Wright Chat

Ignoring the as-built photos and studying instead the drawings rewards the student---as is not seldom the case---with insights into the designer and his intentions.

The Carr drawing with the lowest file number---1603.001---illustrates the most complex of the various plans; the oddity there is the U-shaped corridor surrounding the row of bedrooms (?). A later plan has a "carport" sketched in near the kitchen: I am always looking for the earliest use of the form and the term.

The plan Jay presents is the crucial one, as it closely resembles the final layout while presenting, by means of the erasures, Wright's path to the solution: he first includes the bedroom corridor within the volume fully covered by a simple roof shape, before deciding to sacrifice some footage in the servant's room in favor of enlargement of the four bedrooms, by moving the corridor outside the rectangle of that wing to become a screened (and partially unroofed ?) passage.

S

Although it is not indicated, the top of the corridor that extended beyond the eave would have to have been either roofed solid or screened. Otherwise there would be no point in screening the walls. Since the rafters extend considerably beyond the outer wall, I suspect that the 'roofing' was screening, perhaps with some sort of verdure?

That is my assumption; the drawings do not clarify the matter. Who knows what it looks like today . . .

S

Two drawings of the Carr project, collectively presenting the four elevations. Perhaps the reason that Mr Wright didn't simply widen the bedroom-wing roof to cover the passage was that he couldn't bear to see the end elevation of the wing (bottom-most image) made asymmetrical by shifting the ridge off-center. The elevation is already asymmetrical due to the fenestration. (I assume that all sash were to be figured, indicated via the convention of showing texture only on representative areas of the drawing.)

The spaced openings (?) just above (beneath ?) the water table suggest that the house was to rest on blocks placed on the foundation walls ?


T.1603.005

T.1603.008