Wright Chat

Here we inaugurate a new thread, one destined, if all goes well, to remain near the top of the forum index, for it will present a new Wright photograph each weekday, for the foreseeable future.

The photos of Wright buildings and artifacts to be seen here are the work of one Dave Anderson, address unknown, a long-time pursuer of Wright properties whose travels have taken him and his wife to all corners of the USA, over the course of many years. And for quite a long time now he has shared one of these photos, on a seemingly random basis, five days a week, with a group of friends and fellow Wright-o-philes.

Now it is time to spread the joy a bit further, by posting a DailyWright (Dave's monicker) image to a larger audience, here at Wright Chat, each weekday. Of late things have been a bit slow here at the forum; I sought to remedy that in some way, and my answer is here.

The DailyWright for Monday, June 13 is a great shot of the ASBH Elizabeth Murphy house fireplace wall. Owner/restorer Nick Hayes, well known now to a growing Wright fandom, wrote about this fireplace in his book, "Frank Lloyd Wright's Forgotten House" (2021, The University of Wisconsin Press, pp 85-86).



photo © 2022 Dave Anderson

Today's DailyWright image from Dave Anderson is a view of the garden side of the E CLarke Arnold residence of 1954, in Columbus, Wisconsin.



William Allin Storrer's coverage of the house, as published in "The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion" of 1993, is a good place to start:


©1993 by William Allin Storrer

Another source of information is Taliesin's original drawings for the project, now available online:

https://library.artstor.org/#/search/Wr ... =1;size=24

And a third source might be found right here at Wright Chat; we simply "Search" for Clark + Arnold:

http://wrightchat.savewright.org/viewto ... rke+Arnold

Here is a color photo by our Dan Nichols of the Arnold living room:



and a larger view in black and white, from Monograph 8:


photo by Yukio Futagawa

In looking at this photo of the Arnold living room, Wright Chatter and Teater's Knoll owner Henry Whiting reported that when visiting the house recently he noticed that the exposed ceiling beams run at right angles to the long walls of the room, seemingly in violation of the 30-60º grid the house is based on. This "dissonance," he wrote, "bothered my eye and created an awkward feeling in the room. I wondered if it was a mistake that the contractor made. Or maybe it's just my problem -- living too many years with a diamond grid and dealing with tricky questions like this."

This interesting observation has been echoed by others, and caused me to look for evidence in the drawings of this seeming anomaly. The framing and reflected ceiling plans for the house appear to be in conflict---with each other and with what's seen at the house:




© The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York)

Readers will find these drawings at the above-linked Artstor page and can enlarge them to explore the details (to a certain degree, depending on resolution of the image) for themselves. The ceiling beams seen in the photos certainly do not appear on the reflected ceiling plan . . .

S

Noticed the changes to the fireplace between the preliminary drawing and the working drawings

There is an oddity to the ceiling beams, but not quite as noted. The reflected ceiling plan does show four beams in the living room and one in the kitchen perpendicular to the NE wall, but which terminate at the ridge, while the SW half of the roof appears to have beams coinciding with the hex plan stopping short of the ridge beam and covered up. It is the structural connection of these two systems that is not shown. As built, the perpendicular beams were apparently extended to the SW side to simplify the structure of the roof. The NE treatment looks fine, but that extension interrupts the flow of the SW ceiling plane.

Though hardly a parallel comparison, look at the way FLW finished the ceiling planes in the Taliesin living room. I suspect the change at Arnold was done on site, possibly without FLW's approval.

I recall the Arnold's mentioning to me in 1986 that the ceiling beams were added by Jack Howe ?

. . .the assumption being that he made this change as the house was being built---or later, when he was adding the wing to the house ?

We see this ceiling beam detail with its characteristic resolution at one exterior wall in other work by Howe:

https://www.edinarealty.com/homes-for-s ... 02-6170820

Sooner or later, perhaps a list of Wright's Usonians will be made with the houses categorized by apprentice: which apprentice if any was involved in the design, the drafting, and/or the supervision of each house.

S

The Arnold house and the Thaxton house are both variations on a theme. The Arnold house has the visible beams, the Thaxton house doesn’t.

From the drawings available on the Avery website it is shown that the roof framing sections differ between the two houses. The Thaxton house, which has no protruding beams in the ceiling is framed with a series of steel beams.

The Arnold house drawings are not clear enough to read the notes, but from the differing line work, I suspect wood or steel flitch beams might be in place that increase the beam depth, making them protrude from the ceiling plane.

SDR wrote: ↑Tue Jun 14, 2022 7:07 pm Here we inaugurate a new thread, one destined, if all goes well, to remain near the top of the forum index, for it will present a new Wright photograph each weekday, for the foreseeable future.

The DailyWright for Monday, June 13 is a great shot of the ASBH Elizabeth Murphy house fireplace wall. Owner/restorer Nick Hayes, well known now to a growing Wright fandom, wrote about this fireplace in his book, "Frank Lloyd Wright's Forgotten House" (2021, The University of Wisconsin Press, pp 85-86).



photo © 2022 Dave Anderson

Thank you for featuring Ms. Murphy, Dave. She can be a tad shy, sometimes. -N