While perusing the book 'Eichler/Modernism Rebuilds the American
Dream', I took note of the influence of FLlW on the mid-century housing
developer Joseph Eichler. It seems Eichler rented the Bazett house
during WWII and this stay influenced his decision to become a developer.
His admiration of Wright also led him to engage fellow Wright devotee
Robert Anshen as his first architect. The rest, as they say, is history.
A worthwhile read for anyone interested in mid-century modern.
Wright Eichler Connection
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Ed Jarolin
- Posts: 277
- Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2006 1:06 pm
- Location: Wyoming
Eichler was an unusual instance of thoughtful, decent architecture fighting for a place at the table of tract house development.
I lived quite awhile in the Bay area, and always enjoyed seeing these unmistakeable houses scattered around. There is a big following of Eichler owners, and I've seen some really nice renovations the simplicity of these houses makes possible. They also get sales premium's, since many were built in what have become affluent areas, proof of the "the location, location, location" dictum, especially true when Frank's houses are considered.
It is interesting their basic good "bones" make them candidates for renovation rather than tear downs, even in McMansion territory. They also are in like-designed neighborhoods, helping ensure their survival. There are many owner resource groups, not apparent with the hundreds of Wright owners:
http://www.eichlernetwork.com
Obviously, these houses are not as important as those of the master, but what Eichler accomplished should be appreciated by all architectural afficiandos. The FLLW for everyman, if you will.
Frank would probably not be surprised at what some of his houses sell for, but I'm sure Joseph Eichler would be!
I lived quite awhile in the Bay area, and always enjoyed seeing these unmistakeable houses scattered around. There is a big following of Eichler owners, and I've seen some really nice renovations the simplicity of these houses makes possible. They also get sales premium's, since many were built in what have become affluent areas, proof of the "the location, location, location" dictum, especially true when Frank's houses are considered.
It is interesting their basic good "bones" make them candidates for renovation rather than tear downs, even in McMansion territory. They also are in like-designed neighborhoods, helping ensure their survival. There are many owner resource groups, not apparent with the hundreds of Wright owners:
http://www.eichlernetwork.com
Obviously, these houses are not as important as those of the master, but what Eichler accomplished should be appreciated by all architectural afficiandos. The FLLW for everyman, if you will.
Frank would probably not be surprised at what some of his houses sell for, but I'm sure Joseph Eichler would be!
Eichler and the Power of Architectural Excellence
My brother-in-law's sister and her family live in an Eichler House in suburban San Francisco. The first time that I was in it, I recalled being impressed by its simple beauty and design elegance. I knew nothing of Eichler but I knew that here was a modest house that was incredibly well designed. It was obviously designed by a talented architect. The client, the developer, obviously had a committment to work with the architect to do housing that was marketable AND well designed. It was about intelligent design versus today's typical populist view of design that seems to be ever popular and has given rise to McMansions. The Eichler Houses demonstrate the lasting value of quality design by talented architects and an enlightened client.
Eichler and the Power of Architectural Excellence
My brother-in-law's sister and her family live in an Eichler House in suburban San Francisco. The first time that I was in it, I recalled being impressed by its simple beauty and design elegance. I knew nothing of Eichler but I knew that here was a modest house that was incredibly well designed. It was obviously designed by a talented architect. The client, the developer, obviously had a committment to work with the architect to do housing that was marketable AND well designed. It was about intelligent design versus today's typical populist view of design that seems to be ever popular and has given rise to McMansions. The Eichler Houses demonstrate the lasting value of quality design by talented architects and an enlightened client.
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RobertLever
- Posts: 24
- Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:12 pm
Re: Wright Eichler Connection
I hope to do a video on the Bazett-Eichler connection.
Available photos of the Bazett House are hard to find.
Has anyone seen a picture of the Bazett House workspace?
My understanding is that the stove is in its own hexagonal cell, illuminated by a skylight overhead.
I've blown up living room photos of the kitchen entrance and they appear to show open shelving rather than cabinets.
I've wondered whether the exaggerated compartmentalization of the bedroom wing was done to strengthen the board and batten walls through folding since there is very little masonry support in the bedroom wing. It's confusing as the exterior walls are all brick half-walls with the B&B walls on the top half, so the cell-like nature of the wing would not appear to be an economy measure.
I've heard the bedrooms referred to as "ship's cabin" sized. Has anyone who visited the house found them claustrophobic? I was relieved to find that the skylights that appear in the preliminary plan did make it into the built house. The skylights do not appear in the Bazett plan in Storrer's wonderful book.
It is interesting to note that two bedrooms are more like sleeping porches in the original design. Folding perforated screen shutters could be drawn back to open the bedroom to the outdoors. This element of the preliminary plan did not make it into the final house. The bedrooms have the half walls with casement or clerestory windows above a B&B wall.
I find the Eichler designs to be quite elegant with a wonderful inside-outside interplay. They managed to capture much of the Wright feel at an affordable price.
Available photos of the Bazett House are hard to find.
Has anyone seen a picture of the Bazett House workspace?
My understanding is that the stove is in its own hexagonal cell, illuminated by a skylight overhead.
I've blown up living room photos of the kitchen entrance and they appear to show open shelving rather than cabinets.
I've wondered whether the exaggerated compartmentalization of the bedroom wing was done to strengthen the board and batten walls through folding since there is very little masonry support in the bedroom wing. It's confusing as the exterior walls are all brick half-walls with the B&B walls on the top half, so the cell-like nature of the wing would not appear to be an economy measure.
I've heard the bedrooms referred to as "ship's cabin" sized. Has anyone who visited the house found them claustrophobic? I was relieved to find that the skylights that appear in the preliminary plan did make it into the built house. The skylights do not appear in the Bazett plan in Storrer's wonderful book.
It is interesting to note that two bedrooms are more like sleeping porches in the original design. Folding perforated screen shutters could be drawn back to open the bedroom to the outdoors. This element of the preliminary plan did not make it into the final house. The bedrooms have the half walls with casement or clerestory windows above a B&B wall.
I find the Eichler designs to be quite elegant with a wonderful inside-outside interplay. They managed to capture much of the Wright feel at an affordable price.
Last edited by RobertLever on Fri Jan 26, 2024 11:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Wright Eichler Connection
Yes, they are notably small. This is a standard complaint about Eichler's houses, too. Wright said if you are trying to save money, concentrate your resources on the common areas.
What struck me was the mattresses that fit the hexagonal grid (visible in the floor plan above). I remarked that they must be hard to make up. The owner (Louis Frank) said that they're not hard to make up, but that replacement mattresses were hard to find. They found a factory locally that was willing to make them to order.
Palmer is another with mattresses fit to the grid.
What struck me was the mattresses that fit the hexagonal grid (visible in the floor plan above). I remarked that they must be hard to make up. The owner (Louis Frank) said that they're not hard to make up, but that replacement mattresses were hard to find. They found a factory locally that was willing to make them to order.
Palmer is another with mattresses fit to the grid.
Re: Wright Eichler Connection
http://wrightchat.savewright.org/viewto ... =2&t=15575
I have become familiar with the Bazett house only recently, despite living 23 miles from it for forty years. The house has received relatively few visitors over time according to owner Laurence Frank, son of the second owners of the house. He grew up in the smallest of the bedrooms. The local custom mattress firm wanted "thousands" to replicate one of the hexagonal mattresses, last time an inquiry was made. A foam mattress would undoubtedly be more economical.
The bedrooms did originally have screens, with exterior plywood shutters (one of which survives---they were removed when glazed sash were installed long ago). I'd be curious to know where the information about screens and shutters was published, as I have never seen reference to them in print.
The Hanna house bedroom wing has far fewer partitions than Bazett, and it has stood without complaint, including through the 1989 earthquake that badly damaged the chimney. I don't see that as the impetus for the beehive that is the Bazett private quarters; this is simply a curious solution to providing for the original family while occupying the least possible square footage. Wright was always struggling to provide more Architecture for what the client could afford to spend; as has been noted, he was willing to sacrifice footage in the bedrooms to provide the maximum of apparent luxury where it counted (in his view). The bedroom exterior walls could have been all wood, as they are in any number of other Usonians.
If privacy had been the objective of the Bazett bedroom plan, it didn't work for the youngest Frank, a girl, who was given the central space of the children's suite, containing the tub (but no shower) in its own brick cell, and her bed; she had to endure her older brothers passing through this "dressing room" to reach their own quarters. When the studio/playroom was added to the small guest suite at the opposite end of the carport, in the mid-'fifties (first proposed by the Franks in 1950, five years after occupying the house and ultimately designed by Aaron Green with Wright's approval), the family realized they could spread out---and they did.
Drawings that reside with the house show a surprising and previously unrecognized further proposal for changes, in the form of a new carport to be built beyond the present quest quarters, with the original carport designated for play space. As the terrain falls away sharply there, considerable fill and retaining wall---or a new cellar to match the one beneath the studio addition---would have been necessary.
Yes, the kitchen has its stove in a portion of a hexagonal cell, under a skylight. The owner is contemplating the addition of a range hood, there; we looked at how that might be designed and ducted unobtrusively. Next time I'm at the house I will take a photo or two.
An oddity of the house is that, like Lamberson, it has a "kitchen door" which the visitor has to pass to get to the front door proper. In the case of Bazett, this first door leads to a foyer from which one sees the garden and from which the bedrooms lead, at the same level, while a turn in the opposite direction gives one the kitchen, and down three steps is the living room with dining table immediately to the right against the beginning of the window wall, with the centered fireplace to the left. It is beyond the fireplace that one finds the (cramped) entry proper, up steps from that corner of the living room. In consequence, neither family nor visitors uses that "front door," ever. It is exactly comparable to the centered ranch house door that no one uses---and which sometimes has no paved path to it---because everyone enters the house from a breezeway kitchen door, the breezeway (like the Bazett carport) nicely sheltering the door and giving convenient and covered access to the automobile.
If the Sturges kitchen door were more commodious, it too might have been used as the front door. As at Bazett, the Sturges visitor must travel almost to the point of defenestration to find the front door---all of this seeming to fall within the Wrightian tradition of maximizing perambulation around his building's exterior before being allowed inside.
S
I have become familiar with the Bazett house only recently, despite living 23 miles from it for forty years. The house has received relatively few visitors over time according to owner Laurence Frank, son of the second owners of the house. He grew up in the smallest of the bedrooms. The local custom mattress firm wanted "thousands" to replicate one of the hexagonal mattresses, last time an inquiry was made. A foam mattress would undoubtedly be more economical.
The bedrooms did originally have screens, with exterior plywood shutters (one of which survives---they were removed when glazed sash were installed long ago). I'd be curious to know where the information about screens and shutters was published, as I have never seen reference to them in print.
The Hanna house bedroom wing has far fewer partitions than Bazett, and it has stood without complaint, including through the 1989 earthquake that badly damaged the chimney. I don't see that as the impetus for the beehive that is the Bazett private quarters; this is simply a curious solution to providing for the original family while occupying the least possible square footage. Wright was always struggling to provide more Architecture for what the client could afford to spend; as has been noted, he was willing to sacrifice footage in the bedrooms to provide the maximum of apparent luxury where it counted (in his view). The bedroom exterior walls could have been all wood, as they are in any number of other Usonians.
If privacy had been the objective of the Bazett bedroom plan, it didn't work for the youngest Frank, a girl, who was given the central space of the children's suite, containing the tub (but no shower) in its own brick cell, and her bed; she had to endure her older brothers passing through this "dressing room" to reach their own quarters. When the studio/playroom was added to the small guest suite at the opposite end of the carport, in the mid-'fifties (first proposed by the Franks in 1950, five years after occupying the house and ultimately designed by Aaron Green with Wright's approval), the family realized they could spread out---and they did.
Drawings that reside with the house show a surprising and previously unrecognized further proposal for changes, in the form of a new carport to be built beyond the present quest quarters, with the original carport designated for play space. As the terrain falls away sharply there, considerable fill and retaining wall---or a new cellar to match the one beneath the studio addition---would have been necessary.
Yes, the kitchen has its stove in a portion of a hexagonal cell, under a skylight. The owner is contemplating the addition of a range hood, there; we looked at how that might be designed and ducted unobtrusively. Next time I'm at the house I will take a photo or two.
An oddity of the house is that, like Lamberson, it has a "kitchen door" which the visitor has to pass to get to the front door proper. In the case of Bazett, this first door leads to a foyer from which one sees the garden and from which the bedrooms lead, at the same level, while a turn in the opposite direction gives one the kitchen, and down three steps is the living room with dining table immediately to the right against the beginning of the window wall, with the centered fireplace to the left. It is beyond the fireplace that one finds the (cramped) entry proper, up steps from that corner of the living room. In consequence, neither family nor visitors uses that "front door," ever. It is exactly comparable to the centered ranch house door that no one uses---and which sometimes has no paved path to it---because everyone enters the house from a breezeway kitchen door, the breezeway (like the Bazett carport) nicely sheltering the door and giving convenient and covered access to the automobile.
If the Sturges kitchen door were more commodious, it too might have been used as the front door. As at Bazett, the Sturges visitor must travel almost to the point of defenestration to find the front door---all of this seeming to fall within the Wrightian tradition of maximizing perambulation around his building's exterior before being allowed inside.
S
Last edited by SDR on Sun Dec 25, 2022 7:26 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Re: Wright Eichler Connection
This Eichler Network piece by Marty Arbunich is unfortunately not dated. Betty Frank no longer lives at the house . . .
https://www.eichlernetwork.com/article/ ... llsborough
S
https://www.eichlernetwork.com/article/ ... llsborough
S
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Roderick Grant
- Posts: 11815
- Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:48 am
Re: Wright Eichler Connection
The entrance to Sturges is easy to find and not at all inconvenient.
Re: Wright Eichler Connection
I wouldn't call it inconvenient; it is even covered, if I'm not mistaken. But it is as far from the street as one could get without falling down the hill on the other side of the house.
At Lamberson, and perhaps at other Usonians, a shoulder-high brick wall was devised to screen the kitchen door and encourage visitors to seek the front door, around the corner. This wall wasn't constructed until Peter bought and restored the property. The folly reaches its apex at Bazett, where everyone, family and strangers alike, use the "secondary door."
S
At Lamberson, and perhaps at other Usonians, a shoulder-high brick wall was devised to screen the kitchen door and encourage visitors to seek the front door, around the corner. This wall wasn't constructed until Peter bought and restored the property. The folly reaches its apex at Bazett, where everyone, family and strangers alike, use the "secondary door."
S
Re: Wright Eichler Connection
RE: the kitchen shelving, Artstor shows a combination of open shelving (as visible from some photos from the living room) and standard cabinets with doors.
RE: the bedrooms. "Details of Frank Lloyd" book shows one photo of one of the bedrooms/beds.
"Frank Lloyd Wright's Classic Geometry" article in the November 1987 issue of "Northern California Home & Garden" magazine shows a photo another bedroom/bed, as well as a photo of one of the custom made tubs. From the photos, they suggest to me not claustrophobia, but womb-like comfort. One does wonder whether the lack of a double bed for Mr and Mrs was a client request or not. The uniqueness of the whole bedroom layout suggests a study of the programming requests from the Bazetts and the architect/client correspondence for illumination.
RE: the bedrooms. "Details of Frank Lloyd" book shows one photo of one of the bedrooms/beds.
"Frank Lloyd Wright's Classic Geometry" article in the November 1987 issue of "Northern California Home & Garden" magazine shows a photo another bedroom/bed, as well as a photo of one of the custom made tubs. From the photos, they suggest to me not claustrophobia, but womb-like comfort. One does wonder whether the lack of a double bed for Mr and Mrs was a client request or not. The uniqueness of the whole bedroom layout suggests a study of the programming requests from the Bazetts and the architect/client correspondence for illumination.
Re: Wright Eichler Connection
Duncan has kindly found photos taken in the Bazett-Frank bedroom wing, in two different sources. First, a plan key to locate the viewpoints of the three photos:
1 Scot Zimmerman photo
2 Scot Zimmerman photo
3 © Northern California Homes + Gardens
1 Scot Zimmerman photo
2 Scot Zimmerman photo
3 © Northern California Homes + Gardens
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RobertLever
- Posts: 24
- Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:12 pm
Re: Wright Eichler Connection
Thank you SDR for the beautiful posts on the Bazett House.
It is interesting that Wright's B&B walls in the Hanna House were so resilient during the quake, yet the stiff chimney mass that anchors them crumbled. I hope the reconstruction is complete.
I feel empathy for the poor Frank daughter growing up in the overgrown hallway called a sitting room. I grew up what was called the "Florida Room" of our house. It was basically a sunny multipurpose room that served as a hallway between the living room and garage. Louvered bifold doors separated it from the living room.
Thank you for posting the pictures. May I have permission to use them in the video? I also saw some photos of the Bazett under construction that would be quite useful if you are feeling generous.
The compartmentalized bedrooms were always a point of bafflement for me when I'd study the Bazett plan. If have deconstructed them for the video which will hopefully add clarity for others.
I am surprised that Wright placed the Entry so far back under the carport. I am sure that 99% of visitors to the house go to the Loggia doors. I'm curious if the owners posted a little sign saying " <next door down <".
I have not checked with Artstor yet. Who wrote the "Details of FLW book, is it Pfeiffer?
I have found some bedroom photos in books and am seeing permission.
Thanks for the great resource.
It is interesting that Wright's B&B walls in the Hanna House were so resilient during the quake, yet the stiff chimney mass that anchors them crumbled. I hope the reconstruction is complete.
I feel empathy for the poor Frank daughter growing up in the overgrown hallway called a sitting room. I grew up what was called the "Florida Room" of our house. It was basically a sunny multipurpose room that served as a hallway between the living room and garage. Louvered bifold doors separated it from the living room.
Thank you for posting the pictures. May I have permission to use them in the video? I also saw some photos of the Bazett under construction that would be quite useful if you are feeling generous.
The compartmentalized bedrooms were always a point of bafflement for me when I'd study the Bazett plan. If have deconstructed them for the video which will hopefully add clarity for others.
I am surprised that Wright placed the Entry so far back under the carport. I am sure that 99% of visitors to the house go to the Loggia doors. I'm curious if the owners posted a little sign saying " <next door down <".
I have not checked with Artstor yet. Who wrote the "Details of FLW book, is it Pfeiffer?
I have found some bedroom photos in books and am seeing permission.
Thanks for the great resource.
Last edited by RobertLever on Fri Jan 26, 2024 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Roderick Grant
- Posts: 11815
- Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:48 am
Re: Wright Eichler Connection
To clarify, the chimney at Hanna didn't collapse. There was some damage to it, but it stood.
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RobertLever
- Posts: 24
- Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:12 pm
Re: Wright Eichler Connection
Thanks, Roderick, That Is good to know. I have seen recent pictures of the Hanna with the deck over the living room window wall braced up and assumed the worst. There is a grille of alternating bricks adjacent to the fireplace where I understand the bricks crumbled.