Wright Chat

Another question about Toker's book is what part of it the movie might recount. One of his most interesting stories is his debunking of Junior's claim to have been the "real" client, who discovered Wright and brought him to Edgar and Liliane, whose only role in turn was putting up the mone...

Wrong period for Miriam Noel, but maybe Bette as Liliane. Liliane and Junior, as Toker presented them, could be Oscar-worthy supporting parts for somebody. Too bad Anne Bancroft isn't around.



Peter

Bette Midler would be the perfect Miriam Noel.



Peter

Years ago I heard that a builder had moved the stone remains of the Pauson house and put them to use as the gateway to a new tract. I don't know where it is, though.



Peter

I'm inclined to think of Wright as the Wright of the west coast. He lived in LA and maintaned an office in the early 20s, and he built in absentia both before and after that time.



Peter

Another case in point is Mildred Rosenbaum at 88, though she hasn't lived in her house in a few years. The story is that a subsequent owner of Gilmore in Madison was there for 70 years. On the other hand, Mamah Cheney and Seth Peterson would bring the average down. Anecdotal examples like these aren...

I wonder if "ahead of his time" is the right way to describe his technological innovations. The phrase suggests that they later became standard, and this did not happen with, e.g. textile block, slab floors for houses and reinforced-concrete cores for highrises. Prefab building and radiant...

See the Conservancy's homwpage: http://savewright.org.



Peter

As for privacy, if you want to keep a secret, don't post to Wright Chat.



Peter

Minor point: "apprentices" would not be the term for von Holst and Mahony, who presumably did the Amberg house after Wright left for Europe. "Apprentices" in this connection means members of the Taliesin Fellowship, which didn't start up until the 30s. Before that, "staffers...

Between Form and Principle by Laseau and Tice is about plan types (they claim that most of Wright's buildings grow from a small stock of them) rather than proportional systems, but it might feed into your interest. Sargent's book on the Usonian houses goes into detail on proportional grid systems i...

Joseph Siry's book on Unity Temple goes into detail for this one building, about both how the building follows the grid and how it departs from it.



Peter

The Conservancy's newsletter did an article on the fire and rebuilding a few years back. You could contact them directly for a back issue. (Now that I have the floor, I want to remind everyone who uses this board to join and contribute.) Zimmerman and Gebhard's The California Architecture of FLlW ha...

A waterproofing mastic that went on about 35 years ago has turned out to be one of the biggest problems for Ennis, even though it doesn't face freeze-and-thaw cycles. The inevitable holes that have shown up in the coating have absorbed water, which the coating then holds in, exacerbating the rusting...

"Prairie" in one sense is a style, and anything that fits the definition qualifies, regardless of date. In another sense it's a phase of Wright's career that ended some time around 1913. He never was much of a scholar, and you can't take for granted that his remarks about Wingspread, or ab...