Wright Chat

The architect I'm researching, Seattle's Paul Kirk, used sandwiched columns frequently, starting in the late 1940s. He would typically use a big center element (4x4 of 4x6), then put thinner side piece on either side that were a bit wider so they created a shadow line and resembled an I or H metal b...

Was Rudolph the first to pair columns like that, or was that a known technique going back much further?

U Penn doesn't have H&H's archive but has been helpful in tracking down some other resources. Tough to access stuff when so many places are locked up tight. What a great year for University Librarians...an 8 month paid vacation.

Half tones would be take from prints and its the prints I'm after. I assume the photographers kept their negatives. But fingers crossed that the main archive will allow staff to enter and make scans. This does limit the selection to those either online or that I've already seen, so pouring through c...

One person at the Seattle Times said they couldn't keep all that archival material as it would be a fire hazard. That sounds like an excuse to save the time and expense of maintaining an archive.

I don't even thing a Magazine photo would reproduce well. Perhaps if was large and the intended reproduction small. But there are some photos that I have tracked down to a photographer who is still alive, and he couldn't find the originals. Amazing how many photos were taken for magazines and the or...

High res scans of original negs can't be beat, but a dupe might suffice if not reproduced too big. One now-defunct paper's archive is at a local archive that is slowly reopening. Another paper's archive may or may not still exist. Papers are running on financial fumes and the "morgue" is one area th...

I'll have to look up that book. I've been in touch with Pierluigi about another book he wrote. That is a good point about the importance of photography, and I think that Paul Kirk became the go-to "Northwest" modernist for magazine editors. I'm sure that rankled his peers in the area. There are some...

Everything from Architectural Forum to House & Garden, Sunset, etc. From 1940s through 1960s. Some of these magazines are no longer publishing. So are the photos they used in some archive somewhere? Or were they all thrown out? The problem is the main repository is closed and and there's no telling ...

So I'm publishing a book on a Seattle architect. Everything is going great. I raised the money. Found a great editor and designer. The problem is graphics. Various archives in Seattle remain closed. It may be months before they will reopen and provide me with the high-res scans of photos and drawing...

I'm sure copyright has something to do with the Avery's distribution of images. More accurately the copyright on Wright's drawings, but the lack of copyright on his architectural designs. It's confusing, but in Wright's era, drawings were protects but buildings weren't. So you could build a Wright d...

It looks fantastic and substantial....of concrete, right? But I do quibble with the way the walls of glass are handled with beams sitting on a head and glass stuff into the open areas. It's not a clean design. I'd rather see the headers buried in the ceiling plane.

So this isn't Buckner's house, but a similar model? Didn't Edgardo Cortino (sp?) have a hand in these designs?

Interesting that this house is up for $3.8 million and the Launter for $1.8 million.

Interesting that this project was stained. I'm so used to masonry or stucco with the Prairie designs. Was stain a common material at the time? The mid-century architects of Seattle had to work with a local paint company to create stains in their preferred palette...and that was in the 40s and 50s.

A great design. As good as anything by the master. What is the history of that section of skylights, where one side of the gable roof is extended. It's an interesting trick.