Issue 156 July 3rd 2019

The Headlines

Conservancy Seeking Proposals To Move Booth Cottage

The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy is seeking an individual or group to move, reconstruct, and restore the Sherman Booth Cottage (1913). This is an opportunity to breathe new life into a Wright-designed structure currently located in Glencoe, Illinois.

After being owned by the same family since 1956, the property was recently sold. The site on which it stands is to be redeveloped, and the Conservancy is assisting the new owner in finding a solution to preserve the Cottage at an alternate location. Because of the planned redevelopment, the cottage must be moved by Nov. 30, 2019.

The Cottage was originally built in Glencoe as a temporary home for the Sherman and Elizabeth Booth family while their permanent house was being constructed nearby. After the Booths moved from the Cottage in late 1916 or early 1917, the structure was moved approximately 300 feet south to its current location at 239 Franklin Road. If you are able to help save this structure, find out what's needed here.

Apartments At The Price Tower?

A federal grant of $500,000 may now be used to create apartments in Price Tower, the executive director of the Bartlesville Redevelopment Trust Authority said Wednesday.

BRTA Executive Director Chris Wilson said plans have been submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to use the 2015 Hope VI Main Street grant to rehabilitate four of the original apartments in the Price Tower into affordable housing.

“The project will take three of the original two-level apartments on six floors and rehabilitate them into new rental apartments,” Wilson said. “They will be restored in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright. The hardest part of the project will be the reconfiguration of the kitchens and bathrooms to be functional. Some of the funds may also be used for the HVAC and possible window treatments. One additional office space on a single floor will be converted to a required ADA accessible apartment as required by the grant. All will have elevator access. Because of the difficulty with moving furniture up and down in the elevators all apartments will be furnished.” Read more here.

The Farnsworth House Will Get A Light Makeover For The Chicago Architecture Biennial

Archpaper.com says that all eyes will be on Plano, Illinois, the small town nearly 60 miles west of the city that’s home to the Miesian masterpiece Farnsworth House, for the upcoming Chicago Architecture Biennial. Artists Iker Gil and Luftwerk duo, Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, are teaming up to shed new light on the pioneering Modern house, lining its underlying geometries with beams of neon laser light. The laser installation, "Geometry of Light," will be open to the public from October 11th to 13th for an evening walk-through like no other.

"Fitted out for a tech- and social media-savvy audience, the neon-saturated installation is sure to bring attention to the Fox River site, as the home will become the next in a series of architectural icons to get the Luftwerk treatment. In 2011, the collective brought a prototype of Geometry of Light to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater for its 75th anniversary. That installation was named INsite, and the artists collaborated with video designer Liviu Pasare and composer Owen Clayton Condon to create an audiovisual study of the house. INsite focused on outlining the building’s geometric components and the experience of moving through the lines of the space. An INsite-style study was also conducted independently for the Farnsworth House in 2014." More here.

Wright’s Renovated William H. Copeland House Asks $1.3M

Located on Forest Avenue in the nexus of the Neil Park Historic District, the Copeland House is a rare Wright project that saw the architect renovating another architect’s work (he also remodeled the Peter A. Beachy House and Hills-DeCaro House, also located in Oak Park).

The 1873 structure was originally built for William H. Harman in the Italianate style by an unknown architect. In 1908, new owner Dr. William Copeland hired Wright to design a combination coach house and garage. Happy with Wright’s work on that addition, Copeland then contracted him to renovate the main house.

Wright’s proposed Prairie design would be watered down, per Copeland’s wishes, but amid the wrap-around front porch, new tile roof, and reworked interior complete with custom woodwork, there remains touches, such as the low-pitched hip roof and modern interiors, that recall the new architecture Wright was then popularizing.

Agent Steve Northey of Berkshire Hathaway Real Estate hopes a preservation-minded buyer is able to purchase and care for the home. Asking price is $1,295,000. See it here.

Lautner's "Treehouse" in Sherman Oaks, California For Sale

A spiraling, two-story ‘treehouse’ built on a hill in posh Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, listed for sale on Tuesday for the first time in its 70-year history, asking $1.6 million.

Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice John Lautner—whose private residences are among the most celebrated modern architecture in Southern California—built the two-bedroom house in 1950 for a client named Louise Foster. The home is modest in size. It spans only 1,200 square feet and the lot occupies a sliver of an acre. The main living room occupies the second floor, topped with a wood-beamed ceiling and curved walls with windows looking out onto a thick of treetops on one side and a half-moon balcony on the other. An arm reaching off the circle encompasses the kitchen and large bedrooms. The first floor includes a car port and self-contained bedroom. See the photos here.

Learning By Doing Part 1 – Froebel’s Gifts

For the next several months, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation 2018-2019 Graphic Design Fellow, Meagan Vanderhill, will be exploring the concept of "learning by doing." In this article, she creates a nature pattern inspired by Froebel’s Gifts, childhood education objects that inspired Frank Lloyd Wright and impacted his philosophy and approach to design. Read Meagan's article here.

Dome Home By James Dresser For Sale

Located in Madison, Wisconsin, this two-bedroom, two-bathroom dome home is called the "Sunflower House" due to its round shape and the petal-like awnings over the triangular windows. Built in 1952 by architect James Dresser as a family home, the structure was featured in many 1950s magazines due to its unique style. Dresser studied organic architecture as an apprentice under Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin in Spring Green, and designed the Sunflower House as a monodome—a concrete shell built on a radial framework of curved steel beams.

Auldbrass 2019 Tour Tickets On Sale

If you are hoping to see Auldbrass Plantation, the only Frank Lloyd Wright home in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, get your tickets for this year because they won’t offer any tours at all in 2020.

Auldbrass Plantation, built by Wright in 1939 for Michigan industrialist C. Leigh Stevens, is located just outside Yemassee in the northern reaches of Beaufort County. The property was bought by movie producer Joel Silver in 1987 and restored during the past three decades.

The 4,000-acre property on the Combahee River, is “one of the largest and most complex residential projects Wright ever undertook,” according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Architectural Digest has featured Auldbrass, explaining that Wright worked on the home for nearly 20 years until his death in 1959. Buildings on the property include a main house, caretaker’s house, kennels, and stables.

Visitors come from all over the world for the event that has, for the past several years, been a fundraiser for the Beaufort County Open Land Trust. Tickets are still available for this year’s tour weekend, set for Nov. 1 and 2, said a news release from Beaufort-based event planner Ashley Rhodes. They are $175 per person. More here.

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