Article: Austin House - Greenville, SC

[DavidC]

Places: Broad Margin is a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home in Greenville


David

[Roderick Grant]

Wonderful little house, owned by a member of the Bristol family, of Bristol-Myers Squibb.

[pmahoney]

The exterior shown in the article does not appear to be the house

[SDR]

Good catch. There appears to be brick in the photo shown; here's a photo showing the desert masonry found at Broad Margin:

https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/ ... 543929001/

Here's another bit of evidence:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmcnicholas/3227097945

The comments reveal that there's a Wright look-alike in the neighborhood ?

S

[jay]

SDR, the house in your second link, labeled "Not FLLW's Broad Margin", is across the street from Broad Margin. Driving past it, it didn't seem like an apprentice house, but more of a mid-century type with Wright "stylings".

One interesting aspect of Broad Margin is that it sits just two miles north of downtown Greenville. You could ride your bike right into the center of town very easily. So it's a "neighborhood Usonian". And Greenville has a great little downtown, too. They did a wonderful public works project in early 2000's, building a huge suspended pedestrian bridge over a waterfall that cuts right through the city.

[SDR]

I found a picture of the bridge online. Pretty impressive !

Does anyone know how Broad Margin was named ?

S

[Tom]

Jay might be understating the achievement of downtown Greenville.
It's amazing how it was turned around.
Lot's of night life, packed restaurants, people on the streets.
Realy good overall urban design going on there.
May have something to do with the BMW manufacturing plant locating nearby.

[dkottum]

From the original link in this thread:

Broad Margin is the name given to the property by Wright. The term comes from Thoreau’s Walden in which he states, “I love a broad margin to my life.�

Did Frank Lloyd Wright admire the writings of Thoreau, especially in Walden where Henry comes across as the most extreme of minimalists?

[Rood]

From the original link in this thread:

Broad Margin is the name given to the property by Wright. The term comes from Thoreau’s Walden in which he states, “I love a broad margin to my life.�

Did Frank Lloyd Wright admire the writings of Thoreau, especially in Walden where Henry comes across as the most extreme of minimalists?

Mr. Wright was a great admirer of Thoreau ...

In one Sunday morning talk, Mr. Wright mentioned Thoreau's comment from "Economy" ... "About shelter ...", the third paragraph of which reads, in part:
" ... I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free."

[SDR]

". . . and so have freedom in his love . . ." A trysting place, in other words ? And why not . . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau

S

[Roderick Grant]

"I love a broad margin in my life."
I am not certain what that means, but it could be construed as a contradiction of his overall philosophy. As his friend, James Russell Lowell, once said of Thoreau: "He is fine with roughing it, as long as he knows he has a dry box of lucifers [matches] in his pocket."

[SDR]

The phrase sounds like an appeal along the lines of "give me some room !"---a buffer zone around oneself or one's habitat ?

S

[Roderick Grant]

Is that 3'x6' box with holes, a lid and a hook part of the Broad Margin? A casket retreat against rain and darkness?

I read Thoreau decades ago, and was less impressed than the hippie lot, who seemed to get it all wrong. Lowell got it right. Thoreau was more a prototype for the modern suburbanite than a "back to nature" type, as he portrayed himself to be.

[juankbedoya]

does somebody have the plans of this beautiful house..?

[juankbedoya]

The phrase sounds like an appeal along the lines of "give me some room !"---a buffer zone around oneself or one's habitat ?

S

Do you have the plans of this house..? it's also in my list of hidden gems