Issue 100 June 6th 2018

Announcements

Welcome to Issue #100

This is a milestone worth noting—100 weekly issues of hand picked Frank Lloyd Wright-related news read by several thousand Wright enthusiasts across the globe!

Thanks for your interest and support over the past two years since we launched this very special and free digital publication. We'd love to hear what you enjoy most about Wright Society and why it still holds your attention each and every Wednesday it's delivered to your email inbox. Send a message to mail[at]wrightsociety.com and let us know.

Here's to the next 100 issues!

The Headlines

Solving the Mystery of Taliesin's Carriages

The Whirling Arrow has the first installment of a two-part series where Vicki Nelson Bodoh shares her journey of finding and researching Frank Lloyd Wright’s carriages. Vicki and her husband became part of the carriage driving world and joined the Carriage Association of America in 1983. Vicki has worked on numerous CAA committees and was President for three terms. She has researched and written numerous articles for the Carriage Association’s official publication, The Journal, including “The Frank Lloyd Wright Carriages” published in 2002. The research was an opportunity to combine her love of carriages with her interest in Frank Lloyd Wright.

Vicki writes, "In 2000, Annie Randall, a fellow driving enthusiast and the owner of a bookstore in Baraboo, WI, asked me if I would like to follow up on a tip that she received from a customer. Annie had been told that there were still some carriages at Taliesin, the home of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, near Spring Green, WI. Those of us in the driving world often receive information about carriages from non-drivers. Usually these “carriages” turn out to be a farm wagon or a buggy. However, as a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, I was curious. Did he drive carriages at Taliesin?" Read more.

Restoring Landscaping At The Darwin D. Martin House

Crews have begun work to restore the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed landscape at the Darwin Martin House estate in Buffalo.The project will be primarily funded by Phase 2 of the Buffalo Billion and is the final stage of a more than two-decades long restoration effort that reflects a $50 million dollar investment in the National Historic Landmark and New York State Historic Site.

Restoring the landscaping is essential for the complete restoration of the estate, because Wright intertwined both architecture and landscaping in his design. Wright is described as having created homes in harmony with nature, taking an integrated design approach unifying buildings, their interior decorative elements and exterior landscape in an organic style. Under Wright's design, gardens took on the character of outdoor rooms. Read more.

FSC's Annie Pfeiffer Chapel Honored

In its June edition, Southern Living magazine includes Florida Southern College's Annie Pfeiffer Chapel in its list of “The South’s Most Beautiful Chapels. Annie Pfeiffer Chapel, completed in 1941, was the first of a dozen structures at Florida Southern designed by the celebrated architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It is the largest collection in the world of Wright-designed structures at a single site.

“Florida Southern College is honored to have the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel, a structure of Frank Lloyd Wright’s, included in the latest issue of Southern Living,” FSC spokeswoman Rebecca Paul said. “The Annie Pfeiffer Chapel is an architectural gem and we are thrilled to share it with the readers of Southern Living.”

Annie Pfeiffer Chapel, named for a benefactor of the college, displays elements of Wright’s distinctive style of building design. Its strongly horizontal exterior features smooth surface blocks intersecting at sharp angles, offset by overlapping segments and cantilevered roofs. The chapel, which holds about 500, rests on a base of interlocking, textured blocks inset with squares of colored glass. The soaring center tower of the chapel contains repeating geometric elements, including patterns of triangles, topped by a web of metal in right-angle segments painted Cherokee red. The interior of the chapel continues the motif of repeated geometric figures set into the pale walls. Accents of red appear in metal beams and the grids of windows, as well as the surfaces of chairs.

While the chapel and the other Wright-designed buildings are a source of pride for Florida Southern, they also present an ongoing and expensive maintenance challenge for the college. Florida Southern recently received a matching $50,000 grant from the Florida Department of State’s Division of Historical Resources for restoration of Annie Pfeiffer Chapel, which involves replacing the lower section of skylights. Read more.

Raising Funds To Wright The Unitarian Meeting House's Roof

The Unitarian Meeting House was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and is a National Historical Landmark in Madison. The building was listed as one of 17 Wright-designed buildings that should be preserved in its original configuration by the American Institute of Architects in 1960.

Friends of the Meeting House with the First Unitarian Society of Madison are launching a crowdfunding campaign Friday to help restore the Unitarian Meeting House which needs repairs to the trusses under the copper roof and the auditorium prow.

Partial funding of $1.35 million was acquired through grants from the Evjue Foundation and the Pleasant Rowland Foundation and funds donated by members of the First Unitarian Society of Madison.

The crowdfunding campaign, "Wright the Roof," is launching on Indiegogo Friday and will end July 31.The campaign aims to raise $25,000 of the $750,000 needed to reach the $2.1 million goal. Read more.

Interior Design Lessons From Frank Lloyd Wright

The Whirling Arrow informs us that Frank Lloyd Wright’s key design lessons can be taken from his ethos of focusing on a holistic process to design from within outward.

“His intent was to design complete buildings … the resulting whole much more than the sum of the parts,” says Margo Stipe, the Director and Curator of Collections at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. “He believed works of architecture should be complete works of art.”

To accomplish this cohesive vision, Wright was in control of all aspects of the design. “This included the orientation of the building on the site, choice of building materials, and all of the interior design — furniture, lighting, art glass, rugs, and even art objects — if complete unity, and, hence, the desired harmony and repose, was to be achieved,” says Stipe.

Stipe, who has authored multiple books on Wright — one of them focusing specifically on his lesser-known passion for interior design: Frank Lloyd Wright, The Rooms: Interiors and Decorative Arts — shares four of the architect’s most compelling and provocative interior design mantras over at the Foundation's blog . Read more.

A Wright Legacy House For Sale

The "Whiteford-Haddock House," near Ann Arbor is left off most lists of Michigan buildings designed by iconic architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. That's because technically, it wasn't built until after his death, and so is attributed as a Taliesin Associated Architect's Legacy Design. Now this house is stepping into the spotlight by going on the market for $1.2 million.

Wright initially designed the house for a retired Wisconsin teacher in 1938, but she didn't end up building it. Four decades later, the late Fred Haddock, an astrophysicist who taught at the University of Michigan, and his wife-at-the-time, Priscilla Whiteford, worked with Taliesin Associated Architects to carry out Wright's plans for the house on 10 acres bordering Honey Creek in Ann Arbor. The Whiteford-Haddock House is one of just a dozen of Wright's designs constructed after his death in 1959.

In keeping with Wright's Usonian style, the main living space in the Whiteford-Haddock House is on a single floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows in the front corner of the house and master bedroom to provide views of the patios and gardens and give a sense of merging the indoors and outdoors. Read more.

Wright's Neils House in Minnesota for Sale

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation shares the news that the Frieda and Henry J. Neils House in Minneapolis, MN has been listed for $3.4 million.

Originally designed in 1949 on a unit system of hexagons, the Minnesota home is an L-shaped design and faces the southeastern shore of Cedar Lake. The Usonian-style, 2,511 square foot home has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.

Some of the furniture throughout the home is Wright-designed, including built-ins, desks, tables, and beds. The property has had few significant alterations to the original design and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. See the pictures here.

Wright Report From The FLWBC

The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy recently provided important information about Wright building updates and conservancy action. Included is information about the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin; the Suntop Homes, located in the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore; the Haynes House in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Kalita Humphreys Theater at Turtle Creek Conservancy in Dallas, Texas; and the Coonley Playhouse in Riverside, Illinois. Read all about what is going on here.

Prairie School Comfort With Space Needle Views

A 1911 Prairie School-era home designed by architects Willatsen & Byrne has hit the market in Seattle. Restored to display its original bones in full glory, the George Matzen House is a take off of Wright's "$5000 Fireproof Home" design and offers dramatic views of the Space Needle, Mt. Rainier, the city skyline, and Puget Sound from almost every window...and is priced accordingly at $2.950 million. See more here.

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