Issue Feb 21st 2024  February 21st 2024

Lloyd Wright's Wayfarers Chapel Shuts Amid Landslide Fears

The Wayfarers Chapel, a glass-walled, mid-century marvel that sits beneath a canopy of redwoods near Los Angeles, California, has closed indefinitely due to “accelerated land movement” in the area.

Known locally as the “glass church”, the building was designed by architect Lloyd Wright and designated a national historic landmark just two months ago. But the structure sits on the Palos Verdes peninsula, which is prone to landslides. Cracks had begun to appear in the structure, and several panes of glass had broken in recent months.

“Effective immediately, we are extremely devastated to announce the closure of Wayfarers Chapel and its surrounding property,” a statement from the chapel reads.

The chapel is located in the city of Rancho Palos Verdes, just south of LA, amid towering redwood trees overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It sits just above Abalone Cove, where homes have cracked and streets have buckled in recent months, and south of the Rolling Hills Estates, where dozens of homes last year began sliding into a canyon. “The City stands ready to support Wayfarers Chapel in any way possible to safely reopen this sacred space to the community,” a city statement on the closure reads.

City inspectors noted damage and signs of land movement at the chapel, though they did not yellow- or red-tag any structures for immediate closure. Still, the chapel’s board of directors decided to shut the chapel and grounds so repairs could be made, according to the city.

Intense rain and storms in recent weeks have deepened worries about landslides, which have been a hazard in the region for decades.

The chapel was completed in 1951, and over the years has become an iconic wedding venue and tourist attraction. Film stars Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay were married here in 1958, as were thousands of less-famous couples.

It is the most well-known work of Wright, the eldest son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It was built as a memorial to the 18th-century Swedish philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg – conceptualised as a place where people could connect with God and nature. It blurs “the lines between architectural structure and natural landscape”, the national historic landmarks program wrote, after dedicating the structure in December.

Click for more details: theguardian.com  

The Making of a National Historic Landmark: Bruce Goff's Ford House

By John H. Waters, AIA

On December 11, 2023, the Sam and Ruth Van Sickle Ford House in Aurora, Illinois, designed by Bruce Goff in 1947 and built by Don Tosi, was designated a National Historic Landmark. With that designation it joins the ranks of Monticello and Mount Vernon, or, perhaps of more relevance, works like Richardson’s Glessner House, Greene and Greene’s Gamble House, Philip Johnson’s Glass House, Charles and Ray Eames’ own house and 26 structures by Frank Lloyd Wright. These are works that are considered to have exceptional historical value, in these cases architectural value.

While sites placed on the National Register of Historic Places (NR) can be considered to be of local, state or national significance, National Historic Landmarks (NHLs) by definition are considered to represent qualities that are specifically of national significance, and each nomination for an NHL must make a convincing argument for that significance. In an architectural context, that argument should focus on an evaluation, based on scholarly assessment, of a designer’s impact on his or her field. Further, not all works of a documented master designer are considered eligible for NHL designation. A nominated work must be found to be a nationally significant benchmark within the designer’s career.

There are nearly 100,000 properties on the National Register. By contrast, there just over 2,600 NHLs, and the listing of less than 20% of those is due primarily to their architectural significance. Illinois has 89 NHLs (53 of those are in Cook County, 39 in Chicago). Nevada has eight. The Ford House is the first NHL in Kane County. This is an occasion worth celebrating!

Not surprisingly, NHL designations don’t just happen. The effort to have the Ford House designated began nearly ten years ago, and grew out of more general discussions about preserving this house for the future. In 1986 the house was purchased by Sidney Robinson. As an architect and educator, Sid’s motivation to buy the house wasn’t simply as a place to live. He recognized that it was a location for learning. Over the years Sid has shared the house with hundreds of people, ranging from interested neighbors, to his students at the University of Illinois at Chicago (of which I was one) and what was formerly known (when he taught there) as the School of Architecture at Taliesin, to visitors from around the world. Soon after he bought the house, he began discussions with Landmarks Illinois (LI) about donating a preservation easement on the house that would protect the structure in perpetuity. From 2007 to 2014 I was on Landmarks Illinois’s Easement Committee, which reviewed work on easement properties that LI held, so I became a logical sounding board for Sid as he contemplated his easement donation.

In November 19, 2013, Sid and I met at the house with Bonnie McDonald and Suzanne Germann of LI, to discuss the easement donation. Typically, properties on which easements are donated are listed in the National Register. One of the reasons for this is that if the owner is planning to take a tax deduction on the difference in appraised value of the property with and without an easement, the IRS requires this sort of listing to certify the property’s historic significance. In this case Sid did not plan to take this deduction, so did not plan to have the house listed. During our meeting Bonnie urged him to consider listing the house. She explained that, while the property would be legally protected by the easement, if there were any challenge to the easement, its listing would assist LI’s efforts to protect the house. Given this, Sid readily agreed to have the house listed. This was the first event that led the house toward its designation as an NHL.

Having some experience with writing NR nominations, I eagerly agreed to write the nomination for the Ford House. The second event that moved the house toward its NHL designation occurred when we reached out to the Illinois state historic preservation office (SHPO) to propose nominating the house to the NR. On February 4, 2014, then-Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer Rachel Leibowitz responded enthusiastically! She suggested that the house be placed on the NR at a national level of significance. While most listings are at a local or state level of significance, nominating at a national level requires proving that the site’s significance extends beyond local recognition. At this point Rachel also suggested NHL designation should be considered, though at that time we were thinking one step at a time – getting the house on the National Register – this idea resonated.

The Ford house nomination benefited from a healthy amount of archival information. The Bruce Goff Archive at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryerson and Burnham Library holds a wealth of documents relating to Goff’s career. Goff’s appointment as a professor at the Department of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma in Norman in 1946 required that much of the communication between Goff and the Fords be by letter. This correspondence is now held in the Goff Archive. By contrast, to the archive’s holdings on the now-demolished Bavinger House in Norman are slim. It is likely that much of the communication regarding the Bavinger House was either conducted in person or on the telephone. This documentation of the Ford House design process was, of course, a boon to my research. Goff’s effort to provide a design for the Fords that met their budget led to Goff providing three schemes for the Fords. Drawings for all three schemes are held by the Department of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute. Research in the Ryerson/Burnham Library was relatively easy, I could go there anytime during opening hours and request file boxes filled with information. Research at the Department of Architecture and Design was more complicated. Appointments had to be made, and I was not allowed to touch any of the drawings or make study snapshots of them. While Art Institute staff members were extremely helpful, these rules made research more challenging. My efforts were aided by Sid’s generous underwriting of the digitization of several of the key Ford House drawings.

To better understand the three schemes Goff proposed to the Fords, I created digital models of each. The design for Scheme 1 was generated by the rotating of Quonset hut ribs around a central axis. Goff was familiar with Quonset huts from his time in the Navy during World War II as a member of the Seabees, the Navy’s construction division. Scheme 2 used the ribs in a more traditional fashion. Ruth Ford made a perceptive critique of Scheme 2 when she wrote Goff,

I am sorry I feel as I do about quansit [sic] huts but too I feel they are not your design. They were something conceived for war time living and gives me the same feeling as a prefabricated house does – The use of the ribs as they were in the round one was totally different and didn’t suggest in any way the rather horrible (to me) quansit shape.

Scheme 3 jettisoned the ribs all together. As it worked out, Scheme 1 was the design constructed.

An additional item greatly enhanced our understanding of the design and construction of the Ford House. This was a transcribed interview that Sid held with builder Don Tosi in 1995. Tosi may be considered more the just the general contractor for the Ford house. He was, in many aspects, a collaborator with Goff on the house as constructed. Tosi was a student of Goff’s at the Chicago Academy of Design, which was owned and run by Ruth Ford. Tosi worked for Goff before and after service in World War II and he would go on to have a successful career and a designer and builder of houses in the western suburbs of Chicago. He described Goff’s early work on the design of the Ford house. “Bruce liked to work with shapes.” Generating the “dome” of the Ford house by the rotation of the Quonset ribs developed from this preference. This was a great example of Goff’s ability to look at materials in new ways. You have to be able to think outside the box to imagine that coal he used as masonry at the Ford House would make a useful construction material!

Writing of the nomination proceeded smoothly and on October 24, 2014, Sid and I drove down to Springfield where I presented the nomination to the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council (IHSAC), the entity that reviews NR nominations. Each state’s historic preservation office is the effective gate-keeper for NR nominations in its state, so IHSAC’s approval of the nomination was a major hurdle in the nomination process. Following up on minor comments made at the IHSAC meeting, I forwarded a revised draft of the nomination to the SHPO on December 1, 2014. Once this was done, we were able to think in a more focused manner about nominating the house as an NHL. On January 14, 2015, I made a formal inquiry to the National Park Service about designating the house as an NHL. This flagged the NR nomination at the National Park Service and comments were sent back requesting the argument for national significance be developed. In particular, comparisons to Goff’s other works needed to be expanded. Over the course of 2015 I researched Goff’s work further and on November 28, 2015 submitted a further revised NR nomination. On March 8, 2016, over two years after Bonnie McDonald’s original suggestion, the house was listed in the National Register at a national level of significance.

Unlike National Register, which are reviewed by each state, National Historic Landmark nominations are handled directly by the National Park Service (NPS). Nominations for Illinois are handled out of the NPS’s Omaha office. In November 2014, before I submitted my letter of inquiry to the NPS, Rachel Leibowitz connected me with Alesha Cerny, historian with the NPS, who came to play a crucial role in shepherding the nomination. To start with, Alesha steered me toward correct models for my formal nomination inquiry letter to the NPS, so I would start off on the right foot with the NPS. Alesha’s unwavering support of the nomination was immensely helpful as we worked through the NHL nomination process. This process was not unduly arduous, but it took PATIENCE! This timeline bears this out:

• August 16, 2016: Alesha wrote that the Washington DC office of the NPS had not been aware that the NR listing at a national level of significance had been completed. The NR nomination would need to be reviewed by NPS staff before the NHL process could move forward.

• January 12, 2017: Alesha wrote that there was a backlog on nomination review.

• July 17, 2017: Alesha visited the house had no doubt that it was appropriate for consideration as an NHL, but she had received a letter from her program head stating they, “looked forward to reviewing the nomination.” A year and half after my initial inquiry, the nomination still had not been reviewed!

• February 23, 2021: Alesha received comments from reviewer Barbara Wyatt. These comments were very helpful in strengthening the argument for national significance.

• May 2, 2021: I sent a revised draft of the nomination to Alesha addressing Barbara Wyatt’s comments.

• January 3, 2022: Alesha sent back minor additional review comments Barbara Wyatt on formatting.

• January 16-February 11, 2022: I sent revised materials to Alesha.

• May 11-12, 2023: The review meeting for the nomination was held. This was the first review of NHL nominations for several years. Through Alesha’s efforts the Ford House nomination was included on the agenda. Unfortunately I had a conflict on that date and was not be able to present. Alesha, with backup from Sid agreed to present. With minor comments from the committee, the nomination was unanimously approved.

• May 23, 2022: I sent a revised draft of the nomination to Alesha addressing the committee’s comments (sound familiar?).

The rest was smooth sailing, right? Not exactly! There was one more committee that needs to rubber-stamp the nomination before it went to the Secretary of Interior for signature. The terms of membership of this committee all expired at the same time and so a completely new membership needed to be established before the committee could meet (no – really!).

• August 16, 2023, the National Park Service Advisory Board met and formally approved the Ford House nomination. Next stop, the Secretary of Interior’s desk for signature!

• December 13, 2023, Secretary of Interior’s signing of eighteen NHLs, including the Ford House, is announced. The Ford House is now and National Historic Landmark!!!

The NPS’s press release stated:

“The new National Historic and Natural Landmarks designated today further the Interior Department’s vision for inclusive and collaborative conservation,” said Secretary Deb Haaland. “Supporting voluntary and locally led stewardship is key to nationwide efforts to conserve and connect the lands upon which we all depend.”       



“It’s important that the places we deem nationally significant represent the historical and natural diversity of the American experience,” said Chuck Sams, Director of the National Park Service, which administers the NHL and NNL programs. “These 18 new landmarks further illustrate and expand our country’s collective heritage and splendor.”  

The ten years was worth it! Throughout the process, Sid and I experienced nothing but support for the nomination. Thanks in particular to Rachel Leibowitz and Alesha Cerny for their advocacy of this nomination. And of course to Sid, for his stewardship for almost 40 years, of this extraordinary work of art. And in regard to the initial effort that motivated this whole process, Sid has included the donation of an easement to LI as a part of his estate planning.

One piece of advice: never plan to nominate an NHL on a tight timeline!

Click for more details: nps.gov  

Frank Lloyd Wright's Spring Green Restaurant Added To National Register Of Historic Places

After being added to the State Register of Historic Places last year, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Spring Green Restaurant at Riverview Terrace, 5607 County Road C, just up and across the road from Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, has now also been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The building was landmarked by Wisconsin Historical Society in November and it was added to the National Park Service register on Feb. 8.

These days, the building serves as a visitors center for Wright's Taliesin home, but it wasn't built for that purpose.

Wright bought the site along the Wisconsin River where State Highway 23 meets County Road C and planned it as a restaurant called Riverview Terrace.

Initially meant to be a seasonal venue when it was designed in 1953, by the following year Wright pivoted to make it a year-round restaurant and construction began in 1957.

Two years later, however, Wright died at the age of 92 and progress on the restaurant stopped.

Work recommenced in 1966 when the property was bought by the Wisconsin River Land Development Corporation, which tapped Taliesin Associate Architects – founded by Wright's son-in-law, architect William Wesley Peters, and fellow FLW acolytes after their mentor's death – to finish the work.

The Spring Green Restaurant opened in the building in 1967 with a grand opening event that, according to WHS, coincided with a visit by first lady “Lady Bird” Johnson to meet Olgivanna, Wright's widow.

The restaurant continued to operate until 1992. It was sold the following year to Taliesin Preservation, which converted it to the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center.

The facility has a cafe and gift shop and is also where tours meet. It is also home to the offices of Taliesin Preservation.

“This building has such a fascinating history," said Taliesin Preservation Executive Director Carrie Rodamaker. "The driving force behind it was for Wright to give back to the community and valley where he lived for the majority of his life.

"We are thrilled about its recognition at the state level—and now nationally.”

According to WHS, "the midsection of the building connects two hills to form a bridge-like structure. The metal truss that spans the length of the building was salvaged from the collapsed Highway 23 bridge that connected the Wyoming Valley to Spring Green. It overlooks County Road C and the Wisconsin River, blending harmoniously into the landscape as Wright intended.

"The interior boasts a vaulted ceiling, expansive windows, red oak paneling, and a fireplace. Olgivanna was responsible for selecting the furnishings and various elements of the décor."

Click for more details: onmilwaukee.com