Issue Jul 3rd 2024  July 3rd 2024

Welcome Weekend On Wisconsin's Frank Lloyd Wright Trail

Wisconsin’s Frank Lloyd Wright Trail Sites invite you to our Welcome Weekend August 2-4, 2024! Whether you want to check off a site on your bucket list or immerse yourself in a full weekend of Wright’s architectural wonders, the Wright doors will be open for you.

Use the information at the Frank Lloyd Wright Trail website to begin planning but please note that most sites require advance reservations or ticketing. In many cases, you’ll need to visit the building’s website to acquire tickets. See you on the Trail!

Click for more details: franklloydwrighttrail.org  

Wright's Walser House Needs Rescue From Foreclosure Limbo

Crain's Chicago reports that the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Walser House in Chicago's Austin neighborhood is deteriorating while mired in a foreclosure mess and needs a rescuer, but the path to that is murky.

Built in 1903, the J.J. Walser Jr. House on Central Avenue is in poor condition, as seen in the photos provided by the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. Holes in the roof let in rain and snow, wooden window frames are rotting and there are many holes in the exterior plaster, including around the foundation.

"It's in really bad condition," said Barbara Gordon, the conservancy's executive director. "It's shocking to see the condition" of a city landmark that's less than three miles from Wright's own home and studio in Oak Park and the many buildings he designed there. Gordon gave a rough estimate that restoration could cost half a million dollars. But the Walser house comes with an additional layer of complexity: the opacity of the present ownership.

Johnny Teague, whose parents, Anne and Hurley Teague, bought the house in 1969, told Crain's a reverse mortgage his mother took out in 1997 "has gone wrong so many times" since his mother died in 2019, 22 years after her husband died.

Public records on the home's mortgage over the past two decades are a tangle of overlapping names of lenders.

The most recent move was in late May, when the Federal National Mortgage Association, aka Fannie Mae, assigned the house's 27-year-old reverse mortgage to a Florida firm, PHH Mortgage. A year ago, the Bank of New York Mellon Trust launched a foreclosure action against the property. Representatives of the firms were not available to comment on the property.

While the building hangs in foreclosure limbo and decays, The FLWBC and others have been exploring future routes to saving it, but amid the legal tangle, nothing concrete can be done.

"The crisis for that building right now is that it's vulnerable to more damage and it's open for (dangerous) things to happen inside," said Darnell Shields, executive director of Austin Coming Together, a community revitalization group. "Our interest is in getting it secured now so others in the community can look into the possibility of saving it later."

At the moment, though, no fixes can be made to the Wright home without the owners' consent — and the ownership is in flux.

Teague said he doesn't know whether the lenders are aware that the property is an official city landmark and a piece of Chicago's architectural history.

"I don't think they'd care," he said. The house's derelict condition "makes me sad," Teague said. His father, a contractor, "kept it up well" before he died in 1997, Teague said, and his mother replaced the roof and had other work done on it after taking out a $189,000 reverse mortgage that year.

In 2009, Anne Teague told the Austin Weekly News that she was struggling to keep on top of the repairs and maintenance the then-century-old house demanded.

If the house is lost to decay while it's in limbo, "it's a loss of the opportunity for Austin and Chicago to appreciate that bit of our history," Shields said.

Wright's characteristic art glass windows, light fixtures and built-in furniture were all gone by the time the Teagues bought the house in 1969, Anne Teague said in the 2009 interview. The interior had been painted black and white, she said.

“We brought the house back to life,” she said at the time. “All the work that you see here is the work that my husband did in the house.”

Gordon and Shields both said the Teagues were commendable stewards of the home despite its financial challenges. In any future use, such as for an architectural tourism spot, the Teagues' tenure should be lauded, Shields said.

If not for Anne and Hurley Teague, the house "might not be here now," Shields said.

Click for more details: chicagobusiness.com  

Frank Lloyd Wright: How Wales Shaped America’s Favourite Buildings

As America’s most illustrious architect, Frank Lloyd Wright is a household name recognised both inside and outside the realm of architecture. Ask almost any layperson to name an American architect and be not surprised when the words "Frank Lloyd Wright" are confidently replied.

Known for his radical organic designs that sometimes denied their urban context, often rooted in profound meaning, and always inspired by nature, Frank Lloyd Wright and his hundreds of buildings undeniably shaped a better world for living.

He gave reason, rhyme, and meaning to buildings and those fortunate enough to step over their thresholds. As an architectural designer, Daniel Vella notices a similar sense of reason, rhyme and meaning can be drawn out of his philosophy.

Better yet, Vella, as a designer who has moved to the US from Wales, knows it’s almost impossible to separate his own Welsh ancestry and upbringing from the philosophies, ingenuity, and defiance for which he is so renowned.

Remnants of Wales of late echo through the walls and names of his buildings today. In fact, his estate on the brow of a hill in Wisconsin – Taliesin – is named after the old Welsh bard whose name translates to “Shining Brow”.

It’s an inescapable reality that Welsh culture had impacted Wright’s flair and values, and during the current zeitgeist of galvanized Welsh identity and the resurgence of the Welsh language, it’s a difficult trait to overlook and understate.

Although born four thousand miles from his ancestral home, his Welsh identity, old traditions, and culture was imparted on him from birth in a small Welsh facsimile; one filled with art, storytelling, and the Welsh language.

For Wright, the true architect is a poet, hence, naming his personal estate after the Welsh bard held far greater meaning for Wright than a simple nod to Welsh lineage.

Wright thought of Taliesin as the epitome of the model artist; “a druid bard who sang to Wales and the glories of fine art”, and whose name reflects the truth and beauty of nature.

It’s unsurprising, therefore, that Wright proudly adopted the motto of his Welsh grandfather, Y Gwir Yn Erbyn Y Byd ("Truth Against The World"), a motto suggesting that truth rather than devotion to aesthetic standards is what contributes to great architecture.

From New York’s Guggenheim to Los Angeles’ Storer House, it’s a romantic thought that old traditions of Wales are engrained into the thousands of graphite lines that compose the architectural drawings of America’s most iconic buildings.

Click for more details: nation.cymru  

Inside Wright's Walter House At Cedar Rock

Twenty miles east of Waterloo, Iowa, overlooking the Wapsipinicon River, is the historic Wright-designed home of Agnes and Lowell Walter at Cedar Rock State Park. The Walters owned the Iowa Road Building Company, which held the patent for bituminous oil seal coating used on gravel roads.

The plan for the Walter house follows a “tadpole” form, typical of Wright’s Usonian homes, with bedrooms constituting the tadpole’s tail and the living and dining areas forming its head. The 11-acre site includes a Usonian-style main house, a two-story boathouse, an entrance gate and outdoor hearth. Though Walter commissioned the house in 1942, wartime building restrictions delayed construction for six years. In 1945, Wright published the design as the “glass house” in the Ladies’ Home Journal. Three exterior glass walls afford a spectacular view of the surrounding valley. A central clerestory and several skylights create an interior garden filled with natural light. Set below the residence, the River Pavilion boathouse is composed of similar materials.

The home was donated to the state of Iowa in 1981 and is part of Cedar Rock State Park maintained by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

You can take a free tour of the Walter House and Cedar Rock visitor center on weekdays from mid-May into early October. To make a reservation, you can call 319-934-3572 or email cedar_rock@dnr.iowa.gov.

Click for more details: kcci.com