Issue Apr 17th 2024  April 17th 2024

Washington State University Students Study American Transcendentalism At Taliesin West

The Taliesin Institute hosted students from Washington State University at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona from March 4 – March 9. The studio, led by Professor Ayad Rahmani, was made possible through a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities as part of a national effort to expand the role and purpose of the humanities. Blending literature into the study of architecture and engineering, the course asked students to consider the architectural nature of the site through the lens of literary works—notably American transcendentalism—to delve deeper into their experience on campus.

In addition to studying the physical design of the site, students documented and engaged the multi-sensory nature of Taliesin West—sounds, smells, touch, the surrounding desert landscape, animals, and such—culminating in the creation of proposals outlining three-day mindfulness retreats for Taliesin West.

The students were housed in the Apprentice Court and the Carousel. During their time at Taliesin West, they took part in several activities that were the basis for their project proposals. Activities included tours of the historic core, the shelter zone, and the David Dodge house. In the mornings, yoga, tai chi, and mindfulness walks helped to center the students each day. The students also went on several field trips visiting the campus of Arizona State University as well as spending a day at Arcosanti.

The highlight of the week was when the group came together to cook a communal meal in the Taliesin West kitchen. The students were paired with a partner, and each made a dish from scratch to share. In preparation for their return home the students presented their proposals to a packed house of Taliesin West staff, including the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation CEO, Stuart Graff, as well as faculty and students from Arizona State University.

Upon their return to Washington State University the students will create an exhibition assembled and curated in the gallery space of Carpenter Hall on the WSU campus. This will be a collective effort with a major focus on the week spent at Taliesin West.

Click for more details: franklloydwright.org  

3 Years and Over $2 Million: What It Costs To Restore A Frank Lloyd Wright Home

Sixty five years after his death, Frank Lloyd Wright has sustained quite the fan club. His admirers congregate in Facebook Groups, like the 120,000-member Frank Lloyd Wright Nation, to share photos of his structures and discuss his brilliance on the daily. Roughly 150,000 people visit his most widely known home, Fallingwater, each year. And for many Wright superfans, living in one of the roughly 400 remaining homes designed by the famed 20th-century architect is the ultimate dream.

Still, Wright’s structures are notorious for aging poorly. Weak foundations, leaky roofs, and poor insulation, among other problems, have reportedly caused headaches for homeowners again and again over the decades. Given the high highs and low lows of his homes, we wondered what it would cost to make one of them from scratch in 2024, with slight adjustments to avoid these common problems. Dwell reached out to a range of contractors across the states with the most Wright-designed residences—namely Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, and Arizona—to suss it out, but most were hesitant to make an estimate of what such a project might cost, stating either that they’d need much more than the available photos and blueprints, or they didn’t have the bandwidth to turn around estimates. So instead Dwell sought out the next best thing: Frank Lloyd Wright homeowners and curators who would share what their restoration processes entailed.

A sample - Still Bend was suffering from deferred maintenance when brothers Michael and Gary Ditmer purchased the Two Rivers, Wisconsin, residence (also known as Schwartz House) in 2003. "We bought the house knowing that we were probably gonna have to put in almost what we paid for it within the first year just to stabilize it," Michael says. The Ditmers’ assumption was correct—they spent close to $300,000 on restoring the 2,900-square-foot Usonian-style home in the first year of the project. Work included replacing the roof, removing siding on the exterior that was covering the original exterior wood on part of the house, repairing a utility room wall that was deflecting, restoring the brickwork around the perimeter of the house, repairing the chimney, and rebuilding a balcony that had suffered a carpenter ant infestation, among other tweaks.

As stewards of the home, which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2019, and is now open to the public for tours and as an overnight rental, the Ditmers’ aim with Still Bend is to give visitors an experience as similar as possible to that of the original owners. In keeping with that, their work has been focused on maintaining the home as it was designed in 1938—not extensively updating it for modern life. "I’ve seen some [Wright] houses where people think they need to modernize the kitchen or the bathrooms and there’s a certain tipping point where if you start changing too many things the magic disappears," Michael says.

Click for more details: dwell.com  

Wright’s Legacy Perseveres In Northeast Indiana 65 years After His Death

Despite being born just two years after the American Civil War ended, the footprints — and blueprints — of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright can still be seen around the U.S. in 2024, and northeast Indiana is no exception.

Seven houses designed by Wright still remain across the Hoosier State, and two of them reside in northeast Indiana: the John D. Haynes House in Fort Wayne and the Dr. Richard Davis House in Marion.

Both houses are examples of Wright’s “Usonian” style of homes, which were one of two major styles Wright used during his career.

“Throughout his career, Wright was looking to create well-designed residential buildings for people of moderate income,” said John Waters, preservation programs manager with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and a registered architect in the State of Illinois.

Wright’s goal led him to designing Usonian homes from 1936 until his death April 9, 1959. The Haynes and Davis houses are two of roughly 135 Usonian-period homes that still exist in 2024. Located at 3901 N. Washington Road near Jefferson Pointe, the John D. Haynes House is a later example of Wright’s Usonian works. Wright designed the house in 1950, and it was built in 1952 for Haynes’ family, which at the time included his wife and four children. Featuring a brick base, wood shingles and a carport, the house highlights many of the design philosophies people have come to know Wright for.

“[The house shows] a very typical formula for Wright’s plans where you have a very open living space centered around a fireplace,” Waters said.

While the unique designs and materials of the Haynes house and many other Usonian homes are what draw enthusiasts to Wright’s work, they often proved to be a headache for the contractors tasked with building them.

“Your standard contractor would look at [Wright’s blueprints] and go ‘what is this thing? This is not like anything I’ve ever seen before,'” Waters said.

In a 1991 story on the Haynes house published by The News-Sentinel, Charles Sipe, who did the carpentry work and built some of the furniture, said the house was “very radical for its time.”

“All of the exposed wood was cypress. We had to order it and have the lumber made. And everything that hinged – cabinet doors, folding screens – had piano hinges. The roof edging was 14-16 inches wide and very difficult to fit … We went through a lot of trial and error on that roof,” Sipe told The News-Sentinel in 1991.

The Haynes house in one of 88 properties in Fort Wayne to receive a “Local Historic District” designation, and the house has received designations from the National Register of Historic Places and the Indiana State Historic Architectural and Archaeological Research Database (SHAARD).

While the Dr. Richard Davis House shares many characteristics with the John D. Haynes House, the house also has many unique features that set it apart from its Fort Wayne contemporary.

Located in the northern reaches of Marion, the home also known as “Woodside” is considerably larger than the John D. Haynes house and also features a tipi design that Waters has only seen on one other structure designed by Wright. Wright also designed Woodside in 1950, but the house was not built until 1955, according to property records.

In one of Wright’s most popular quotes, he said, “the longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” According to Wright’s fans and historians, the same could be said for his body of work.

“For me, as someone who works with [Wright] every day, I’m always learning something new,” Waters said.

While the Haynes and Davis houses may not as be widely known as some of Wright’s other designs, they represent a part of Wright’s work, influence and legacy that has continued to thrive 65 years after his death.

Click for more details: wane.com  

Rare Louis Sullivan Home For Sale In Chicago's Lincoln Park

One of a handful of remaining homes in the city designed by architectural innovator Louis Sullivan is coming on the market today. Its owner, a Chicago interior designer, has restored and updated it extensively over the past three decades.

Built in 1884, the house on Cleveland Avenue in Lincoln Park is one of only five single-family houses by Sullivan that remain in the city, according to the Art Institute of Chicago. There are also five row homes by Sullivan on North Lincoln Park West, and a Clark Street retail building designed with upstairs apartments is still standing.

Jessica Lagrange, head of River North firm Jessica Lagrange Interiors, is listing the Cleveland Avenue house for just under $1.95 million. It’s represented by Julie Harron of Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty. The five-bedroom house is about 2,400 square feet, according to the Cook County assessor, and has an extra-deep lot, about 137 feet compared to the city standard 125, providing a large backyard where Lagrange planted a brick-walled shade garden that Harron said “feels like you’re not in the city.” (See more photos below.)

The house’s distinctive facade includes a triangular window bay, a fan-shaped medallion below a barrel-shaped roof line and intricately carved details seen in detail here. It shows “very early Sullivan detailing that is grander than his other structures at the time, which were typically more modest with simpler detailing,” Lagrange wrote in notes on the house that she provided to Crain’s.

Inside, Lagrange wrote, the staircase is original, ceiling medallions are duplicates of the originals, which are now in a museum, and two fireplace mantels are reproductions of Sullivan designs for the nearby rowhouses. For the carved wood front doors, she copied historical doors designed by Sullivan for the Clark Street building. The pocket doors in the living and dining rooms are originals, retrieved from being sealed up inside the walls for decades, according to Lagrange.

The interior of the five-bedroom home has a timeless look, with crown and base moldings, large windows and wood floors. The V-shaped window bay “gets a lot of light flowing through the living room,” Harron said. While the facade is a protected landmark, Harron said the owner got plans approved for adding a third floor.

The house was built for Leon and Pauline Mannheimer when the street was called Hurlbutt. Jessica Lagrange and her then-husband, architect Lucien Lagrange, bought it for $550,000 in 1992, according to the Cook County recorder of deeds. At the time they bought the house, it had not been updated since it was modernized 30 years before, she wrote.

As part of that modernization, the owners had stripped out carved escutcheons and other details and sold or gave them to Richard Nickel, the architecture photographer who documented Chicago’s older architectural treasures during a period in the middle of the 20th century when many of them were being demolished. The bits of the Cleveland house that Nickel acquired were part of a collection of hundreds of pieces of Sullivan’s buildings that he sold to Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. They’re now in the school’s museum, which made it possible for Lagrange to duplicate them.

Louis Sullivan, who died in 1924, designed many innovative buildings in Chicago, including the Auditorium Theatre on Michigan Avenue, a State Street department store that now houses a Target and is called the Sullivan Center in his honor, and the charming Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church on Leavitt Street in West Town. In other cities across the country, he designed numerous high-rises, banks and other buildings.

Click for more details: chicagobusiness.com  

Frank Lloyd Wright's Southwestern Pennsylvania Opens At The National Building Museum

On Saturday, April 13, 2024, the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., opened Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania, an exhibition co-organized by The Westmoreland Museum of American Art and Fallingwater, a property entrusted to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. The exhibition is curated by Scott W. Perkins, Sr. Director of Preservation and Collections, Fallingwater, and Jeremiah William McCarthy, Chief Curator, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art. The exhibition will be on view through Monday, March 17, 2025.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania is a journey into the famed architect’s mind, articulating—for the first time—his broader creative vision. Presenting both realized and unrealized projects Wright designed for the region from the 1930s through the 1950s, the exhibition examines how his vision of the future might have impacted urban, suburban, and rural landscapes.

Realistic animated films, created by Skyline Ink Animators + Illustrators, provide, for the first time, a virtual exploration of five unrealized Wright projects for Southwestern Pennsylvania. These include a monumental reimagining of the Point (1947), a self-service garage for Kaufmann’s Department Store (1949), the Point View Residences designed for the Edgar J. Kaufmann Charitable Trust (1952), the Rhododendron Chapel (1952), and a gate lodge for the Fallingwater grounds (1941). Using three-dimensional rendering technology to choreograph camera paths and to shape lighting to produce the same type of visual effects used in the film industry, Skyline Ink’s resulting animations will be presented throughout the exhibition to provide a multimedia experience. A viewing theater will envelop visitors to show an expanded film of the three unrealized Pittsburgh designs. To further engage the senses, the film will feature an accompanying musical score by Daniel May with Marty Ashby and produced by MCG Jazz. Viewers will take a journey into Wright’s creative mind, exploring architecture from an artistic perspective, with emphasis on his intended materials, textures, light and shadow.

“We are thrilled to have Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania on view at the Museum,” said Aileen Fuchs, president and executive director of the National Building Museum. “We feel fortunate to have a new window into the mind of this legendary architect. By presenting both realized and unrealized projects, the exhibition encourages visitors to consider ‘what might have been.’ This aligns beautifully with the Museum’s institutional Pillars, most notably the pillars of Wonder and Innovation. We hope it sparks curiosity and a better understanding of the impact architecture can have on urban, suburban, and rural landscapes.”

The exhibition also explores the involvement of key individuals, such as Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr. in Frank Lloyd Wright’s projects in the region. Kaufmann played a pivotal role by introducing Wright to Pittsburgh in 1934 and advocating for his participation in various civic projects. The Allegheny Conference on Community Development (ACCD) is also explored, highlighting its efforts to improve Pittsburgh through cultural initiatives, housing, and addressing urban challenges like traffic and parking. Kaufmann was a key player on the ACCD planning committee and enlisted Wright’s advice, specifically in the revitalization of downtown Pittsburgh.

Additionally, 3D models, architectural drawings, and historical photographs, further contextualize the animations of Wright’s unrealized projects.

Click for more details: nbm.org