Hello,
Book reviews on the new Pauson House and Louis Sullivan books out this month from Pomegranate are now up on PrairieMod:
http://www.prairiemod.com/prairiemod/20 ... .html#more
Pauson House & Louis Sullivan Book Review
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PrairieMod
- Posts: 494
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Just finished my first reading of "Building The Pauson House". Very interesting. Advise reading in a bright light and with a handy magnifying glass to view the drwgs. Price for the Pauson in 1940 : $7,940 = $124,897 in 2011 dollars. Correspondence between Rose and FLW is amazing. Miscommunication. Misunderstandings. Rose asks for changes. FLW ignores them. Plans show changes and how the design matured. Builder does the work for virtually no profit. Bob Mosher spends two summers in Arizona, most likely without benefit of air conditioning of ANY kind. Finished product suffers serious leaking in winter rains due to expansion/contraction of wood.
Recriminations all around. Happiness at the end. Then the fire. Now I am hungry for more.....
Recriminations all around. Happiness at the end. Then the fire. Now I am hungry for more.....
More ? Well, there's this . . . http://savewright.org/wright_chat/viewtopic.php?t=2489
What more could you want ?
What more could you want ?
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Jeff Myers
- Posts: 1813
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- Location: Tulsa
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Yup. And I'm not claiming that it's all there in the Pauson house thread -- far from it. It sounds like the new book has drawings ? Quite a bit can be gleaned from the ones printed at the scale of those in the Monographs -- if you have a pocket lens handy. I continue to learn from the two volumes I have . . .
S
S
I just got the Building The Pauson House, read it the first day. I agree on m.perrino's suggestion for a bright light and a magnifying glass. It's does shed some interesting insight between architect and client in those times. If one could build anything close to that house for $124K today, why not? Comes back to availability of craftsmanship, quality of materials and I suppose adhering to today's code requirements. And of course more water-proofing! The material cost breakdown will make you wish you could really get that hardware for $100!
That said, the short life of the house and the feelings that Rose Pauson must have had after the news of the fire, cannot be realized in any note to Mr. Wright nor anyone. Tragic.
The drawings (although small) are worth the venture. I will study them again tonight for desert.
That said, the short life of the house and the feelings that Rose Pauson must have had after the news of the fire, cannot be realized in any note to Mr. Wright nor anyone. Tragic.
The drawings (although small) are worth the venture. I will study them again tonight for desert.
SDR: "An argument for Wright's authorship or influence at Charnley: no handrail on that magnificently screened second-floor stair ?"
Wright's contribution may have been the wood screen stair alone and nothing else...maybe just a detail here and there.
Most architectural historians agree with that conclusion today - Wright's contributions are minimal at best. If you read the relatively new "The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan book" (http://www.richardnickelcommittee.org/book.html), then you might notice how similar Charnley is to the Albert Sullivan House and other buildings Sullivan designed between 1887-1892.
And I'm sorry, Sullivan would not have relied on his young assistant to solely design houses for his brother and mother as well as two closest friends (the Charnleys).
I'm really sick of hearing how Wright influenced Sullivan instead of the other way around. Wright would not have turned into the genius he later became without Sullivan.[/url]
Wright's contribution may have been the wood screen stair alone and nothing else...maybe just a detail here and there.
Most architectural historians agree with that conclusion today - Wright's contributions are minimal at best. If you read the relatively new "The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan book" (http://www.richardnickelcommittee.org/book.html), then you might notice how similar Charnley is to the Albert Sullivan House and other buildings Sullivan designed between 1887-1892.
And I'm sorry, Sullivan would not have relied on his young assistant to solely design houses for his brother and mother as well as two closest friends (the Charnleys).
I'm really sick of hearing how Wright influenced Sullivan instead of the other way around. Wright would not have turned into the genius he later became without Sullivan.[/url]
I see no reason to think that Wright influenced Sullivan in any tangible way -- though I'm not on intimate terms with Sullivan's oeuvre. It may be, I suppose; I've never considered the possibility.
Nor do I think that Wright's career as an architect depended upon his time with Sullivan. I have little doubt that his personal muse would have ushered him to some significant shore, though perhaps not exactly the one he ended upon. There is just too much there, in his portfolio, to think otherwise -- in my opinion.
S D R
Nor do I think that Wright's career as an architect depended upon his time with Sullivan. I have little doubt that his personal muse would have ushered him to some significant shore, though perhaps not exactly the one he ended upon. There is just too much there, in his portfolio, to think otherwise -- in my opinion.
S D R
My book review ...
Building the Pauson House is a wonderful book ... brief, and to the point. I believe the best part, besides the to me "new" photographs, are the parade of floor plans.
To see Mr. Wright's first idea going through permutation after permutation, until Rose Pauson finally obtained his undivided attention, which resulted in the plan and elevation featured on pages 28 and 29 (the almost "as built" plan), is from first to last a revelation. The clincher, of course, is the even later switch of the maid's room, along with the furnace room, from behind the workspace to the stone mass to the left of the loggia, the substitution in its place of the utility room, the slight but critical enlargement of the workspace, itself, and the addition of closet space in the main bedroom above.
To see it all come together in the superb plans made for publication on page 58 makes the whole saga worthwhile. Those final plans are a work of art, all by themselves.
What I particularly missed in the book and in the pages featuring plans are dates of execution. Mr. Wright invariable signed and dated drawings, as he approved them, and I don't quite understand why those dates weren't noted in the book. To have known the exact time-sequence between the plans would have added additional dimension to the story.
The only place where I found a legible date is the plan on page 56: "Plan For Rearrangement of Servant's Bath In Utility Room". Obviously, those changes were last minute ... during construction ... See note scratched on the drawing: "PLEASE WIRE ANSWER ... Plumbing this week." The drawing is dated 12 August 1940, but the emendations must have been even later.
Evidently the transfer of the maid's room came even later, and the only plan illustrating that change is the plan made for publication. Does anyone know if the plan made for publication is "as built", or did the maid's room remain behind the workspace. Of course I'm grateful for what we have been given, here, ... but these things pique my curiosity. It's painful to realize that those last critical changes went virtually unrecorded.
It's probably too late now, too late with all the principles gone, but to have had a text accompany the letters and drawings, a text analyzing the design changes, a text analyzing the design, itself, could have given a broader perspective to the whole.
Years ago, while in college, I was privileged to hear an Egyptian architect lecture on the Pauson house ... a lecture particularly important to me as it helped teach me how Mr. Wright designed his buildings in relation to their sites, and to the larger landscape ... how he united the two. Little of that is here. In his forward, Bruce Pfeiffer provides a poetic description of the approach to the house, and with Mr. Wright's appreciation for Japanese thought, but the larger picture ... the relationship between the hill slope, the stairway, the building as a mass punctured to reveal the now Piestewa Peak in the distance, with each visitor then forced to turn and enter the fairly long, dark, low-ceilinged hallway before turning, again, to the final release within and to the long terrace pointing to the mountains beyond .... Well, the whole sequence was designed to take your breath away. Despite the ruined state of the structure, I feel fortunate to have experienced some of that magic before the city bulldozed the site.
N.B. On a side note are the letters themselves: too many were dated "Friday", "Wednesday", Monday", or nothing at all. Arranging them in chronological order must have been a chore. I can sympathize, as one of my earliest jobs at Taliesin was helping sort the Monona Terrace correspondence for the lawyers... and all to often we faced the same problem: "last Wednesday", etc.
To see Mr. Wright's first idea going through permutation after permutation, until Rose Pauson finally obtained his undivided attention, which resulted in the plan and elevation featured on pages 28 and 29 (the almost "as built" plan), is from first to last a revelation. The clincher, of course, is the even later switch of the maid's room, along with the furnace room, from behind the workspace to the stone mass to the left of the loggia, the substitution in its place of the utility room, the slight but critical enlargement of the workspace, itself, and the addition of closet space in the main bedroom above.
To see it all come together in the superb plans made for publication on page 58 makes the whole saga worthwhile. Those final plans are a work of art, all by themselves.
What I particularly missed in the book and in the pages featuring plans are dates of execution. Mr. Wright invariable signed and dated drawings, as he approved them, and I don't quite understand why those dates weren't noted in the book. To have known the exact time-sequence between the plans would have added additional dimension to the story.
The only place where I found a legible date is the plan on page 56: "Plan For Rearrangement of Servant's Bath In Utility Room". Obviously, those changes were last minute ... during construction ... See note scratched on the drawing: "PLEASE WIRE ANSWER ... Plumbing this week." The drawing is dated 12 August 1940, but the emendations must have been even later.
Evidently the transfer of the maid's room came even later, and the only plan illustrating that change is the plan made for publication. Does anyone know if the plan made for publication is "as built", or did the maid's room remain behind the workspace. Of course I'm grateful for what we have been given, here, ... but these things pique my curiosity. It's painful to realize that those last critical changes went virtually unrecorded.
It's probably too late now, too late with all the principles gone, but to have had a text accompany the letters and drawings, a text analyzing the design changes, a text analyzing the design, itself, could have given a broader perspective to the whole.
Years ago, while in college, I was privileged to hear an Egyptian architect lecture on the Pauson house ... a lecture particularly important to me as it helped teach me how Mr. Wright designed his buildings in relation to their sites, and to the larger landscape ... how he united the two. Little of that is here. In his forward, Bruce Pfeiffer provides a poetic description of the approach to the house, and with Mr. Wright's appreciation for Japanese thought, but the larger picture ... the relationship between the hill slope, the stairway, the building as a mass punctured to reveal the now Piestewa Peak in the distance, with each visitor then forced to turn and enter the fairly long, dark, low-ceilinged hallway before turning, again, to the final release within and to the long terrace pointing to the mountains beyond .... Well, the whole sequence was designed to take your breath away. Despite the ruined state of the structure, I feel fortunate to have experienced some of that magic before the city bulldozed the site.
N.B. On a side note are the letters themselves: too many were dated "Friday", "Wednesday", Monday", or nothing at all. Arranging them in chronological order must have been a chore. I can sympathize, as one of my earliest jobs at Taliesin was helping sort the Monona Terrace correspondence for the lawyers... and all to often we faced the same problem: "last Wednesday", etc.
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Roderick Grant
- Posts: 11815
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Re: Pauson: The $7,940/$124,897 comparison is meaningless when the times are considered; pre-WWII the country was still in the throes of the Great Depression. People were hungry for any work they could get. Today, even with the current economic challenges, one would be hard pressed to build that house for $124K. That's closer to the cost of the land, or possibly (probably by California standards) the cost of the building permit.
Re: Charnley: The strongest evidence in favor of FLW's involvement with the Charnley House design is shown on pages 19 through 33 of "Creating A New American Architecture" which show the Adler & Sullivan residences with which FLW was not involved, all of which fit squarely within the Victorian aesthetic of the era. The quantum leap made by Charnley had no precedent in the firm before FLW arrived. To suggest that FLW at 24 was too young and inexperienced to come up with such a sophisticated design is like saying Felix Mendelssohn couldn't possibly have written his octet at age 16 ... and yet he did. I don't know if "most" architectural historians dismiss FLW as Charnley's designer (has a poll been taken?) but one of the finest, Grant Carpenter Manson, gives him his due. Manson, who saw the interior of the Albert Sullivan House of 1891 (pg 33), a little published, long-demolished house, says FLW's design motifs inside are evident, and he was probably responsible for that one, too. As to who influenced whom, Silsbee, Sullivan, Adler and Richardson had an impact on FLW, but the reverse is not substantiated. It could be argued that George Grant Elmslie was influenced by FLW, and by virtue of his association with Sullivan, post-Adler, and his dominant involvement in the Owattona bank and Babson House designs, FLW seeped into Sullivan's later work, but I would still say FLW did not influence Sullivan one bit.
Re: Charnley: The strongest evidence in favor of FLW's involvement with the Charnley House design is shown on pages 19 through 33 of "Creating A New American Architecture" which show the Adler & Sullivan residences with which FLW was not involved, all of which fit squarely within the Victorian aesthetic of the era. The quantum leap made by Charnley had no precedent in the firm before FLW arrived. To suggest that FLW at 24 was too young and inexperienced to come up with such a sophisticated design is like saying Felix Mendelssohn couldn't possibly have written his octet at age 16 ... and yet he did. I don't know if "most" architectural historians dismiss FLW as Charnley's designer (has a poll been taken?) but one of the finest, Grant Carpenter Manson, gives him his due. Manson, who saw the interior of the Albert Sullivan House of 1891 (pg 33), a little published, long-demolished house, says FLW's design motifs inside are evident, and he was probably responsible for that one, too. As to who influenced whom, Silsbee, Sullivan, Adler and Richardson had an impact on FLW, but the reverse is not substantiated. It could be argued that George Grant Elmslie was influenced by FLW, and by virtue of his association with Sullivan, post-Adler, and his dominant involvement in the Owattona bank and Babson House designs, FLW seeped into Sullivan's later work, but I would still say FLW did not influence Sullivan one bit.