Wright Chat

Hein (and its progeny) is a masterpiece, given that it was designed in 1943, and FLW was still ruminating about it 12 years later. Hein is like Sundt, Clifton, Jester and other schemes that popped up periodically: Frank really wanted to build that house. He came close with Muirhead and Boswell, and ...

This is a very complex house. A floor plan would have been helpful.

Apparently the material was changed at some point: Page 17: "Masonry walls change to adobe. Under all adobe walls provide a poured concrete footing to extend at least six (6") inches above natural grade" But on page 19, the adobe appears to have stone slabs showing, as if the adobe re...

The 1950 Bloomfield Project (Mono 7/240; Taschen 3/223-4) was intended to be built of desert masonry. It was a virtual copy of the 1943 Hein Project (Mono 7/36; Taschen 3/39; Herbert Jacobs' "Building With Wright" 77).

The Wilmette and Lake Bluff Houses didn't make the cut until the "Companion." I am certain it was Thomas Heinz who found them and authenticated them as ASBH. The Lake Bluff House obviously used different fenestration, but apparently, according to Heinz (who is meticulous about such things)...

That, SDR, is exactly why writers without architectural savvy should leave the subject alone. Undoubtedly "Hemingway" benefitted from the fact that Lynn and Hemingway were in the same profession, a lateral move, if you will. Brendan Gill was also a superb writer, but, as Edgar Kaufmann, Jr...

In the first of Twombley's books, he mentioned that he became aware of FLW in college when he dated Elizabeth Jacobs. So he was late to the game. I think of "An Autobiography" as a text on FLW's approach to design rather than as a credible autobiography. There are many 'facts' of his histo...

I recall when the James R. Thompson Center (formerly State of Illinois Center) was completed. It got a lot of coverage in the architectural press, similar to Michael Graves' Portland Building, but more deserving. I saw it in 1988, and was duly impressed. The movement in architecture could have follo...

My favorite comment from Huxtable was in a scathing review of the JFK Center for the Performing Arts by Ed Stone. She dubbed the massive lobby - 600' long, wallpapered in marble, with blood-red carpeting and crystal chandeliers - the world's biggest whore house. She also wrote eloquently about the I...

Actually, Finis Farr also wrote and published what became his bio while FLW was alive. Farr wrote for the Saturday Evening Post (Ah, memories!) a serialized version in the 50s, collected into the book in 1961,

As a New Yorker, Stephen, you should know that Manhattan runs from SW to NE, so the glazed façade of Usonia faced SE. The house was set back on the lot, close to the SE lot line, next to a large brick apartment building, that blocked much of the sunlight. The 89th Street façade was enclosed in a hig...

Probably not. Though there may be on which ones to avoid, principally "Many Masks," by Brendan Gill. The Meryl Secrest book is generally OK, but she knows nothing about architecture and relied on questionable resources to fill in the blanks. She also adds to the "Lincoln" rumor w...

Having complete freedom in the design of the Exhibition House, this opus might well be considered the ultimate version of the Usonian House. The elegance of the living room is enhanced by the necessity of providing large clerestories to grab what little sunlight is available in midtown Manhattan.

Inspiration comes not only from artists working together, but from artists looking around them at the world as it is, both natural and man-made, by dealing with advancements in technology* that can be used to create new aesthetics. But the process of being inspired by all of these influences necessa...

Remnants of Northome have been recreated in NYC, Mpls., and Allentown, PA. Not entirely fulfilling, but better than nothing.