Issue 251 April 28th 2021

The Headlines

Spring 2021 Journal OA+D: Eric Lloyd Wright — Coming Soon!

Eric Lloyd Wright — son of Lloyd Wright and grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright — is an architect of rare pedigree and a creative force in his own right. Eric is a sincerely genial and generous person who often appeared in various local and national publications interviewed about his family countless times. His advocacy for organic architecture as developed by his grandfather has been second to none. However, very little has been published on Eric Lloyd Wright's own architectural work.

The Spring 2021 issue of the Journal of Organic Architecture + Design seeks to rectify this oversight, focusing on Eric’s independent architectural works created during the course of his over 50-year career. The 64 page, full color publication features essays by architectural historian William B. Scott, Jr., architect Gary McCowan, with additional text by author and historian David G. De Long. With never-before-published drawings, plans, and photographs focusing on a selection of Eric’s built and unbuilt works, this issue stands as a long-overdue monograph of Eric Lloyd Wright’s contribution to organic architecture.

Subscribers to the Journal OA+D can expect their copies to arrive in their mailboxes in May. If you are not a subscriber, individual copies of this landmark issue can be pre-ordered online here to ensure you get a copy as soon as its released!

Revisiting Wingspread, Cameras In Hand

Wright in Racine features Mark Hertzberg's photo journey through the delights of Wingspread.

"One of the joys I have in visiting buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, cameras in hand, is noticing new details, no matter how many times I have been at a particular site. Sometimes it is a question of different lighting at a different time of day from my last visit, other times the photo comes from wondering why I had not noticed something before."

Read Mark's entire article and see his photographs here.

When It’s Wright, It’s Wright

Kevin Walsh writes that Frank Lloyd Wright left his mark on Manhattan and Staten Island, even if he disliked the city and didn't live to see the Guggenheim completed.

A home on Staten Island is Frank Lloyd Wright’s sole private home design in New York City, yet he never saw its completion, as it was finished the year he died, 1959. Wright did plan to visit the construction site in 1958 but illness kept him away.

The lengthy red and tan building is at the edge of Lighthouse Hill, 200 feet above sea level, and takes advantage of the spectacular hillside and ocean views. It’s in the mold of Wright’s “prairie” design ranch houses. The building was commissioned and built for New York personnel agency vice-president William Cass and his wife Catherine, who occupied it for 40 years, selling it in 1999.

The Cass’ were fans of Wright’s work elsewhere in the country, and after seeing him on a Mike Wallace interview show in 1957, wrote the architect to inquire if he’d build them a house. Wright referred them to an associate, Marshall Erdman, a Lithuanian-born architect, who agreed to construct a design called “Prefab No. 1.” Prefabricated units were shipped from Madison, Wisconsin, and assembled here by another Wright associate, Morton Delson, who sited the house for maximum views of the valley and Richmondtown below.

The house is named for a copper beech tree that originally graced the property. A 1967 hurricane felled the tree, but a new one was planted in its place. Wright, who believed that a building’s interior furnishings should be designed in concert with the exterior, also designed the living room and bedroom furniture. Read the entire article here.

The Iconic Arizona Biltmore's Major Renovation

Architectural Digest features an exclusive look inside the iconic Arizona Biltmore Hotel's recent renovation.

Opened in 1929, Arizona Biltmore still sparkles with the old Hollywood glamour of the Roaring Twenties. Marilyn Monroe, Elton John, Frank Sinatra, and many American presidents, from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama, have all rested their heads in this architectural gem. Surrounded by the mountains, desert, and stucco rooftops of Phoenix, the hotel was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright protégé Albert Chase McArthur. The influences of Wright, who consulted on the hotel, can be seen throughout the property, such as the signature Prairie-style design. After undergoing a $70 million renovation, in which great care was taken to preserve the hotel’s architectural details, the property will once again open to the public this May.

“The building is iconic and known for its Wright influences, so staying true to this without copying or emulating it was important to us,” says PHX Architecture’s Erik Peterson, the architect who led the project. “Everything new was done with an organic inspiration, but also done with today’s cutting-edge technology. That is how Wright did design in his day….Nothing is timid, but instead bold.” More here.

Hayes On Frank Lloyd Wright's "Forgotten House"

In 2015, a seemingly run of the mill Shorewood house hit the news when it was rediscovered as a Frank Lloyd Wright American System-Built design.

Then Nick and Angela Hayes purchased the home originally built for Elizabeth Murphy in 1917 and set about restoring it. Nick Hayes began researching the history of the home and the System-Built project, including tracing the relationship between Wright and his then-employee Russell Barr Williamson as well as with the owner, Murphy, and the developer, Arthur Richards.

At the same time, he chronicled the work they were undertaking to restore the house. The result is "Frank Lloyd Wright's Forgotten House," a book that is part history, part home restoration, part architecture, part memoir and a readable, personal and deep-diving work about a local Wright house. More here.

In Memoriam: Franklin Toker, Architectural Historian

Franklin Karl Toker, an engaging architectural historian and archaeologist whose indefatigable scholarship unearthed revelations about Italy’s Florence Cathedral, Fallingwater and Pittsburgh landmarks, died Monday at his Squirrel Hill home, just 10 days shy of his 77th birthday. He retired in 2018 after being diagnosed with a rare form of dementia.

For more than 40 years, he taught the history of art and architecture to students at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. His two best-known books are “Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait” and “Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E.J. Kaufmann and America’s Most Extraordinary House.”

“Fallingwater Rising” showed, through letters previously unavailable to scholars, how deeply involved department store owner E.J. Kaufmann was in the design and construction of the house that he commissioned and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Mr. Toker destroyed the myth, propagated by Edgar Kaufmann Jr., the department store owner’s son, that he, Edgar Jr., had played a key role in the home’s design and construction.

“He put a context to Fallingwater in a way that hadn’t been done before. That’s what took him time, effort.” said his retired colleague, Katheryn Linduff, of Shadyside. More on Toker's life and accomplishments here.

Best Summer Design Discovery 2021 — The School Of Architecture

The School of Architecture, founded by Frank Lloyd Wright as the Taliesin Fellowship in 1932, is pleased to offer a Summer Design Discovery 2021 program organized in collaboration with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).

The program, titled City Edge, will explore notions of collective space in architecture and urban design through the examination of both historic examples and contemporary projects across rural and urban landscapes in the midwest. Participants will engage in tours and private events at a number of significant Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in Chicago and Wisconsin, as well as activities around the upcoming 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial, The Available City.

Over the course of 4 weeks, home base will move between two iconic workspaces, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wyoming Valley School in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall in Chicago, which will serve as the program’s studio space for a short design project related to the upcoming Biennial. More information here.

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