Issue 262 July 14th 2021

The Headlines

Wright's Freeman House For Sale

The Samuel & Harriet Freeman House by Frank Lloyd Wright (1923-25) in Los Angeles, CA with additions and furniture by Rudolf Schindler and subsequent minor improvements by Wright’s apprentices, John Lautner, Gregory Ain, and Robert Clark, is now for sale.

The Freeman House clearly expresses the design rationale of Wright’s textile block construction system, incorporating the openness and central hearth of Wright’s earlier Prairie houses with the extensive ornament of the textile blocks. The walls, constructed of 12,000 cast concrete blocks, are textured on both the interior and exterior to create a unified decorative scheme. Large windows, balconies and terraces make the modest home feel expansive.

Crowning the hill above Highland and Franklin with 270-degree views of Hollywood and the LA Basin, the Freeman House was originally designed as a salon space with a focal hearth, quasi-open kitchen, two bedrooms, and various terraces and roof decks. The concrete knit blocks provide structure and organic decoration, embodying the very concept of architecture as art.

The price of the home is $4,250,000 and includes many of the original furnishings designed for the house. The home is on the National Register of Historic Places. See listing info and additional photos here.

Wright's Boulter House Sold

The Boulter House in Clifton, Ohio, designed in 1954 by Frank Lloyd Wright, has been sold for $519,000 to the principals of a local venture capital firm. Candice Matthews Brackeen and her husband, Brian Brackeen manage Clifton-based Lightship Capital, which invests in women- and minority-owned startups and other underrepresented entrepreneurs.

The more than 2,000-square-foot, five-bedroom house was listed in 2019 for $695,000 by then owners Chuck Lohre and his wife, Janet Groeber, who spent more than a decade updating the house.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Boulter House is one of only three Frank Lloyd Wright homes built in Cincinnati during his lifetime and is an early example of his "Usonian" design – a term he coined for affordable housing.

The two-story house, which was designed for Cedric G. and Patricia Neils Boulter, is made of concrete blocks and Douglas fir timbers, and includes many of Wright's signature design features, including built-in furniture and expansive rows of floor-to-ceiling windows. See it here.

This American House: Frank Lloyd Wright's Meier House and The American System-Built Homes

In “This American House,” Jason Loper and Michael Schreiber—husbands, authors, and current owners of the Delbert and Grace Meier House in Monona, Iowa—explore that interconnectedness with enthusiasm and empathy.

2020 saw people across the world spending more time in their homes than ever before as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Families held off going out to eat or on vacation, and many began working and schooling from home. As a result, the way we interacted with our homes on a daily basis changed.

“A living room is no longer just a living room; it’s an office, a classroom and a playground all-in-one,” says Cory Mimms, publisher at Pomegranate. “Many of us used to live parts of our lives at home: the intimate moments of getting ready for school or work, sharing meals, going to bed. Now, we are living every aspect of our identity in the same space, whether that’s spouse or parent, friend or coworker or even activist. Inevitably, that changes the feelings we have about where we live.”

When Loper and Schreiber set out to buy a home several years ago, they certainly didn’t envision one suited to a pandemic, nor did they picture buying one with a pedigree. In fact, they had imagined a cozy getaway cabin not far from their life in Chicago. What they got instead was a big house in a small town and one of the few American System-Built Homes constructed from Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs. In doing so, they took on not just a mortgage, but also a long history of stewardship, ushering the house into a new period of time while retaining its original meaning and charm.

Inspired by that history, the two began compiling a record of their experiences, those of the previous residents and the role of the American System-Built Homes within Wright’s oeuvre. Featuring over 120 photographs and architectural drawings, “This American House: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Meier House and the American System-Built Homes” will be available July 15, 2021. Pre-order here.

The 16 Most Unusual Churches In North America

Fodors has a list of some of the most extraordinary churches in North America. From a church with murals of “secular saints”–like Anne Frank, Malcolm X, and Charles Darwin—to a replica of a 12th-century Norwegian stave church to a church eight feet wide, churches in the U.S. and Canada offer the unexpected. Not surprising, architectural icons Frank Lloyd Wright, Lloyd Wright, E. Fay Jones, among other notables are represented in this interesting group. See Fodors' choices here.

Loki’s Production Designer On The Modernist Inspiration Behind The Show’s Stunning Visuals

Loki’s Production Designer, Kasra Farahani, explains to The Art Newspaper's Helen Stoilas about the Modernist inspiration behind the show's stunning visuals.

Having studied industrial design early in her career, Kasra was asked, "Were there specific examples of Modernist architecture and design that you were looking at when you started working on the series?"

Kasra Farahani: So many, everyone from Frank Lloyd Wright to Breuer, to Mies van der Rohe to Paul Rudolph—you have a shot in the John Portman building—to Oscar Niemeyer.

The Time Variance Authority exists outside of the physical world—so there's no weather, there's no roofs, there's no difference between interior and exterior, there's not necessarily even gravity in the way that we know it. But there are these meandering colonnades that we took a lot of inspiration from Brasilia—and obviously a lot of the super cities that were drawn in comics. But also there's some really beautiful conceptual sketches that Frank Lloyd Wright did of a version Los Angeles in the early 20th century that had Roman-like colonnades and plazas and a lot of that fed into what the TVA expanse is." Read the entire interview here.

Mitchell House: Corwin/Wright’s Coda?

Mark Hertzberg recently posted an blog article that takes up the subject of the Henry G. and Lily Mitchell House at 905 Main Street in Racine, Wisconsin. Perhaps no house linked to Frank Lloyd Wright has generated as much give-and-take about its provenance as the Mitchell House. Note that Mark stated “linked to” and not “designed by.” There is no documentation of Wright’s involvement – if any – in the design of the stately house, but there is much thought that Corwin likely designed the house in collaboration with Wright. A definitive answer to “Who Did What?” still remains even after 20 years of sometimes contentious discussion. The lack of documentation means that the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation is unable to ascribe any of its design to Wright. Find out more on this intriguing topic here.

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