Wright Chat

Speaking of how much FLW homeowners loved living in his creations, the Samuel & Harriett Freeman House represents the ultimate devotion. Not long after Sam and & Harriett finished their house in 1925, their marrieage fell apart. I'm not sure if they ever divorced, even though they hated one another passionately. Neither was willing to leave the house, so they lived and battled together for over half a century in that tiny one-bathroom house, each having marked their private territory, sharing the living room. And for most of that time, Sam was retired and at home! I don't think I could do that, unless I had something on the order of Coonley to split.

I believe I read that the Turkel House put an end to the Turkel marriage, but, in their case, Mr. Turkel moved out. It appears that the majority of Wright clients had long lives and marriages, but are there any other exceptions such as these? And how might we convince Mr. Storrer to make his next project (after the new Companion comes out this spring) a book on FLLW's clients?

I think a book on Wright's clients would be very interesting!

Already published are accounts of M. M. Smith, Reisley, Rosenbaum, Hagan, Pappas, Jacobs and Hanna by the clients themselves. What would be most interesting would be an expanded "Letters To Clients." The published letters are just a fraction of what exists.



I believe that Mrs. Turkel built her house after Mr. was out of the picture. Not sure about that, but usually the house is listed with the husband's first name, and this one has always been know as the "Dorothy Turkel House."

First of all, Rgrant that was very funny stuff.



Living in a FLW house has its highs and lows. Mostly highs. Frank really knew how to turn those procrustean screws. He would engage the homeowners in the design process yet ultimately build the house the way he saw fit. Thank heavens he was so rigid in this regard or he would have not produced such magnificent art. To further the procrustean (the fable is amusing) analogy, Mr Wright had two single beds in my guest room head to head against a three foot knee wall under a sloped ceiling. Lots of head banging.



Dealing with the peculiarities and oddiites of one of his houses is

the challange given what one expects to find in a modern house.

The rewards are the never ending surprises and the visual excitement.

Living in one is fantastic, it is the restoration which will kill you.

Richard, what FLW do you own? Would like to look in Storrer to see. Thanks.

If I could come up with a reason to live in Ohio and had the money, I would already be living in the Boswell home....



Pdean

Dallas TX.

Of course I would live in a FLW house given the chance. It's sad that Taliesin may not survive. Capitalism does not like any kind of communal arrangement and its hard to imagine why they would hire a businessman to manage the Foundation. In typical short sighted management fashion he nearly dismantled the edifice it took Wright several careers to build.

MHOLUBAR wrote:Of course I would live in a FLW house given the chance. It's sad that Taliesin may not survive. Capitalism does not like any kind of communal arrangement and its hard to imagine why they would hire a businessman to manage the Foundation. In typical short sighted management fashion he nearly dismantled the edifice it took Wright several careers to build.

Who (or maybe what) are you are talking about?......They hired a "business" man because, like Frank, they pretended for too long they were not a business. If the Foundation had been able to continue dealing with the world on their own terms, believe me, they would have. I don't think "capitalism" has an opinion one way or the other about communes.



What edifice? TWest is in need of restoration because of what the Foundation has done to it!

I grew up in a Marshall Erdman House; not a Wright Pre-fab but a development house, on a block in the back meadow from the FLW Unitarian Meetinghouse. It had some lovely elements: the fireplace brick core, a glorious natural rock walkway to the front door on the portion of the house that was earth sheltered and a wide flat roof overhang. But there was little else perfect about the house. So unlike a FLW design. Our family built a utilitarian addition for my grandmother without guilt but, also, without the confidance of the strong inner logic that would guide the design. That house needed us to make it work; it needed our sculptures and paintings, our furniture, our personal interests and our eccentric and inconsistant aesthetics for its charm.



Now that I have worked in several FLW homes I can see how the shortfalls of that house encouraged certain ways of living that now serve me poorly but are engrained. A tendency to collect and hoard objects of "interest", without requiring the discrimination of connoisseurship, is one. Another is the capacity to live in disarray, without the idea "everything in its place".



Basically, a Wright House is a deliberate House. And to live in one would be to honor the care and rightness of that architecture. I relish that sense in the Houses I now know well, but my personal habits did not develop in that environment. I live, productively, in the mess of a cluttered studio/ house, surrounded by all the reminders of physical ideas to construct and explore. So I could not live full time in a Wright House. But a retreat home, a Wright house I would choose to come to when focus and the comfort of sensual order is essential to my well-being, well, that House I could live in happily several days every week.