctive features. More patterns of art glass were designed for the Martin House than for any other of Wright's Prairie Houses. Of particular significance are the fifteen distinctive patterns of jewel-like iridescent glass, that act as "light screens" to visually connect areas within the house.

Wright considered the exterior landscape to be integral to the architectural design. Designed by Walter Burley Griffin, the semi-circular garden contained a wide variety of plant species, chosen for their blossoming cycles to ensure blooms throughout the growing season. The landscaping provided privacy as well as beautiful flower and shrub views from the veranda. There are two sculptures in the garden made by Richard Bock. There is also a sculpture of Nike in the solarium that can be seen from the entrance.

The family settled into the house and came to love living there over twenty years. Sadly, they lost the house during the great depression. Martin enjoyed several post retirement years in the home while Wright was building Graycliff, their summer home.

Following the loss of the family fortune due to the Wall street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, Martin suffered a series of strokes. In 1937, two years after Martin died, debt collectors forced Isabelle from the house in 1937. Our tour guide said she walked out with the clothes on her back.

The official Martin House website states that the home did not fare well over the years. It was abandoned, partially demolished, and neglected in the period following the Martins’ life there. With the resolve of many, an ambitious restoration effort to save this treasure began in earnest in 1992 and was completed in 2019. Today, the Darwin Martin House Complex stands as a compelling symbol of civic identity and cultural pride. It has been named a National Historic Landmark and a premier heritage destination within New York State’s network of historic sites. (https://martinhouse.org/explore/our-story)

Graycliff

In 1926, Daniel Martin contracted Frank Lloyd Wright to build a summer home for his family, with Isabelle as the principle client. Wright was advised to keep her in full consultation as he designed the house for her pleasure. This had been a long-standing promise by Martin to Isabelle in exchange for her accepting certain design features in the city home that she did not like. 

The 8.5 acre Graycliff estate is approximately twenty miles outside of Buffalo, New York, situated on a high bluff overlooking Lake Erie. The house has a view of Buffalo across the lake, as well as the Ontario shore.

Some adaptations due to Isabelle’s wishes including bright lighting, important to Isabelle with her fading eyesight, and greater comfort in the living and dining areas. She installed drapes on the windows and had a large walk-in closet built off her bedroom for her clothing. Her favorite place to sit was a walled patio off the dining room in front of the house, looking out to the flower and vegetable gardens.

Isabelle had special requests for the garden. She wanted extensive gardens with the cut flowers she loved, as well as vegetable gardens, perennial gardens, and landscaping plants. Wright worked closely with her and designed the gardens, himself. The Graycliff gardens are considered one of the few, if not only garden designed by his hand. The grounds include a tennis court as well as trees and shrubs that complement the architecture.

Additional significant design-work was done by Ellen Biddle Shipman, one of the early and renowned women landscape architects, and one of the creators of the Arts and Crafts and American Craftsman style landscape design.

Shipman commented on the male dominated landscaping field to The New York Times (1938). "Before women took hold of the profession, landscape architects were doing what I call cemetery work." Shipman preferred to look on her career of using plantings as if she "were painting pictures as an artist." Little of her work remains today because of the labor-intensive style of her designs, but there exist preserved spaces, including the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University, often cited as one of the most beautiful American college campuses.

By the time of Graycliff's commission, Wright and the Martins had been personal friends as well as clients for over twenty years. Their long friendship grew between the time of the completion of the Martin House Complex and the construction of Graycliff .

The Graycliff complex of three buildings was built from stone quarried from the cliffs of the lakeside property and wood harvested from the grounds. Wright believed stone to be the only true building material and may be why he insisted the Martins incorporate it at Graycliff. He loved the way the copper came out of the rocks over time creating a run of rust, one of his favorite colors. Graycliff is considered to be one of Wright's most important mid-career works in his Organic Style.

On our tour we walked through the gardens to the house and were greeted by a small waterfall gushing from the portico and falling into a free-form pond. Wright wanted the sensation of water running through the house and spilling over the entrance grounds.

(Photo: Elizabeth Gould)

Isabelle did not like this feature and had it removed when she took possession of the home. The Graycliff Restoration team rebuilt it according to Wright’s designs and photos, as they aimed to capture the house as it was completed before the Martin’s took occupancy. Once again emphasizing Wright’s concept of architecture as portraiture to be a portrait of himself not the client.

The entrance opens into a pavilion-like center of transparent glass walls, allowing a view of the lake beyond. One section of the living area is floored and surrounded with planters of ferns. While it looks as if it is an exterior porch, it is enclosed and part of the main room. A cut flower garden with Isabelle’s favorite flowers is located beside the verandah.

The home was casual in décor and furnishings, quite different from the city home. The ledge above the fireplace and a low room divider of shelving invited clutter. While Wright detested these features, it was something that Isabelle insisted upon.

It was surprising to see such a pauper-like office off Martin’s bedroom, as he was a workaholic even on vacation. His home-office did have a view of the lake.

Photo by Elizabeth Gould

The bedrooms were on the second floor. All had views of Lake Erie. Note Isabelle's bedroom and walk-in closet.

The three servant’s bedrooms, on the same hall as the family’s, had fireplaces, bathrooms and lake views.

Downstairs the servants worked from a lovely kitchen and enjoyed a private dining room with window views from three sides of the room.

Room with windows is servant's dining room

Room with windows is servant's dining room. The door from kitchen opens to a path connecting Graycliff to daughter's house.

Darwin Martin, Isabel, daughter Dorothy and husband.

On the west side, a broad esplanade connects the terrace to the cliff and lake. The esplanade was designed to carry water, pumped from Lake Erie, down its length and over the bluffs, completing the illusion of water flowing through. Deemed financially extravagant, this feature was halted after only the esplanade itself was completed.

Other architectural features of the landscape include a sunken garden, a hidden garden, and stone walls in a "waterfall" pattern. Not surprisingly, it was Darwin Martin who first introduced Wright to Niagara Falls, less than 40 miles (64 km) to the north. The property included a garage and a home for their daughter’s family.

Although the Martin family lost much of its fortune due to the Great Depression and was forced to abandon the city house in 1937, they kept Graycliff, and returned annually until 1943.

At that time, they sold the property to a Roman Catholic teaching order of Piarists from Hungary in 1951. The Piarists established a boarding school on the grounds, as well as a private high school for gifted children in Buffalo. Although they added two structures to Wright's original design, they were respectful of the architects original rendering and left all Wright-designed buildings intact. Eventually enrollment dwindled and the schools closed; the number of priests in residence also declined dramatically. Finally, in late 1997, the Piarists decided they could no longer afford to maintain the property, and put it up for sale.

Soon after, a group of concerned individuals purchased the property, which was threatened with destruction due to its prime lakeside location and attractiveness to private developers. The group formed the non-profit Graycliff Conservancy in order to buy the property, restore it to its original condition, and open it to the public. This effort, aided by volunteers from throughout the community, has undertaken extensive restoration, both to remove the non-Wright additions and to restore the nearly ninety-year-old buildings. Public tours are now offered.

Information in this section was attained from our tour guide and Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fountain,_Graycliff.jpg

The Next Best House for Me

I could never afford a Frank Lloyd Wright home but over the years I have been drawn to Craftsman style architecture, as was Frank Lloyd Wright. The further study of Frank Lloyd Wright occasioned by this blog helped me to see why I am so attracted to these homes.

Over the years our family enjoyed visiting the David and Ruth Gaines’ family in Asheville, NC who lived in an historic Craftsman home, thought to be the site for the brothel depicted in Thomas Wolf’s novel, Look Homeward Angel. I loved the windows and the exposed wooden beams, the artisan woodwork, further enhanced by their Mission Style furniture, often associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. There were other examples of Craftsman homes in the old neighborhood where we lived in Durham. Frank Lloyd Wright was also influenced by this style of architecture and furnishings. 

Craftsman home architecture was pioneered by the Arts and Crafts Movement led by two California brothers Charles and Henry Greene who practiced in Pasadena from 1893-1914. Like FLW, they were also influenced by English Arts and Crafts movement and Oriental Wooden Architecture. Gustav Stickley was another leader in Arts and Crafts movement and coined the name, American Craftsman home.

Characteristics of the American Craftsman home included:

·      Low-pitched gable roofs that showcase exposed rafter tails

·      Structural integrity and craftsmanship

·      Wide front porches with distinctive columns resting on massive piers or a solid balustrade.

·      Walls of windows, large bay windows sometimes forming an entire wall.

·      Natural materials matched to locale including stone, clapboard, shingles, brick, or stucco.

·      Handcrafted details –exposed beams, fireplaces, built-in furniture-bookcases, benches,

·      Earthy color palettes – warm hues like deep browns and rust/terracotta, olive greens, muted tones creating warmth

·      Decorative motifs – Furnished with textiles in geometric patterns or nature inspired motifs. Inspired by nature rather than replicating nature precisely. Stylized interpretations.

·      Accessories like pottery and decorative tiles; light fixtures often feature stained or leaded glass shades with wrought iron details.

·      Enduring style – simplicity and elegance, timeless quality that transcends trends, craftsmanship and quality materials, that stand the test of time.

·      Emphases on connecting interior to exterior nature with emphasis on porches and covered terraces, and bringing natural materials indoors as part of the construction.

Gustav Stickley is recognized for creating the first uniquely American style of furniture and home design known as Craftsman. A leader of the Arts and Crafts movement in homebuilding and a major influence on Frank Lloyd Wright, Stickley created home designs that valued construction in harmony with its landscape: open floor plans, built-in storage, and natural lighting. In his lifetime, he designed at least 241 homes in this style and published more than 200 plans in his journal, The Craftsman. Articles on furnishings and landscape design for the Craftsman home also appeared in each issue.

In 1908, The Sears and Roebuck Company offered a catalog, the “Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans”, which advertised the company’s new line of building supplies. Included also were plans and instructions for 22 different house styles, all based on the popular designs of the period, including the Craftsman bungalow.

Three years later in 1911, realizing that one out of every four people in the country was a Sears customer, the company began including illustrations of house interiors with home furnishings, lighting, and hardware. Now for the first time, a potential homeowner could not only buy plans and building materials from the same company, but could find furnishings, as well.

Other important aspects of the Sears concept included giving the client opportunity to vary a house plan and materials to suit their needs. The Chicago office would send the exact materials, down to the nails, needed for the revised design. These homes started as a catalog design but bore the buyer’s imprint, a type of “Democratic Architecture.”

Above: The Hawthorne, what we believe to be our house plan.

The company’s philosophy was to better the standard of living for Americans no matter their background, race or economic class. Sears Roebuck and Company realized it could be a corporate citizen and still maintain a profit margin.

For the next three decades, the Sears Modern Homes department created a new chapter in the

history of American domestic architecture. Working with a group of company architects, Sears

designed 447 different houses, including the Craftsman and Prairie home design. The designs and materials ranged in price from $390 to under $5,000.

Not mentioned in historical references I have seen is the possible influence of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright on Sears architects who also worked and lived in Chicago. At any rate, I had to have a Craftsman home.

When we decided to downsize from our 1778 historic home in Beaufort, I had my sights set to buy a Craftsman home. There are several in Beaufort and I put flyers on their front porches expressing our interest should they wish to sell. One afternoon I was sitting on the front porch of our old house, yielding a “For Sale” sign out front. A couple walked by and asked after our daughter and her corgi dogs. I had never officially met this couple but realized they were the owners of two corgi dogs whom my daughter had become acquainted.

They asked how our house sell was going and I told them I was not worried about selling the house but finding a house to buy in this tight market. They told me that they would be selling their house once they found a house to buy in Raleigh. I asked them which was their house. To my surprise and delight, it was a Craftsman home I had admired, only two blocks from our current house. Discussions proceeded over several weeks and to our delight we were able to acquire the home. Our daughter and her corgis claimed all the credit.

A local historian told us that while there are a number of Craftsman styled homes in our small town, he thought that ours might be the only original Sears and Roebuck kit house. As mentioned, the design and building materials were shipped by train from Chicago and constructed around 1915/17. Ours contains all the characteristics of a Craftsman home, but the question remained, was it an authentic Sears home? We wanted to find out.  

We found valuable information from the William and Mary Center for Archeological Research on Sears Kit Houses. We also bought a reproduction copy of the Sears Home-building catalog and found our design called the Hawthorne. The Hawthorne kit cost ranged from $1,488 to $2,792 depending on architectural variations selected.

We read historic documentation to verify whether a house was a Sears kit house.  It told us to look for three features: stained glass windows in a particular design (Check).

Fan-shaped bronze hinges on the interior doorframes (check), and numbers written on each piece of lumber showing the exact location and fit (no luck). An erector set of sorts. Or perhaps Lincoln Logs, a popular toy designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, John.

Hawthorne’s description that matches our house include: eight rooms and one bath on first floor, which was renovated by previous owners removing one bedroom and creating closets, second bath and laundry area.

The main floor features include bay window walls in dining room and principle bedroom.

Other features authenticated the house as Craftsman. There is a large front porch with round columns, hipped roof with low over-hanging eaves with decorative tails, large open living and dining room with ceiling beams, front door with glazed with beveled glass, fireplace flanked by window seats (not present), large opening from living to dining room supported with four columns, and a screened back porch, also with custom door.

Our home has these features. The Hawthorne design also had an open room on the second level with space to create a den or sewing room space. At some point the staircase in the dining room was moved and the upper space was used for a small office and storage space by the previous owner.

After purchasing the house, we renovated the second floor adding two, 10-feet dormers with windows on east and west sides of the house to create an office/library, guest suite with TV area, wine and coffee bar, a large bathroom, and plenty of climate controlled attic space.

Our son made door frames, top and bottom so that upstairs finishing was the same. Our friend, Kent Brondell, helped us find antique bronze fan hinges for the closets and doors we added upstairs.

We love our American Craftsman home and have enjoyed making it our own by manipulating the design, just as Gustav Stickley (Craftsman magazine), Sears (Kit Houses), and Wright (Unisonian designs) intended. Our home is not a Frank Lloyd Wright design but perhaps this design achieves a virtue, the owner’s individuality, that was missing in Wright’s.

Genius – Arrogance or Achievable with Humility?

The more I read about Frank Lloyd Wright, the more I’ve distanced myself from him. Yes, his designs were stunning and innovative for the times, a work of brilliance, but his life was a train wreck.

To augment my historical research on his life and work, I read two historical fiction novels on the women in his life. These included Loving Frank by Nancy Horan and The Women by T.C. Boyles. While these are based on journals and archives, they remain fiction with glints of truth about the way he worked and lived his life.

The women in his life included Montenegrin beauty Olgivanna Milanoff, Maud Miriam Noel, passionate southern bell, the spirited Mamah Cheney, tragically killed by a disgruntled butler at Taliesan, and his young first wife, Kitty Toban who he married when she was age seventeen and bore six children, all of whom became architects or designers, including the invention and marketing of Lincoln Logs by son, John.  

While Wright was attracted to free thinking, spirited women, each of the wives or amours (plus his mother) was required to bend to his will similar to his expectation for clients. He was attracted to intellectual women while expecting them to worship him, care for his every comfort, listen to him extol on his ideas, and constantly tell him how brilliant he was.

The introduction of T.C. Boyle’s novel, The Women, had this to say: “Wright’s life was one long howling struggle against the bonds of convention, whether aesthetic, social, moral or romantic. He never did what was expected and despite the overblown scandals surrounding his amours, his very public divorces, and financial disarray that dogged him throughout his career. He never let anything get in the way of his larger than life appetites and visions.”

He made his clients feel monumental by selecting him to build their homes, and once entwined in his web, he manipulated them. Would we consider this a sign of disrespect or simply doing what is necessary to reach his goal, a stunning work of art? He often doubled the budget, dogged clients for money, and failed to deliver designs on time while he juggled multiple projects and domestic chaos.

Here is a letter from Darwin Martin to Wright, ignoring Wright’s bid to double the budget for the house: Have you any idea by this time how exceedingly aggravating it is to a client to have to tease and coax and wheedle for past due details. For details that obviously require only concentrated industry, not courting the Muse, to produce detail for our stable door. We want to hang the doors soon and we don’t want to wait much longer for brains. We will make them without them.

Do artistic geniuses have to be self-centered and uncompromising to achieve their monumental vision? This is a question I’ve pondered? What are my readers’ thoughts on this?

Unlike Wright, I value humility, fellowship and team work over go-it-alone approaches. In a conversation with Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama said, “When we meet anyone, first and foremost we must remember that they, too, have the same desire to have a happy day, a happy month, a happy life. And all have the right to achieve it…It is this sense of separateness that isolates us from other people. In fact, this kind of arrogant way of thinking creates a sense of loneliness and anxiety…We are not created for independence or self-sufficiency, but for interdependence and mutual support.”

One life lesson I’ve discovered is that when we create something together, bringing in mutual talents, life experiences and ideas, the final product is far greater than anything achieved alone.

But is that product ever a work of artistic genius, or just an approach to living well with others?

One could argue that people with an unusually high ability to experience kindness and compassion exemplified by Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama are also geniuses. The psychologist, Howard Gardner recognized “Seven Intelligences,” or types of genius, later adding an eighth. He considered how people process knowing. He identified the categories by thinking of people with exceptional skills, signs of genius, and discovered that these fell into eight areas. Consider a dancer with bodily kinesthetic genius such as Misty Copeland, a gifted linguist such as Emily Dickinson, a mathematical genius such as Einstein or the Wright brothers, a naturalist such as Jane Goodall, and intrapersonal genius with the ability to see into the mind’s eye such as Gandhi, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.

My study of Frank Lloyd Wright has led me to wonder whether an artistic genius can create a masterpiece while exhibiting a bit of compassion and collaboration along the way? Genius with a dash of humility and collaboration.  I’ll keep my eye open to that in the biographies that I enjoy reading. My daughter says there are many examples.

As always, the miracle of writing the blog topics I delve into is that they give rise to many meaningful conversations with family and friends about their perspectives on the questions that arise from writing my blogs, moving us from talking about the weather to matters of the heart. And from that we grow in love and trust.

I may be uncomfortable with Wright’s treatment of his clients, assistants, amours, and children, but most of the people in his path of fire seemed to give him slack just for the honor of proximity to him. They recognized that go-it-alone genius requires others to clean up the mess.  Or does it?

Perhaps the concepts of artistic genius and humility are incompatible.  A genius is compelled to go it alone because she or he is testing conventional thinking, inspired by a single-minded force, a transcendental state, focused solely on creating something that no one else has done before.

In coining the phrase, architecture as portraiture, Frank Lloyd Wright seemed to be considering the concepts of humility and collaboration in the scope of designing a building for a client. In reality, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces were a portrait of himself. He believed that anything he imagined could be achieved, and he probably didn’t think that his clients would be able to see that vision until it was completed. In fact, he often told them that. He had a lot to build and was in a big hurry, sometimes, no often, at the displeasure of others.

I still muse about being a great architect and wonder how my structures might have arrived from collaboration and humility. I take inspiration from a local architect, Christina Colucci, Align IAD, who worked with us to design our second floor addition.

Christina asked me to tell her all my dreams and ideas for the space. In a separate meeting she asked the same question to my husband. She listened carefully, thought about the two different perspectives of my husband and me, observed and measured the space. Then she went to the drawing board, considering each of our hopes and dreams while maintaining the Craftsman architectural integrity. She incorporated her own talent and training for design solutions unique to us and our setting and explained these to us, demonstrating that she saw us as design team members. We were delighted with her co-creative design process and the results.

We are fortunate when society and circumstances allow a genius like Frank Lloyd Wright to manifest something from within that is beyond the imagination of others living in that era. These geniuses jump-start progress, perhaps leaving some interpersonal mess in their wake. We are also lucky to have really smart and creative people with a dash of humility who bring art and joy to our everyday lives.

During my visit to the Darwin Martin complex and Graycliff, I discovered that Frank Lloyd Wright and I both chose basket weave tile for our showers. Another, I’m so much like FLW moment. Yes, I admire his design instincts and like to think that I, too, share many of his passions for creating an ideal living space. But along the way I learned that I do not admire how he treated the people who supplied the nuts and bolts that allowed him to create these masterpieces.

Beyond a retrospective on the Buffalo architectural tour, I find myself in the same place that new experiences always take me, inspiring me to learn new things about the world and myself. In so many ways, life is art.

Written by Deborah.llewellyn@gmail.com

Deborah's 3 Muses

https://www.Deborah-llewellyn.com/blog

Beaufort, NC

Credits:

Historic black and white photos taken from poster boards located at the sites and from the book: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House –Architecture as Portraiture by Jack Quinn (2004 Princeton Architectural Press).

Color photos were taken by the author, with several photos provided by Elizabeth Gould, marked with her name.

Thanks to Adeline Talbot (Studio Travelers) and Benjamin Briggs (Preservation North Carolina) for an inspirational tour.

 Made even more joyful by my delightful travel companions, Elizabeth Gould and Sally Brett.