Wright Chat

Davenport House Restoration What a great day. Today the carpenters finished the roof sheathing on the new restored 1901 FLW roof extension and bay. With the plywood cladding of the new 1901 restored bay one can see the incredible beauty of FLW's original 1901 design. It is absolutely striking. The brilliance of Frank Lloyd Wright radiates from the Davenport House for the first time in 75 years!



We are just starting the last major structural fix and this is a major challenge. The house has a bulge on the north facade at the ribbon windows. We are jacking out the wall at the top of the windows and simultaneously pulling in the bulge of the wall beneath the windows. At the same time we are jacking up the sagging cantilevered roof that frames into the bulging wall. Both the wall and cantilevered roof will receive extensive structural reinforcing. I hope that it works! By Friday December 2 we will know the results.

pharding wrote:Davenport House Restoration What a great day. Today the carpenters finished the roof sheathing on the new restored 1901 FLW roof extension and bay. With the plywood cladding of the new 1901 restored bay one can see the incredible beauty of FLW's original 1901 design. It is absolutely striking. The brilliance of Frank Lloyd Wright radiates from the Davenport House for the first time in 75 years!



We are just starting the last major structural fix and this is a major challenge. The house has a bulge on the north facade at the ribbon windows. We are jacking out the wall at the top of the windows and simultaneously pulling in the bulge of the wall beneath the windows. At the same time we are jacking up the sagging cantilevered roof that frames into the bulging wall. Both the wall and cantilevered roof will receive extensive structural reinforcing. I hope that it works! By Friday December 2 we will know the results.

I like you house very much. It is good. Hope me see it on tour some day. Is it much money to do work? More than a house on your street with same biggness. Do keep telling us what you do.



Sorry my grammer not great. English still hard for me.

Thank you for your kind comments. I understood what you were saying quite well. If you want a tour of the house as it is being restored, email me.

The first time I saw a photo of the house, I thought that FLW could not possibly have designed such an ungainly thing. Seeing a historical photo made it clear what a wonderful house it had been. Knowing it will be that way again is one bright spot in an otherwise disastrous year (Ennis, Carr, Sullivan and Charnley!). Keep up the good work. If all of Wright's buildings were in such good hands, there would be no need for the Conservancy.

The structural repairs to the bulging north facade with the attached sagging first floor cantilevered roof are complete. The structural repairs were extremely challenging. Fortunately they worked quite well. This concludes 6 months of wood framing for the roof extension and bay as designed by FLW in 1901 and extensive structural repairs throughout the house.



The structural issues on the Davenport House were attributable to three sources. At this point in his career, 1901, FLW was a "practicing" architect. He was pushing the limits of technology with innovative design ideas. The Davenport House has roof cantilevers that extend out between 4 feet and 5 feet 4 inches which were framed with 2x4 rafter extensions and 2x4 lookouts. Our house uses the wood framing technology, balloon framing, common to the turn of the century. This is inherently less stable than the Western Platform Framing Technology that was soon to come. Third, unfortunately we had the rookie carpentry crew build our house. They did some dumb things.



Our house was a virtual laboratory for the development of wood framing strategies for FLW's new design ideas. FLW took the lessons he learned on the Davenport House and applied them with great success on the Ward Willets House and other fine Prairie houses to come.

Thank you so much, Paul, for your fascinating updates. What a thrill it must be to uncover and peer at the same framing a young Wright did! It must be a kick to see the framing solutions, evidence of how early he assimilated and applied structural practices to his revolutionary art form.



People at the time certainly caravaned out to Oak Park as a weekend past time. I know I can't wait until my next visit to see the latest addition to the neighborhood. Photos!

We used the following carpentry crews with varying degrees of success and expense.

Crew 1. High quality medium priced carpentry subcontractor with an hour site visit by me each day.

Crew 2. Two non-union carpenters with summer intern as an assistant, my eyes and ears, when I was not there with me on the site three hours per day.

Crew 3. Extremely high quality union carpenter on loan from a major Chicago General Contractor and two highly educated, M.Arch, architects, one with experience as a project architect 10 years experience and the second 3 months experience and a historic preservation graduate degree. I was there one hour per day.



Crew 3 had the benefit of what I learned from Crew 1. Crew 3 did a phenomenal job because of the blend of skills and effective communication. The carpenter knew how to build efficently and how to use the tools. The two architects worked as carpenter assistants and were responsible for quality control. Communication was extremely effective because the two architects knew what I was looking for and could reiterate that in my abscence. This team was able to implement the structural fixes, which were extremely innovative, engineered solutions, and very importantly measure the results against the initial and target measurements. Bear in mind that we were fixing things that basically failed and had to be removed in 1931 or in 2005 had serious deflection. We had to work within the profile of existing walls and roof/sofiit assemblies. Unlike the Meyer May House I could not afford to insert a steel frame into the house. We used engineered wood LVL members, a variety of Simpson sheet metal straps and ties, custom steel brackets, lag bolts, stainless steel screws, and injected epoxey to fix the original failed wood members. Crew 3 used horizontal and vertical string lines, plumb bobs, laser leveling devices, and laser rangefinders. They used up to 6 jacks vertically, 2 - 1 and 1/2 ton come alongs, and 2 jacks on an angle to simultaneously push and pull on the cantilevered roof and the wall that it was hung off of. More often than not they did not get it right initially, but were able to quickly measure and tune the fix to the desired tolerances and go at it again. We achieved great results with incredibly accurate tolerances in a cost effective manner. Crew 3 had the fewest carpenters, but they had the benefit of one great carpenter who knew how to synthesize efficency and craftsmanship, excellent communication, constant feedback, and the ability make decisions on the fly when the inevitable bump in the road occurred.



Ray the carpenter was invited to our office Christmas Party and was named an "honorary architect". I am going to submit a white paper for consideration to present what we did at the next FLW Building Conservancy. If accepted Dominic, Mike, and I will present what we did and how we did it.

Paul, I studied architecture my first year at school until the analytical courses over powered me. I had to settle for a degree in business. Reading your updates on this project is causing my palms to sweat! The thought of actually restoring a FLW is trully exhilerating to me. One day I hope to travel up to the Chicago erea and visit Forest Park just to see the FLW works that are there. Being from the Southeast, I never held much interest in the mid-west....I do now! His name is Frank Lloyd Wright.



War Eagle!

Pdean

Dallas TX.

One of these days, I'll start proofing my comments prior to posting them on this site. Paul, they do teach us how to spell down here. Erea should read Area!!! sorry..



Pdean

Dallas TX.