THE WEEKLY WRIGHT-UP

WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE?

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:02:00 +0000

The Larkin Company workforce in 1883 (John D. Larkin and Elbert Hubbard not present)

Darwin D. Martin at 17 (second from right. executive Daniel Coss, with large mustache, stands to Darwin's right and his brother, William Coss, is
the tall man second from the left at the top)

Darwin Martin arrived at the Larkin Company in 1879 at the age of 14 to work as the company's bookkeeper for three dollars a week. His salary rose to $10.00 per week in 1883 when he was given his first vacation, a week. Martin's capacity for work was astonishing. He typically worked six ten-hour days a week but often returned to the office Sunday mornings to clean up and write letters to his family. In the summer of 1883 he worked long hours at night at the Larkin office transcribing 86,000 customer accounts from ledger books to index cards (thereby creating the first Cardex system). In his spare time (spare time?) he sold his brother, William's, E-Z Stove Polish door-to-door, commissioned a small house that he rented out for additional income, studied bookkeeping practices at a local YMCA class and read voraciously. The death of his boarding house roommate, Daniel Robins, a railroad brakeman, in January 1883 cast a pall over the year but did not diminish Martin's drive to succeed. BY 1906 Darwin Martin became a millionaire and built the house that would give expression to all those years of hard work.

The Darwin D. Martin House (photo: Jack Quinan)

PHYLLIS LAMBERT VISITS THE MARTIN HOUSE

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:56:00 +0000

Phyllis Lambert and Jack Quinan (Photograph by Mary Roberts, CEO of the MHRC)

You could argue that without Phyllis Lambert there wouldn't be a Martin House, or at least the house as it stands today, nearly completely rebuilt and restored. In the early 1980s when the Wright-Martin Papers were about to be auctioned in Los Angeles there was a mad rush here in Buffalo to raise funds to purchase the papers (which proved vital to the whole restoration process). We put together $50,000 from various foundations only to discover that we would be competing against Phyllis Lambert and her Canadian Centre for Architecture, a newly formed architectural archive and museum that is now one of the leading institutions of its kind in the world. Ms. Lambert kindly agreed not to enter the bidding until after our $50,000 limit was exceeded. As it happened, her representative was ultimately outbid by a Chicago dealer who then attempted to sell the papers to the CCA. Sensitive to the notion that the Wright-Martin Papers really should be in Buffalo with the Martin House, Ms. Lambert flew this writer to Montreal to advise during the negotiation. She decided against the purchase, and soon thereafter it became apparent that Paul Hanna, a Wright client at Stanford University had $50,000 and was also interested in the papers. We (Hanna and UB) decided to pool our resources, bought the papers for $100,000, and divided them between the University of Buffalo (those from 1902 to 1916) and Stanford (those from 1917 to 1945).

So it was a special pleasure to show Phyllis Lambert the Martin House after all these years.
I must admit that I was somewhat trepidatious given Ms. Lambert's passion for the work of Mies van der Rohe, beautifully articulated in her new book, Building Seagram, but she was delighted with the house and the restoration and particularly attentive to details reminiscent of the work of the great Italian interpreter of Wright, Carlo Scarpa, the subject of a major exhibition at the CCA a few years ago. This comes as no surprise as Phyllis Lambert, through the auspices of the Canadian Center for Architecture and the numerous buildings she has commissioned and restored across North America, in Cairo (the Ben Ezra Synagogue, with foundations dating back to the 11th century), Moscow (the Konstantin Melnikov House), and elsewhere, has defined the very idea of architectural patronage for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, and Phyllis Lambert (New York Times)

Frank Lloyd Wright, an interpreter, and Mies van der Rohe at the Johnson's Wax Building site in 1937

Jack Quinan: Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians

noreply@blogger.com (Susana Tejada) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:03:00 +0000

Congratulations to our very own Jack Quinan, who was named a Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians for his distinguished service to the field of architectural history. The announcement was made at the Society's 66th Annual Awards Ceremony, which was held last night at the Buffalo City Hall Common Council Chambers.

The following is the citation that was read in Jack's honor:

Jack Quinan, University at Buffalo

Most of us know Jack Quinan through his exemplary monographs on the Larkin Building and the Darwin Martin House. Through his writings, Jack is recognized as a leading authority on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. But his commitment to the subject extends well beyond scholarship. Shortly after arriving at SUNY Buffalo in 1975, Jack became a central figure in the protracted effort to rescue the Martin House, which was in deteriorated condition and faced a bleak future. After averting the property’s transfer to the State Office of Mental Health, he helped organize the Martin House Restoration Corporation and has served as curator and a leading member of the board. In the past two decades, the Corporation has undertaken extensive restoration of the house, acquired the adjacent Wright-designed buildings, and has reconstructed the pergola, carriage house, and conservatory. Moreover, the limited competition held for a new visitor center yielded an exceptionally synergistic design by Toshiko Mori. As a central figure behind this nearly forty-year effort, Jack has been instrumental in saving one of Wright’s major buildings and in creating models for restoration, reconstruction, appropriate new design, and stewardship.

In the early stages of this ambitious campaign, Jack convened a conference involving curators, architects, and historians to address the challenges of preserving and interpreting Wright buildings. This gathering led to the formation of the Frank Lloyd Building Conservancy, which now boasts some 800 members. Among the most recent and most publicized of the many successful cases it has led was rescuing the David Wright House in Phoenix. Jack has always played a leading role in the organization’s activities. He also was SAH’s secretary from 1989-93. Jack recently retired as SUNY Distinguished Service Professor after an illustrious teaching career, where his integral approach to scholarship and activism has inspired generations of students as well as many others in the community. We are all the beneficiaries of his insight, wisdom, and persistent dedication.

THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 19:15:00 +0000

A view through a pier cluster in the Martin House westward along the long axis of the building

Martin House first floor plan with red arrow delineating vista from "A" (Plan courtesy Hamilton Houston Lownie Architects)

As the restoration of the Martin House progresses aspects of Wright's design that were lost in the mid-Twentieth century through neglect and vandalism are gradually coming to light, among them astonishing vistas through layer after layer of art glass. The photographic image above was taken from point "A," between the living room and the library (see red arrow on the plan) looking through the two sets of pier clusters that flank the main entrance, across the reception room, through another pier cluster, and on into the outdoors -- six windows, altogether too many to capture photographically but the effect is mesmerizing to the naked eye. Multi-functioning, the pier clusters provide structural support, contained heat elements, served as book shelves and space dividers, and carry most of the light sconces.

YOSHIHARU TSUKAMOTO VISITS THE MARTIN HOUSE

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:08:00 +0000

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (photo by Alec Frazier)

The Darwin D. Martin House held a magnetic fascination for Yoshiharu Tsukamoto -- partner with Momoyo Kaijima in the prominent Tokyo-based architectural firm Atelier Bow-Wow -- enough to take a tour after an up-all-night trip to Buffalo and immediately prior to lecturing at UB's School of Architecture and Planning. The affinity had less to do with the fact that Wright went off to Japan for three months while the Martin, Heath, and Barton houses and the Larkin Building were under construction and less to do with Wright's six-year campaign to design and build the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (1916-1922) but a more to do with a predominant interest in both firms' practices with domestic architecture. Mr.Tsukamoto opened his UB presentation with a panoramic view of a vast swath of Tokyo neighborhoods where space for new construction is rare, precious, and often miniscule. He and his partner have built scores of small houses as well as public spaces by operating somewhat like urban surgeons. Their remarkable creativity has earned them commissions in Italy, China, Denmark, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin and Linz, Austria, despite the current rage for the more bombastic work of the architectural stars. Pictured below is Atelier's Bow-Wow's "Split Machiya house," (the one in the middle) so-called for its division into two two-story buildings with a courtyard between them. Given the scale of this house one can not help thinking that the 1.5 acre Martin House site, and what Wright did with it, must have seemed to Mr. Tsukamoto like an embarrassment of riches.

Atelier Bow-Wow, Split Machiya House, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 2011 (photos by Manuel Oka)

Why "Atelier Bow-Wow"? I didn't get a chance to ask Mr. Tsukamoto about the source of the firm's name but they seem to have a certain affinity for little dogs. Their work is endearing and playful but remarkably creative within circumstances that are often tightly constricted.

Atelier Bow-Wow chair (woof woof)

THE HISTORIC CONTEXT OF THE DARWIN D. MARTIN HOUSE

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:55:00 +0000

The immediate neighborhood surrounding the Darwin Martin House is rich in late nineteenth century architecture. The curving street pattern [E] of the Parkside neighborhood was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Directly south of the Martin House stands the 1888 Tudor style home of William Wicks [D], partner of Edward B. Green who dominated Buffalo architecture at every level for over forty years.

Fig. D. William Wicks, Wicks House, Jewett Parkway, Buffalo, NY, 1888 (J. Quinan)

Fig. C. Silsbee, Marling and Burdett, Church of the Good Shepard, Jewett Parkway, Buffalo, NY (Skyscrapercity.com)

The Church of the Good Shepherd [C], east of the Wicks House, was initially designed by Silsbee and Marling but subsequently reworked by Marling and a new partner, Herbert C. Burdett, who came to Buffalo from the office of H.H. Richardson. J.L. Silsbee began his practice in Syracuse but relocated to Chicago where he flourished as a domestic specialist. Together with James Marling, Silsbee maintained an office in Buffalo where they designed numerous Victorian homes on Linwood and Delaware avenues and North street, but Silsbee is best known for hiring the young Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago in 1887. Wright had this to say about him in his autobiography:

Silsbee could draw with amazing ease. He drew with soft, deep black lead-pencil strokes and he would make remarkable free-hand sketches of that type of dwelling peculiarly in his mind at the time… His work was a picturesque combination of gable, turret and hip, with broad porches, quietly domestic and gracefully picturesque. [Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (New York, 1943)]

Fig. B. E.B. Green, Dr. Benjamin Grove House, Jewett Parkway, Buffalo, 1888 (J. Quinan)

Fig. 1. Bruce Price, Chandler House, Tuxedo Park, N.Y. 1885

Fig. 2. Frank LLoyd Wright, Wright Home, Oak Park, Illinois 1889

Across Jewett Parkway to the north of the church resides the Dr. Benjamin Grove House by Green & Wicks, a design with an intriguing lineage. The upper two floors of the front façade are comprised of an isosceles triangular pediment that overhangs a pair of symmetrical half octagonal bays. According to Vincent Scully (The Stick Style and the Shingle Style, 1952) this motif first appeared in Bruce Price’s Chandler [Fig. 1] and Kent houses, both built in 1885-6, in Tuxedo Park, New York, and was the inspiration for Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1889 home in Oak Park, Illinois [Fig. 2]. It seems that E.B. Green and Wright were looking at the same sources published in 1886.

Fig. A. E.B. Green, Swiss Cottage Style House for Dr. Grove, c1890 (J. Quinan)

East of Wright’s George Barton House on Summit Avenue stands a marvelous Swiss Cottage by E.B. Green [A], also the property of Dr. Grove. Altogether the three Green and Wicks houses – Tudor, Swiss, and Shingle style -- bear testimony to the ready eclecticism that sustained the firm so long and established a foil for Wright’s radical critique of American architecture, so well represented here in the Darwin D. Martin House.

Fig. 3 Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, NY 1903-1906 (J. Quinan)

THE MUSIC OF WILLIAM C. WRIGHT

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 01:47:00 +0000

William C. Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright

Any serious attempt to understand Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture has to embrace the degree to which Wright was involved in music. He writes in his autobiography of a painful early memory:

At this time a nervously active intellectual man [Wright’s father] in clerical dress seated at the organ in the church playing. Behind the organ, a dark chamber. In the dark chamber, huge bellows with projecting wooden lever-handle. A tiny shaded oil lamp shining in the dark on a lead marker that ran up and down to indicate the amount of air pressure necessary to keep the organ playing. A small boy of seven, eyes on the lighted marker, pumping away with all his strength at the lever and crying bitterly as he did so.

You might think that Wright would have grown to hate music, but no, subsequent accounts of life in the Taliesin Fellowship that include Curtis Besinger’s Working with Mr. Wright (1995), Randolph Henning’s At Taliesin (1992), Priscilla J. Henken’s Taliesin Diary: A Year with Frank Lloyd Wright (2012), and others, attest to the constancy of serious music in the life of Wright and those around him. As Henning has written: the “music omnipresent and important,” even to the broadcast of the music of Beethoven across the valley from the belvedere atop Taliesin.

It is of considerable interest, then, that David Patterson, a musician and musicologist in Oak Park, Illinois, has obtained funding through the Kickstarter program that has enabled him to gather and record twenty-one pieces of music composed by William C. Wright, the architect’s talented and restless father. I will leave the evaluation of Mr. Wright’s compositions to others better qualified but Patterson’s 31 pages of program notes are a boon to anyone interested in Wright and altogether “The Music of William C. Wright” deepens our understanding of both the architect and his father. As Wright tells it, his father passed quietly and briefly through his life but left one indelible message:

Father sometimes played on the piano far into the night, and much of Beethoven and Bach the boy learned by heart as he lay listening. Living seemed a kind of listening to him – then.

Sometimes it was as though a door would open, and he could get the beautiful meaning clear. Then it would close and the meaning would be dim or far away. But always there was some meaning. Father taught him to see a symphony as an edifice – of sound!

Remembering Van Cliburn

noreply@blogger.com (Susana Tejada) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 19:43:00 +0000

Remembering Van Cliburn

(July 12, 1934 - February 27, 2013)

The pianist Van Cliburn plays the Steinway grand during a visit to the Martin House Complex on September 14, 2007.

A NEW WRIGHT BUILDING AT FLORIDA SOUTHERN COLLEGE

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:20:00 +0000

Wright's Florida Southern esplanades (J. Quinan)

Wright's Florida Southern esplanade adjusting to a grade change (J. Quinan)

The semi-annual board meeting and "Out and About Wright" event of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy was held last Friday and Saturday in the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, Florida, followed by a tour of Wright's Florida Southern College campus in Lakeland. Wright began work there in 1938 and continued until his death in 1959 completing seven buildings connected by a series of wonderfully sculptural shade-providing concrete esplanades (above). The campus has grown as campuses do and now it has 64 buildings. The most recent building, a Usonian house (below) that Wright designed for the campus in the 1950s, raises the thorny question of authenticity that has plagued the Wright world since 1959 and especially since the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation made a practice of selling Wright's unbuilt plans to clients in the 1980s and 1990s (a practice that has fortunately been curtailed).

Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian House for Florida Southern College, under construction (J. Quinan)

This writer has been hostile to the building of Wright's work posthumously as a result of having drawn upon the hundreds of letters, drawings, and related documents pertaining to the design and buildings of the Darwin Martin House in Buffalo for several books. If the Martin House is any example, an authentic Wright building was the result of an intense involvement on the architect's part over a period of years; in the case of the Martin House monthly visits to Buffalo over a three year period.

On the other hand in his later years when Wright's Usonian designs were being supervised by his apprentices all over the United States, there were houses such as the Zimmerman House in Manchester, N.H., that Wright never saw. Now this "new" Usonian at Florida Southern. Is it authentic? The answer doesn't seem to be a "yes" or a "no" but rather it lies somewhere on a sliding scale between 10 (yes) and 1 (not at all). I would put it very high up on the authentic scale. It is a Wright design and Florida State is his client. Although it is not finished, the quality of the craftwork is excellent. Most important, I think, is that the building is an unusual version of the Usonian ideal that spreads out in four directions using generous cantilevers that does not conform to the five typologies -- polywog, in-line, raised, hexagonal and diagonal -- that John Sergeant established in Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian Houses in 1976. In a clinical sense the Usonian under construction at Florida Southern offers an opportunity to experience a unique Wright space that was otherwise inaccessible, simply a drawing on paper. If this is true then why not build all of Wright's unbuilt designs? Three reasons come to mind: First, owing to contemporary building codes, the availability of materials, and the increasing height of the average person since1960 (the average male is 1 1/2 inches taller today than in 1960; the woman 1 inch) the reproduction buildings are invariably altered in the process. Second, the proliferation of inauthentic Wright houses diminish the validity of the authentic ones. Third, Wright's designs belong to a specific period in history that ended in 1959. Even as we preserve the past we have an obligation to support the architects and the architecture of our time -- the 21st century.

COILED LIKE A RATTLER ON THE DESERT FLOOR

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:14:00 +0000

THE DAVID WRIGHT HOUSE, PHOENIX, AZ, (from Mondoblogo.blospot.com)

I'm about to go to Tampa for a board meeting of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and a visit to Wright's Florida Southern campus in nearby Lakeland. In addition to planning future meetings and events there is certain to be a hearty round of congratulations to our president, Larry Woodin, to Janet Halsted, our Executive Director, and to Neil Levine, Susan Jacobs Lockhart, John Thorpe, and others who played vital roles in the rescue of the David Wright House in Phoenix.

Coincidently, I have been reading Curtis Besinger's Working With Mr. Wright: What It Was Like (Cambridge University Press, 1995). Besinger joined the Taliesin Fellowship in 1939 and remained with Wright (except for a three year hiatus) -- working on many of his commissions -- until 1955. Besinger's account of the design of the David Wright House remains fresh and imparts something of the importance of the house in Wright's oeuvre:

Aerial view of the David Wright House. The master bedroom is at the left (fromABC15.com)

"...we also started working drawings for a house for Mr. Wright's son, David and his wife. The design that Mr. Wright had titled "How to live in the Southwest" was, with a few changes, the design of David's house. David was the sales representative in the Phoenix area for the Besser Manufacturing Company, an outfit that produced machinery and equipment for making concrete blocks including molds for the various kinds and shapes of blocks. One of the constraints in making the drawings for David's house was to use only those blocks that could be produced with Besser molds. We used only one special block, the one with a decorative pattern that forms the edge of the elevated concrete slab on which the house rests..." [p. 222-3]

David Wright House; master bedroom is to the left of the chimney (from rockville.com)

David Wright House. Master bedroom (from Bloomberg.com)

Besinger continues: This house, supervised by Gordon Chadwick, was very well built. What particularly impressed me was the carpentry work on the ceiling of the master bedroom. The roof of the bedroom wing was another of those that had different pitches on each side. The ridge of the roof was over the partition separating the corridor from the bedrooms. The steeper pitch was on the corridor side. The roof, however, did not terminate in a gable as might be expected. The end wall of the master bedroom was a half circle. The eave of the roof was horizontal and a hipped roof here made a transition between the different slopes of the sides. The ceilings of the bedrooms reflected the external form of the roof. They were made of lapped mahogany boards. But that of the master bedroom was like the construction of a boat. It was a conical surface with boards becoming increasingly narrow in making the transition from their spacing on the shallow side to their spacing on the steeper pitch of the other side.[p. 236-7]

If Besinger's description seems overly complicated it is because the house, despite the stark simplicity of the concrete block, is a work of extraordinary craft and a remarkable achievement for someone in his eighties.

DARWIN MARTIN, SAFE CRACKER

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:53:00 +0000

Darwin D. Martin (University Archives (SUNY)

John D. Larkin (Courtesy of Daniel I. Larkin)

John D. Larkin built the Larkin Soap Company into a nationally powerful mail order business through a combination of hard work, a passion for plowing profits back into the business, and an uncanny knack for hiring the right underlings. Bringing thirteen year old Darwin Martin to Buffalo as bookkeeper for the business at $3 per week was risky, however, and Larkin proceeded cautiously as this passage from Martin’s autobiography attests:

Mr. Larkin’s safe was a small affair but it held the ledger and order-books and tissue letter-books with which I had to work. The safe had to be locked overnight. I was never given the authority to unlock it. Every morning I chafed at the loss of time waiting for the arrival of the horse-and-buggy which always marked the beginning of Mr. L’s business day. I stood over him so many times while he worked the combination that I quite unconsciously absorbed the secret of the three numbers.

One morning I grew so impatient that I tackled the combination, and lo and behold it opened and I went to my work.

Mr. Larkin said nothing, but the next morning I found that the combination had been changed. Weeks and months ensued and I found that I was no better off for my safe-opening. But history repeated itself, I tackled the combination again, as impatiently, and again behold I had the safe unlocked!

Nothing was said but the combination was not changed again and I opened the safe daily. As I reflected on it, it was a silent comedy. When a new, larger Osgoodby safe replaced the Barth safe I was invited to supply the numbers of the combination. Mr. Larkin lived at 218 Swan Street. Mr. Hubbard at 234 South Division Street; therefore I at once suggested a combination none of us could forget, i.e., 21-82-34.

Young Martin eventually won John Larkin’s confidence and when in 1893 Elbert Hubbard, Larkin's partner, decided to quit the business, Martin took his place and eventually became the highest paid executive in the United States. The Darwin Martin House (1903-1906) soon followed.

DARWIN R. MARTIN REMEMBERS THE CARRIAGE HOUSE

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:41:00 +0000

The Martin House carriage house (FLW Foundation)

Plan of Martin carriage house (FLW Foundation)

In the 1970s Jack Randall, an architect and historian, asked Darwin R. Martin to review a manuscript that he had written on Wright in Buffalo. Martin's response indicates that he had some measure of his father's extraordinary powers of retention. Some might wonder why we should care, but the building in question (above) demolished in the 1960s and has since been rebuilt and modified to accommodate a bookstore. This is the best account of what it was like and how it functioned originally. He writes:

"The "Buffalo Venture" [Randall's manuscript] fails to identify the uses of "garage" properly. It was a combination stable and garage. [It] included 2 box stalls and 2 open stalls and a paddock for airing horses. The gas-engine driven d.c. Dynamo was in the basement of the bldg. along with heating boilers -- anthracite coal, hand-fed -- and a "mushroom-cellar" and tool room -- connected direct thru [the] "pergola" under-pass to the main house.

The Martin House dynamo (University Archives, SUNY at Buffalo)

One of the box stalls (eastern one) was converted later into a bank of "EDISON" storage batteries for illuminating [the] entire complex. "Garage" area, i.e., front section, had [a] manually operated Turn-table that that also served as wash-rack for cars and carriages.

The Martin horse team and brougham (University Archives, SUNY at Buffalo)

The Martin's Maxwell (University Archives, SUNY at Buffalo)

[The] family maintained a team of horses plus a brougham and Victoria by "BRUNN" who also made auto bodies for "PEERLESS" chassis. D.D.M.'s first personal car was [a] "MAXWELL" runabout - 1 cyl. "side-winder" circa 1907 or 1908 (I think it was called "Maxwell Messenger").* I have invoices for most of D.D.M.'s early cars but, so far, none for carriages and horses. Later cars were "Pierce Arrow" sedans. There was also an early "Electric" cabriolet - (1st one I think a "Babcock", The last one a "Detroit".) Father drove the "Electric" to work after he got rid of [the] Maxwell (I think about 1920). He preferred to walk to Jefferson St. (now Ave.) and then take the street car to work so he could read on route. Earlier he road the "BELT LINE" that made a stop at Main where the "Trico" plant is now."

[Thanks to Jason Aronoff and Susana Tejada]

* Martha Neri points out that Darwin Martin's first automobile was a Haynes-Apperson purchased in 1904 and sold in 1908 in order to buy the Maxwell. Thanks, Martha.

1893, A YEAR TO REMEMBER

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 20:06:00 +0000

Adler & Sullivan, The Auditorium Building, Chicago, 1887

1893 was a year to remember: An economic depression known as the "Panic of 1893" had a devastating effect on American banks and businesses, and the Larkin Company in Buffalo was not spared.To make matters worse Elbert Hubbard informed his partner, John D. Larkin, that he would be leaving in January 1893 to attend Harvard, and demanded his share in the business. Larkin refused and law suits were threatened. Darwin Martin, eager to take over Hubbard’s position, was told that it would involve no increase in salary. 1893 was also the year that Frank Lloyd Wright decided to leave Adler & Sullivan and open his own architectural practice in Chicago. Even the high point of the year in the United States was problematic: the much anticipated Chicago world's fair celebrating Columbus’s discovery of America in 1492, was delayed until 1893, but it was a smashing success nevertheless. Four million Americans visited the World’s Columbian Exposition, and Elbert Hubbard and Darwin Martin were among them.

Owing to his abrupt and untimely departure from the Larkin Company Hubbard and John Larkin were not on speaking terms but Hubbard was able to maintain an avid, vested interest in the fortunes of the Larkin Company through his friendly relationship with Darwin Martin. Darwin Martin noted in his diary on the first of June, 1893, “I [went] to East Aurora where I walked five miles with Mr. Hubbard and spent the night.” Shortly after that on June 22, 1893 Hubbard wrote Martin an enthusiastic account of his visit to "The Fair," as the World’s Columbian Exposition was known. The letter suggests that Hubbard was aware that the Martins, too, were going to the Fair. “I think five hours a day at the Fair will do one as much good as eight or ten. I spent eight days inside the gates and the extent of the exhibition is far beyond my expectations – far surpassing the Centennial [Philadelphia 1876].” Hubbard's stay at Harvard was obviously short lived.

Despite the slow-down at the Larkin Company the Martins embarked for the Fair in Chicago a few weeks after Hubbard's visit. Ever generous when it came to his family, Darwin fashioned the occasion into something of a reunion. Along with Isabelle Martin, his wife, and Nettie Reidpath, her sister, they were joined by Darwin’s brother William and his family (Chicagoans), his sister Delta and her husband George Barton (who were then also living in Chicago), Darwin’s oldest brother, Frank and his wife, Florence (wanderers), and Maude Martin, Darwin’s half-sister from Nebraska, whom he had not seen for fifteen years. Of her he had only this comment: "Little bit of a girl, lisps."

The Auditorium tower

But why the top of the Auditorium Building? Two possibilities presents themselves: first, the roof of the tower of the Auditorium Building, then one of the highest points in Chicago, was an ideal place from which to survey the city, and Chicago in 1893, home of the Chicago School of skyscraper pioneers, was something to behold. But they may also have been drawn to the Auditorium because its architects, Adler & Sullivan, were then building the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, soon to be recognized as the finest building in the city. At any rate, the rooftop moment places Darwin Martin immediately above the office of Adler & Sullivan where Frank Lloyd Wright was the principal draftsman. Martin and Wright would not meet, however, for another nine years when the Larkin Company executives invited Wright to Buffalo to discuss a new office building.

WRIGHT AT WORK IN THE PRAIRIE YEARS

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:49:00 +0000

WRIGHT'S OAK PARK STUDIO AS CONVERTED TO A LIVING ROOM AFTER 1911

WRIGHT'S STUDIO AS RESTORED IN THE 1980S

Insights into Frank Lloyd Wright's working methods during the Prairie period (1900-1909) are rare and tend to materialize in little bursts from time to time. Among the best of these is a group of letters written by Charles E. White, Jr., a draftsman who had come to Wright's Oak Park studio around 1903, to his former employer, W. R. B. Willcox, in Vermont. White describes Wright's unit system in detail, in text and sketches, and pays particular attention to the Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, which was then being designed. [The letters were edited by Nancy K. Morris Smith and published in the Journal of Architectural Education in the fall of 1971]. This passage is from White's letter to Willcox of November 16th 1903:

"He [Wright] is certainly an impractical man -- is way behind in his work, but calmly takes seven weeks to alter his office, and lets the work wait. The Buffalo drawings are not even completed, and they are hammering him all the time. Promised the Montreal sketches for November fourth, and hasn't even started to think about them! It makes me nervous to think of the way he treats his clients, and yet he seems to get the work all the time."

A similar passage appears in a letter from William E. Martin in Oak Park to his brother, Darwin, in Buffalo, May 20, 1904:

"I called his office yesterday morning, and one of the draftsmen said that he had been working on the plans, and mailed them to you Thursday, but knew nothing about the brick. He said that when Mr. Wright returned from Buffalo, he threw the plans into the corner of the office, which, by the way, has been torn up from stem to stern for the last two weeks, -- and said nothing about any alterations..."

In Buffalo, Wright's erratic methods were subject to Darwin Martin's relentless" hammering," but C.E. White, jr., in the eye of the storm, got an answer from Wright himself and expressed it in a letter to Willcox of May 13th 1904:

"The studio is again torn up by the annual repairs and alterations. Twice a year, Mr. W. rearranges and changes the different rooms. He says he has gotten more education in experimenting on his own premises, than in any other way."

Wright's penchant for experimentation never ended and is best seen at Taliesin, in Spring Green Wisconsin, Wright's home and studio, built, rebuilt, and continuously expanded from 1911 to his death in 1959. Taliesin is currently under restoration --a task of staggering complexity -- by Taliesin Preservation, Inc.

Plan of Taliesin (The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation)

DARWIN D. MARTIN, AUTODIDACT

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:17:00 +0000

Frank LLoyd Wright: Encyclopedia Britannica bookshelf for the Darwin D. Martin House (photo: New York State Bureau of Historic Sites)

In the early 1980s I sought out Everett K. Martin, Darwin Martin's nephew, at his home in Hyannisport, on Cape Cod where, over lunch, he recalled that during visits to his uncle Darwin's home in Buffalo Darwin would quiz him and the other children on a variety of topics. If they didn't have an answer he would direct them to the Encyclopedia Britannica for which Frank Lloyd Wright had designed a special shelf.

Detail of Wright's Encyclopedia Britannica bookshelf

During those same years I made several visits to the home of Dorothy (Martin) Foster at 95 Highland Avenue in Buffalo who told me that her father often took a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica to read as he traveled to work on the Belt Line.

Recently, while trying to organize my home office, I came across a single page of carbon-copied typescript. I don't know how I came into possession of it but it includes the following paragraph:

"I had a client once -- Darwin D. Martin -- he made the Larkin Company what it was when it was something; behind him on the table in the dining room was a big dictionary. After I had built the house, I was building other buildings and I used to dine there often, and this thing would come up and Mr. Martin would go over to that dictionary two or three times during a meal -- finding out. And he was a self-educated man; never went to college, didn't have much schooling: he was "the boy from Missouri [Valley]" that Elbert Hubbard wrote a piece about once. But his tireless, ceaseless curiosity concerning everything! And he became a remarkably educated man. He was a Christian Scientist, so far a religion went -- which was kind of a bar across his path -- but still he got somewhere; he was a religious man, and he was the man who had me do the Larkin building. So, the dictionary act is a thing I have inherited; I don't do it often enough. Every morning, we should have this dictionary behind here, because we are going to need it..."

Tantalizing ! Who is this man? What more does he have to say in the rest of the manuscript? (This is from page 14) The line "after I built the house" would seem to indicate that this is an interview with Oscar Lang, contractor of the Martin House, but the line "the man who had me do the Larkin building" points elsewhere since Paul Mueller is generally credited as the principal supervisor of Wright's Larkin Administration Building. Given that Mueller was based in Chicago and was generally occupied with large urban buildings it is highly unlikely that he was building frequently in Buffalo. It is possible that the mysterious speaker, possibly Lang, was in charge of some part of the Larkin Building project, such as masonry or carpentry. We may never know, but the collective testimony of three people -- Dorothy Martin Foster, Everett K. Martin, and this builder who was a frequent visitor to the Martin house -- tells us that Darwin Martin's considerable success in life was driven by an insatiable quest for knowledge.

Christmas at the Martin House

noreply@blogger.com (Susana Tejada) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:08:00 +0000

On December 25, 1907, Darwin D. Martin wrote in his diary, Memorandum of Events in the Life of Darwin D. and Isabelle R. Martin, the following words:

A beautiful Christmas. We sent and received many gifts--one from Belle [Isabelle Martin] to DDM [Darwin D. Martin] a lovely miniature of Darwin's. As usual Grandma and Margaret out Christmas eve until 26th. Grace Peckham also overnight Christmas eve, Christmas dinner guests were these, Mrs. Peckham, Mrs. Parmalee, and family. To supper with these except Parmalee, also Moreys, Simpsons and their friends Mr. and Mrs. Austin of Ithaca. Assets reach a million for first time.

Here, Darwin D. Martin describes the familiar traditions we often associate with the holidays--the exchanging of gifts, the welcoming of house guests, and the hosting of dinner parties--and he concludes with the proud, yet factual, declaration of his newly-reached status as self-made millionaire. Yet in reading this journal entry, one begins to wonder what more do we know about Christmases past in the Martin family household?


Martin Family Photographs, University at Buffalo Archives

An archival photograph sheds some light on the Martins' custom of decorating the family Christmas tree. A tall, slender spruce rises to the height of the ceiling frieze rail and stands adjacent to the southeast pier cluster at the point where the living room and the library meet. Clusters of multi-shaped glass ornaments and sparkling strips of silver tinsel adorn it, underneath which sits an overflowing pile of gifts--including what appears to be a large box "wrapped" in a plaid blanket--all awaiting to be opened.

Nellie Gardner and volunteer members of the Interior Beautification Committee trim the Martin House Christmas tree.

Taking inspiration from this historic snapshot, staff and volunteers have brought the yuletide spirit back into the Martin House through the temporary installation of a Christmas tree evocative of the one that was once trimmed by the Martins--right down to the very detail of using a period-appropriate tree stand by North Brothers Manufacturing Company, an early 20th century iron and brass foundry from Philadelphia, PA.

We hope you will come for a tour of the Martin House and discover it with your own eyes. And until then, best wishes for a holiday season filled with much joy, peace and success--from our house to yours!

A TALE OF TWO EDGARS

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:32:00 +0000

1. Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.

2. Edgar Tafel (photo by Al Sabatini)

Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. never attended college, instead he studied painting in Europe and in 1933 joined Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship for a year before returning to his family's department store business in Pittsburgh. Possessed of an exceptionally keen eye for design, in 1940 Kaufmann became the head of the Department of Industrial Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In that capacity one of his tasks was to locate and select objects for the Museum's collections. On May 20, 1947, while lecturing in Buffalo, he wrote to Frank Lloyd Wright about the status of Wright's Buffalo buildings, with an eye toward finding likely specimens. Following a discussion of the Larkin Building he wrote:

"I visited the Martin and Heath houses. The first is almost as shocking as the [Larkin] office building and parts of it are already being demolished. The furniture is not in the house. The Heath house is up for sale and by the owner whom as you know, installed a picture window opposite the fireplace; and I'm hoping to get for us a pair of the leaded glass doors from the bookcases which were removed in order to insert this window. I hope you will agree that they are among the glass designs of that period most likely to look well isolated from their original surroundings. I'm sorry to say that the Heath house too has been pitifully neglected, although it remains entirely liveable."

Both New Yorkers and Taliesin Fellows, it is obvious that Kaufmann visited the Martin House with Edgar Tafel when the photograph (#5. below) was taken, probably by Tafel. According to Tafel, Wright distinguished them as Edgar "Son-of-Tafel" and Edgar "Son-of-Fallingwater." Rumor has it that some of the Heath furniture was acquired by an apprentice to Wright from Buffalo who turned it over to Wright when the house was altered by a subsequent owner. And there it remains today.

3. Heath House door as installed at Taliesin today (photo: JQ)

5. The Martin House interior with Edgar Kaufmann barely visible at the right (Edgar Tafel photo)

4. Heath House window alongside the birdwalk at Taliesin (photo: JQ)

Jewett Refrigerators: Looking for Leads

noreply@blogger.com (Susana Tejada) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 20:13:00 +0000

Do you or someone you know own a refrigerator from the turn of the last century manufactured by

The Jewett Refrigerator Company?

The Jewett Refrigerator Company, logo, 1904

In our quest to accurately replicate two original ice boxes, we seek extant Jewett refrigerators that are similar to the units once held by the Martin House—whether they are working or not. Our primary goal is to locate hardware, specifically latches and hinges, found on surviving large-scale models from the early 1900s—the kind, for example, that might have been used on historic Jewett refrigerators installed in such places as grand residences, restaurants, taverns, or possibly even meat packing houses.

We’re counting on you—if you have any leads, please contact Stephen Oubre, Cabinetmaker, at the Martin House, soubre@darwinmartinhouse.org. Or feel free to post your comments directly on this blog. Thank you!

Writing a Novel is Like Building a House: T.C. Boyle Visits the Martin House Complex

noreply@blogger.com (Susana Tejada) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 19:31:00 +0000

The Martin House was delighted to welcome novelist T.C. Boyle and his family for a tour of the complex during a recent visit to Buffalo. Boyle is the author of twenty-three books of fiction, including the PEN/Faulkner Prize for best novel of the year (World's End, 1988); the PEN/Malamud Prize in the short story (T.C. Boyle Stories, 1999); and the Prix Médicis Étranger for best foreign novel in France (The Tortilla Curtain, 1997).


Novelist T.C. Boyle (right) with Martin House Curator Susana Tejada (left)

Boyle lives in a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1909--the George C. Stewart House--located on the California coastal town of Montecito, a community just outside Santa Barbara. "What is is like to live there? It's pretty illuminating," states Boyle, "we'll never get tired of it." The property is the architect's first California commission, his sole example of the Prairie style west of the Rockies, and a source of inspiration for Boyle's novel, The Women (2009)--a fictionalized story of Wright's life as told through the perspective of the four very different women who loved him.

At a reading that took place on February 12, 2009, at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington D.C., Boyle noted that "writing a novel--building a novel--is sort of like building a house." To listen to T.C. Boyle deliver an excerpt from The Women, or to hear his musings on such topics as "Writing and Architecture," "Living in a Frank Lloyd Wright House," and "Visiting Taliesin," click on the recordings on this section of the NPR website:

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=101170584&m=101343705

MANNY KIRCHHEIMER VISITS THE MARTIN HOUSE

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:46:00 +0000

MANNY KIRCHHEIMER (from Low Budget Legends)

The distinguished documentary filmmaker, Manny Kirchheimer ( "Claw," 1968; "Stations of the Elevated," 1980; "Tall: The American Skyscraper and Louis Sullivan," 2004) jumped at the opportunity to show his work at Hallwalls recently, in part because he is a great fan of Frank Lloyd Wright and wanted to see the Martin House which he last saw about ten years ago. His enthusiasm dates back to 1956 when, after numerous calls to Wright's apartment in the Plaza Hotel, the twenty-six year old filmmaker obtained an hour long interview with the eighty-eight year old architect about the possibility of filming the construction of the Guggenheim Museum. Alas, the film never materialized but Manny was so elated by Wright's accessibility and keen interest in the details of the project that he went home and immediately wrote up the entire event. This piece of history richly deserves publication. The question is, where?

Correction: The correct name of the author of "Taliesin Diary: Year with Frank Lloyd Wright" is Priscilla J. Henken (December 3, 2012 blog)

NEW BOOKS ON WRIGHT

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:06:00 +0000

Ron McCrea's Building Taliesin

One of the pleasures of being a Frank Lloyd Wright scholar is the periodic appearance of something of real insight amidst the annual deluge of picture books and hagiographica. Ron McCrea's Building Taliesin: Frank Lloyd Wright's Home of Love and Loss (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2012) and Priscilla J. Henken's Taliesin Diary: A Year with Frank Lloyd Wright (W.W. Norton & Company, 2012) are filled with visual and written revelations. McCrea concerns himself with Wright's relationship with Mamah Borthwick Cheney from their decision to abandon their respective families and go off to Europe late in 1909 to her tragic death in 1914. That story has been told many times, but what distinguishes McCrea's book are revelations about the construction of the first Taliesin in 1911, illustrated in numerous previously unknown photographs from three collections -- the Utah State Historical Society, the University of Utah Library, and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Most of the photographs in Utah collections were taken by Taylor Woolley, the draftsman who accompanied Wright to Fiesole, Italy, in 1910 to work with Lloyd Wright and his father on the production of the Wasmuth Portfolio (Ausgefuhrte Bauten und Entwurfe von Frank Lloyd Wright). Woolley eventually established his own office in Salt Lake City, became the State Architect of Utah, and passed away in 1965 leaving this cache of photographs to posterity. McCrea draws heavily upon Woolley's photographs as well as some by Wright himself, and those of the distinguished Chicago architectural photographer, Clarence Fuermann, who photographed the Martin House in 1907. Since the first Taliesin was destroyed by fire in 1914, McCrea's book provides a superabundance of invaluable images including some taken right after the fire.

Priscilla V. Henken's Taliesin Diary

Priscilla J. Henken offers quite a different, insider view of life at the third Taliesin (begun after a fire in 1925). Mrs. Henken, a New York City school teacher, accompanied her husband, David, to Wisconsin when he joined Wright's Taliesin Fellowship in 1942. The diary she maintained over the duration of their stay chronicles the rigorous day-to-day life of the Fellowship during World War II. Very much an outsider at the start, she learned to cook for everyone when her turn came (one meal for the Wrights, another for everyone else), spent entire days weaving, canning pumpkins and making apple sauce, mastering the recorder, and was eventually asked to assist with the drafting of Wright buildings, including the Arch Oboler House. A person of considerable sophistication, erudition and writing skills, she tells of gaining the respect of Wright, and of the intense interpersonal relationships between members the Fellowship. She is able to convey a sense of what it was like to be there. Eventually, in the 1950s, David Henken engaged Wright in the creation of "Usonia" in Pleasantville, New York, a cooperative community of thirty families who agreed to build on circular plots of land populated by houses designed by Wright, Henken, Aaron Resnick, Ulrich Franzen, and others.

Film buffs will be interested in the list of 46 films that Wright had shown at Taliesin during the year that Priscilla Henken was there. (This was a practice that Wright continued from the founding of the Fellowship in the early 1930s until his death in 1959) Directors such as Orson Welles, Preston Sturgis, and Alfred Hitchcock, share the stage with Sergei Eisenstein and numerous other Russian directors, at the request, no doubt, of Mrs. Wright (née Olga Ivanovna Lazovich) who was born in Montenegro and educated in Russia.

DAN GRAHAM VISITS THE MARTIN HOUSE

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 14:10:00 +0000

Dan Graham, a major force on the international art scene since the 1970s, toured the Darwin Martin House earlier this week with several artist friends from New York and Toronto. As a gallerist, artist, photographer, filmmaker, and critic, Graham cites early inspiration from Sol Lewitt and UB’s Leslie Fiedler, and has written about many contemporary artists and architects including Mies van der Rohe, Robert Venturi, John Lautner (one of Wright’s original apprentices), and Switzerland’s Peter Zumthor. Graham was particularly drawn to the vistas within the Martin House where it is possible -- now that the pier clusters have been restored -- to see through as many as six layers of scintillating art glass windows across several rooms and into the bright outdoors.

Left to right: Asad Raza, Jack Quinan, and Dan Graham (photo: Sandra Q. Firmin)

In recent years Graham has produced a series of steel-framed glass "pavilions,” that employ special mirrored and half-mirrored sheets of glass that are both reflective and transparent. The pavilions offer an ambiguous immersive experience that is popular with the public everywhere. His work can be found in parks and art museums all over Europe, North and South America, and Asia. (see below)

Graham, whose work lies somewhere between architecture and sculpture enjoyed the Martin House but said Wright’s Johnson’s Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin, is his personal favorite for its qualities of submersion under those lily-pad like dendriform disks. But in time maybe the Martin House will work its magic on his restless creative imagination.

Two Dan Graham pavilions from "I like this Art" blog

RECENT EVENTS AT TALIESIN WEST

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:34:00 +0000

"Minding Design: Neuroscience, Design Education, and the Imagination," a symposium organized for November 9-12, 2012, by architect Sarah Robinson, brought together an impressive roster of neuroscientists, phenomenologists, architects, students, and others at Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's sprawling desert compound near Scottsdale, Arizona. The general idea was to bring together Wright's intuitive organicism and the philosophy of embodiment and direct experience of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, with the very recent insights into the human brain made possible through MRI and PET scan technologies, in order to explore how neuroscience and phenomenology might be brought to bear on the practice of architecture. Juhani Pallasmaa, Finland's distinguished architect-philosopher and author of "The Eyes of the Skin," shared the stage with Alberto Perez-Gomez (scholar of the History of Science and phenomenology at McGill University), Michael Arbib (Director of the USC Brain Project), Iain McGilchrist (Psychiatrist, writer, and former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford), and Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang (architect of the Aqua Building in Chicago and a MacArthur Fellow). The event coincided with a reunion of members of Wright's Taliesin Fellowship (of which there are around 1,500 world wide).

Left to Right: Victor Sidy (Dean, FLW School of Architecture (in red tie)), Michael Arbib, Alberto Perez-Gomez, Iain McGilchrist, ,Juhani Pallasmaa, Jeanne Gang, and Sarah Robinson

Drawing upon a broad spectrum of philosophers, writers, artists, and architects, Pallasmaa presented a compelling argument for direct experience, empathy, embodiment, and a primordial timelessness in architecture and concluded that he felt that neuroscience would validate his position. The two neuroscientists -- not always in agreement -- explained various aspects of brain functions as they are currently understood. Arbib posited a neuroscience examination of how Computer Assisted Design (CAD) works as opposed to free hand drawing; what is gained, what is lost. McGilchrist focused upon the differing functions of the two halves of the brain, the left brain's narrow focus, isolation, and orientation toward detail; the right brain's broad concerns, accepting of the new, seeing the whole, etc., and went on to suggest that the two halves have been in balance at certain moments in history (such as the Renaissance) but today the left brain is dominant. Jeanne Gang, a rising architectural star based in Chicago, gave a straightforward presentation of her work that, for all of its inherent interest and promise, did not accord with the phenomenological tenor of the rest of the program. Architect Steven Holl, whose work is deeply influenced by phenomenology, was unable to attend as planned.

Eric Lloyd Wright (seated, left) talking to Larry Woodin, President of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy (standing, right)

While the symposium bubbled with ideas and represented an important step for the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture the decision to disperse the audience into three break-out sessions with individual speakers (Arbib, McGilchrist, and Pallasmaa) following the formal presentations obviated an expanded plenary discussion of the interface between phenomenology and neuroscience.
Phenomenology does have a direct bearing upon the way that the Darwin D. Martin House and other Wright houses are understood and presented to the public. While at Taliesin West I took a tour -- the third in three years -- and paid close attention to what was said to our group. My docent, like docents everywhere, had a wide range of potential subjects to cover in an hour: Wright's personal history, the history of the building(s), the function of each building and room, the materials used, the desert site, and a healthy measure of anecdotes were included. From a phenomenological point of view my tour and most tours that I have made come up short in terms of experience, by which I mean attention to all of the sensory experiences that Wright made available to his clients, an orchestrated onslaught of visual splendor, sound (water, for instance), touch (the textures of stone), the body in space, a sense of movement, time, and even smell all come into play. Wright was good at many things but none more than engaging us through every sense of our being, not only the visual.

Taliesin West: A view toward the drafting room and drawing vault (JQ)

LI XIAODONG VISITS THE MARTIN HOUSE; DAVID WRIGHT HOUSE SAVED!

noreply@blogger.com (Jack Quinan) — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:55:00 +0000

According to Brian Carter, professor and former Dean of UB’s School of Architecture and Planning, Li Xiaodong, a rising star in the world of Chinese architecture, was so determined to visit Buffalo during his brief stay in the U.S. that in the face of hurricane Sandy, the storm that has devastated the east coast, he and Leslie, his wife, rented a car and drove to Buffalo in heavy rain where they were housed in the Martin House gardener’s cottage and dined in the George Barton House. It all made perfect sense when, in his presentation at UB he outlined the recent history of Chinese architecture and his emerging place within it. By studying first in China, then in Holland, then working in Shanghai where he watched the feverish race to import American and European architects to build entire high-rise cities virtually overnight, Li sensed the loss of significant chunks of Chinese culture and a need for an authentic, regionally-based, sustainable architecture. His Liyuan Library, glass-enclosed and sun-shaded by thousands of salvaged sticks, is designed to draw cool air off a nearby pool in the summer. The interior tiered hall reveals its timber structure with a hint, perhaps, of Wright’s Larkin Building. Li’s School Bridge for the village of Pinghe (2008-9) won an Aga Kahn Award for its multiple functions as school, stage, playground, and bridge all of which connect two ancient round castles to form a new civic core for the village. Given the obvious affinity to Wright’s concern for the nature of materials, we think Li Xiaodong and Leslie slept happily in the gardener’s cottage.

Interior Liyuan Library by Li Xiaodong

School Bridge, Pinghe, China, 2008-9 by Li Xiaodong

Thanks to the heroic efforts of a task force of board members of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, the Mayor and other enlightened persons in Phoenix, and some very generous benefactors, it appears that the David and Gladys Wright House in Phoenix will be preserved. For a Phoenix-based account see http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/20121031frank-lloyd-wrightdesigned-home-sold.html. Whew!

Frank Lloyd Wright, David and Gladys Wright House, Phoenix, AZ, 1950

“It Will Be Your Window, It Will Be Our Best Window”

noreply@blogger.com (Susana Tejada) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:40:00 +0000


Conservatory Window. Photograph by Janet Akcakal.

Most anything is possible—particularly when you combine the idea of a simple “pickle jar” with the enthusiastic spirit of an entire group of Martin House volunteers. Through their inspiration and support, our tireless volunteers embarked on a quiet fundraising campaign with the goal of purchasing a “single-stem” window for the conservatory building of the Martin House Complex. What was once a missing piece of original Frank Lloyd Wright-designed art glass lost to the throes of history is now a beautifully crafted light screen replicated for the Martin House by the Oakbrook Esser Studios. Board President John N. Walsh, III made the announcement at a special presentation held at last week’s Martin House Volunteer Recognition Party where the completed window was formally unveiled and subsequently installed on site. Mr. Walsh expressed our collective gratitude best when he gave the following remarks, which have been redacted for reprint here:

left to right: John N. Walsh, III (board president); Richard Chamberlin (volunteer); Maggie Cammarata (museum store associate); and Mary Roberts (executive director). Photograph by Bernhard C. Wagner.

“Thank you for inviting me to your party! ... A wise woman, my Mom, urges us to ask this question when our personal temperature is rising or when setting priorities in a stress-filled day. The question is, “Will this really matter a year from now?” Well, what we are about to discuss right now will definitely matter a year from now, ten years from now, fifty years from now, and as long as the Martin House flourishes in our community, and greatly because of what we are about to talk about. So what is it? Well first, it’s an honor, beyond words, to be here and to be almost ready to talk about that thing that will matter a year from now. Because, once again, the fabulous Martin House volunteers, the best volunteer army in the free world, the over-worked, underpaid, under-saluted but deeply loved fans of Frank--you, all of you, have, just as you have done for so many years, spectacularly done it again! ...Totally funded by the fabulous Martin House volunteers, because of you—the envied by all other non-profits Gang of 400—the very first replica window for the conservatory has been created and is now ready for installation. Hooray! As you know, this was a one hundred percent volunteer effort. It first sprang from the fertile minds of Maggie Cammaratta and Rich Chamberlain…. And so, thanks to Maggie and Rich, the Pickle Jar Campaign was created! Rich brought in the jar. Maggie made the sign, and the project was officially kicked off at the volunteer business meeting back on April 5, 2008 …. In ten days, you and they had raised sixty dollars…. One gift was a generous one thousand dollars. Others were equally generous at lesser amounts…. In all, a total of $11,668.19 was raised, and a single-stem conservatory window has been beautifully produced by Oakbrook Esser and arrived just a few days ago at the site. It will be installed towards the north end of the conservatory directly adjacent to the door closest to the Wisteria Shop entry. It will be your window. It will be our best window. It will be right there, every time you walk by. Mostly, it will remain evergreen in our hearts as a reflection of spectacular devotion and generosity. It does matter and will do so for years. Mary [Roberts] and I, amidst the millions raised, have agreed that it’s the best gift we have ever received. We humbly thank you on behalf of the entire Martin House family.”