Wright Chat

Another apprentice with his own book: "William Adair Bernoudy, Architect, Bringing the Legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright to St. Louis" by Osmund Overby, photos by Sam Fentress, Forword by Gyo Obata (of Helmuth, Obata and Kassabaum), University of Missouri Press, 1999. Anyone familiar with House...

FLW liked the small Italian villages, but was not overly impressed by the graniose Renaissance cities. The site of the villa he rented in Fiesole is known and has been published, but I'm not sure he had a specific site for the studio he planned to build there. Taliesin is a very Italianate structure...

Winslow was FLW's best 19th Century, pre-Hickox house, but should not be placed ahead of Henderson (first true Prairie, better than Hickox or Bradley for its hip roof). Room must be made for Willits. Hollyhock is problematic; not FLW at his best, even if it had been executed as designed, but as buil...

Desert rubblestone notwithstanding, Ocotilla had more to do with the evolution of TW's forms than Rosenwald.

The exterior looks darker to me than I remember it from 1985 when I first saw it, but the texture doesn't look too cottage cheesy to me. The interior of this house is wonderful, beautifully scaled. And Paul is right, the street is about as good as it gets.

The utility level of Hardy had a bath added early on for the bottom level. The lowest bedroom was for a maid. For a later owner, FLW designed another room below the dining room (1941) which was built as designed except for the fireplace tucked in the outside corner, which would have necessitated eit...

The last time I heard DeLong speak at the Florida Conference in 2001, he said Joel had spent $30M on the project to date. Did he give an updated figure?

Dow was one of only a few architects (Mark Mills and Al Parker two others) who designed a successful A-frame house, for his aunt, I believe. The A-frame, so popular in the 50s with Midwestern Lutheran churches, is a very difficult form to do well. Dow was a real master.

The Heath House was so impressive that a firm in Dallas made a copy of it in 1915. They must have, however, used an unmeasured drawing for their source, like the Ausge image, because they got the scale all wrong. It's significantly overscaled. The approach to the house from the distant sidewalk orig...

For thos of you not familiar with Hallmark, I would recommend this talk. He is a good speaker, and the content of his talks is substantial.

Had the first fire not occurred, FLW's entire life after 1914 would have been different with Mamah alive (and Miriam and Olga not in the picture). He might not have been banished to irrelevance in the 1920s, and the National Life Insurance Building might have been built, presaging the curtain-wall s...

I saw Sander in 2002, and I don't recall a gate.

$105/sf? Doesn't that seem low? Especially on such a large lot. What's wrong here?

Not meaning to beat a dead horse, but I just got a book by Derek Fell, "The Gardens of FLW," and on page 105 is a photo of the parking court that occasioned such a long string of comments a short time ago. For a space providing such a mundane service as parking, it is quite beautiful, and ...

To say nothing of the one with the charming, appropriate crystal chandelier.