Issue Sep 4th 2024 September 4th 2024

Announcements

Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin & Martin Building: A Forgotten Landmark Rediscovered

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin & Martin Building, more commonly known as the E-Z Polish Factory, was constructed in 1905 but remained unknown until rediscovered decades later by historian Grant Carpenter Manson. Manson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock paid relatively little attention to the building in their seminal works on Wright and it has remained largely unexamined until now. The Martin & Martin Building is a forgotten and misunderstood landmark of Frank Lloyd Wright’s early career. It was Wright’s first use of reinforced concrete and likely only the second building of reinforced concrete to be built in Chicago. What little has been written about the building has often been incorrect. No floor plan or other drawing of the finished building has ever been published, although several earlier drawings of Wright’s unbuilt design for a different site continue to be misidentified as the still extant 1905 building. Although both designs were carried through to construction documents, only preliminary drawings have survived.

Thanks to Gregory Brewer's scholarship, this issue of the Journal of Organic Architecture & Design presents for the first time newly prepared drawings based on extensive field measurements and close examination of Wright’s surviving drawings for both projects. With never-before-published photos and drawings, this 60page journal provides insights that will help shed light on this important early Wright designs.

Follow the link to be sure to get your copy of this fantastic publication OR become an annual subscriber here and get three issues at a much better price!

The Headlines

Wright's Winslow House For Sale For $1.98 Million

A newly renovated Frank Lloyd Wright home that owners Susan and Arthur Vogt call “a labor of love” will hit the market on September 4. Located in River Forest, Illinois, near Chicago, the residence, know as the Winslow House, will be offered at $1.985 million. Elizabeth August of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate holds the listing.

The Vogts first fell in love with the Winslow House in an architectural history class in college, never dreaming that more than 40 years later they would end up owning it. The house had been vacant for several years when Arthur Vogt, an architect himself, pitched it to his wife Susan as a retirement project. They worried it would deteriorate or be torn down if it didn’t find buyers who could lovingly restore it into a practical home. In 2016, they purchased the home for $1.3 million, and in 2018, they moved from Boston to Chicago to live in the house while renovating it.

After putting about $1 million into the renovation, the Vogts are listing the home at an intentional loss.

“I think of it as our personal philanthropy project,” Arthur Vogt says.

Designed for William Winslow, a manufacturer of decorative ironworks, the home was built in 1893 and was Wright’s very first commission as an independent architect after parting ways with his mentor Louis Sullivan. Previously, he’d completed a number of “bootleg” houses around Chicago—that is, commissions on the side of his full-time job, which he wasn’t supposed to be doing.

“You can almost feel where Wright was experimenting with different forms and different ideas of how to design the house,” Arthur says. “For me, that was captivating.”

The front of the house rises in a traditional box shape, a sign of Sullivan’s influence, but the roofline has Wright’s signature wide eaves, an early harbinger of the Prairie style. The back of the home shows playful experimentation, as different geometric shapes extend out from the house.

The five-bedroom main home is approximately 5,000 square feet with ornate woodwork and brass sconces throughout. As visitors enter the home, their eyes will be drawn to the inglenook fireplace, a cozy, recessed room within a room that Wright repeated throughout many of his designs. Unlike many homes of the era, Wright used an open floor plan, where visitors can see “end to end,” Susan says. Large windows drench the home in natural light. The property, which sits on about two thirds of an acre, also includes a two-bedroom coach house.

“We felt that the best way to preserve this house was to make it suitable for a family to live in it and continue the legacy of it being a family home,” Susan Vogt says. “But it needed to be brought into the 21st century.”

Now the Vogts are ready to turn it over to new owners, who they hope will love it as much as they have and preserve all of its one-of-a-kind features.

“You could call it a love story,” August, the listing agent, says. “[The Vogts] wanted this home to shine and carry on for years to come.”

Sullivan's Wainwright Building Sells For Over $8 Million

The Wainwright Building in downtown St. Louis was sold to Arch to Park Equity LLC, the real estate fund coordinated by Greater St. Louis Inc., for $8.25 million last week, according to GovDeals, a government auction website.

The sale of the 234,600-square-foot state office building, at 111 N. Seventh St., was approved by the Missouri Board of Public Buildings on July 2. According to the St. Louis Business Journal, the fund purchased the building and all its contents for a total price of $8.4 million.

The Wainwright Building is considered to be one of the nation’s first modern skyscrapers. It consists of two structures, a 10-story office that was built in 1891 and a three-story building that was added in 1981. It was designed by architect Louis Sullivan for Ellis Wainwright, a local brewer.

In a statement attributed to Dustin Allison, its chief real estate investment officer, Greater St. Louis did not give any details about its plans for the Wainwright Building except to say it will be redeveloped.

"St. Louis is the economic engine of Missouri and restoring the core of St. Louis, particularly Downtown, is essential to the growth of our metro. As part of our ongoing efforts to revitalize Downtown St. Louis, Arch to Park Equity Fund LLC is pleased to partner with the State of Missouri to ensure that one of the most architecturally significant buildings in Downtown St. Louis will be preserved for future redevelopment.

"We look forward to working with the City and Downtown partners on a plan to develop the Wainwright Building and to continuing our partnership to revitalize Downtown and make it the safe, vibrant, and beautiful neighborhood at the heart of our metro,” the statement read.

The Guggenheim Museum: Pretty In Pink?

Seen today, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, seems to occupy several time periods at once, looking both modern and somehow ancient. The latter quality surely has to do with its bright white color, which we associate (especially in such an institutional context) with Greek and Roman statues. But just like those statues, the Guggenheim wasn’t actually white to begin with. “Fewer and fewer New Yorkers may recall that the museum, in a then-grimier city, used to be beige,” writes the New York Times’ Michael Kimmelman. “Robert Moses thought it looked like ‘jaundiced skin.’ ” Hence, presumably, the decision during a 1992 expansion to paint over the earthen hue of Wright’s choice.

Not that beige was the only contender in the design phase. Look at the archival drawings, Kimmelman writes, and you’ll find “a reminder that Wright had contemplated some pretty far-out colors — Cherokee red, orange, pink.”

The very thought of that last “leads down a rabbit hole of alternative New York history,” and if you’re curious to see what a pink Guggenheim might have looked like from the street, David Romero at Hooked on the Past has created a few digitally modified photos. The result hardly comes off as being in taste quite as poor as one might expect; in fact, it could have fit quite well into the Memphis-embracing nineteen-eighties, and even the postmodern nineties.

But as it is, “closed off to the city around it, the building’s antiseptic, spanking-white facade, today is in keeping with the neighborhood.” That itself is in keeping with Wright’s ideas for transforming the American city, which he kept on putting forth until the end of his life. Attempting to solve “the problem of the inner city,” he conceived “fantastical megastructures for places like downtown Pittsburgh, Baghdad, and Madison, Wisconsin,” all of them “city-based but anti-urban projects, divorced from the streets.” Even working in the United States’ densest metropolis, Wright expressed a longing for the splendid isolation of the American countryside, where a man — at least as the lore has it — can paint his house any color he pleases.

Why Buying Frank Lloyd Wright Furniture Is More Controversial Than You’d Think

More than 30 years ago, furniture appraiser Thomas Maher bought a bedroom set and barrel chair to match the other early-20th-century decor in his 1937 William B. Stratton–designed home in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. In the set is a wood dresser with a mirror and a double bed. “It’s oak, it’s dark-stained, it all matches [what I already have],” he says.

The pieces were not just any midcentury furniture; they were designed by the one and only Frank Lloyd Wright (the bedroom set was originally created for the William E. Martin House in Oak Park, Illinois, and the chair, for the Frank L. Smith Bank in Dwight, Illinois).

Scooping up a Frank Lloyd Wright–designed chair, window, or even weed holder could be the next best thing for a fan priced out of one of his homes, which can easily spike into the millions. However, the practice of selling Wright furniture is much more nuanced—and potentially controversial—than some may think. Follow the link to read more about it.

Don't Miss Wright & Like 2024

Just a reminder that this Saturday is the Wright & Like 2024 event in Racine Wisconsin.

Over a 30-year timespan, Wright in Wisconsin, Inc., and predecessor organizations, have facilitated awareness of the architecture, vision, legacy and genius of Frank Lloyd Wright, his apprentices, and fellow architects through our Wright and Like TM home tours across Wisconsin. This year our 2024 Wright and Like Racine tour is scheduled for Saturday, September 7th, the weekend following Labor Day.

For 2024, Wright & Like is pleased to be back in Racine, a city where just the right economic circumstances allowed Frank Lloyd Wright and allied architects to thrive and produce world-famous buildings that we very much appreciate today.

Get More info and order your tickets here.

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