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.
Building The Pauson House
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John Donnelly
- Posts: 61
- Joined: Sun Mar 29, 2009 2:59 pm
I received my copy from Amazon, and have thoroughly enjoyed the read to be sure.
I just wish the book was a bit larger, I think it would have done more justice to the images. But all in all, it is a great read, and it is very nice to have a book about one of the greatest homes in my estimation ever created.
-John
I just wish the book was a bit larger, I think it would have done more justice to the images. But all in all, it is a great read, and it is very nice to have a book about one of the greatest homes in my estimation ever created.
-John