Usonian structure Lakeland Florida

[MOman]

Anyone have any update on when the Usonian home will be open at the college in Lakeland? I will be heading to Florida for the winter and would like to tour the structure. Thank You!

[DavidC]

Here is their website - where you can follow along with the progress being made.


David

[DavidC]

Also, you could try sending an e-mail Michael Maguire - who posts here about the current staus of the construction - and ask him about the possibility of an on-site visit. He also happens to run the website that I linked to in the above post.


David

[egads]

And here is our thread devoted to it:

http://savewright.org/wright_chat/viewt ... 7ca24c4fdd

[Randolph C. Henning]

Good luck on having access on site. I visited FSC this past summer and I was not allowed to walk onto the site let alone the building. And know that the entire site is surrounded by a tall chain link fence. I was dressed properly and was proper and polite in asking; the person there that I asked (that appeared to be "in charge") was rude and abrupt (i.e. very direct) in denying me access. I thought I had a chance as there was no work that was going on that day and he could have easily kept an eye on me during my walk through. But he was too busy sitting in his truck smoking a cigarette. So your vantage point is the sidewalk on the south and east sides of the project.

[jmcnally]

Michael Maguire's excellent web page is a private endeavor and is not connected with the college. http://www.buildingtheusonianhouse.com/

The visitor center is not open yet. There have been theft issues, so the area is now posted against trespassing and theft, and has at least one security camera. The college has not given the construction personnel the discretion to invite visitors. It is unfortunate that they don't let people walk through construction sites every day. But they don't. As a lawyer, I know a million reasons why (and they all have presidential portraits on them).

[Randolph C. Henning]

That being said, I was just trying to let MoMan know that access isn't assurred.

[Reidy]

Under the right circumstances you can give tours during restoration, as Fallingwater and the Home & Studio did, so this might be possible during new construction as well.

The big difference is that these buildings had a steady stream of paying customers. Working in only one part of the building at a time, so that the rest remains accessible, would raise construction costs, and letting the public in would raise insurance bills. Florida Southern doesn't have this advantage. Hollyhock is another that closed down completely.

[Paul Ringstrom]

I heard today that the next FLWBC Out and About event will be in Lakeland, FL and will include access to their new unfinished Visitor Center.

The president of the university has told me today that the Visitor Center will be completed by mid-summer 2013.

[michaelmaguire]

We have added link to the Guggenheim Library Archive page that allows you to download the souvenir booklet from the 1953 exhibition.

Merry Christmas!

Michael

[Tom]

Thanks for the link to the "souvenir brochure." Wright's intro essay there is a hoot.

[Tom]

I love it. The first sentence from the essay, just great:

" To say the house planted by myself on the good earth of the Chicago Prairie as early as 1900 or earlier, was the first truly democratic expression of our democracy in Architecture would start a controversy with professional addicts who believe that Architecture has no political (and therefore no social) significance."

love it, LOVE IT.