FLW And Pittsfield: What Could've Been

Paul Ringstrom · Post by **Paul Ringstrom** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 1:06 pm

http://wamc.org/post/frank-lloyd-wright ... uldve-been

Opportunity Lost
http://jph.sagepub.com/content/2/1/25.abstract

Reidy · Post by **Reidy** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 6:33 pm

On the other hand it probably would have become a slum like Neutra's Channel Heights or Le Corbusier's UnitÃ© d'Habitation.

peterm · Post by **peterm** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 8:40 pm

I'm curious...Why do you think that? Is there something about Wright's design that is slum inducing? Are single family houses more slum proof than multifamily units? Or does only private ownership stop the creation of slums?

Today, Le Corbusier's Unite' d'Habitation is considered to be a fashionable place to live and is inhabited by numerous architects and lovers of design. "Like wine bottles in a rack":
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201304 ... ete-horror
It may not be to everyone's liking, but a slum?
http://wn.com/Le_Corbusier__Unite_d%27habitation

Roderick Grant · Post by **Roderick Grant** » Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:24 pm

On the contrary, today Cloverleaf would be like Sun Top, a collection of modestly scaled FLW houses that people would vie for.

Of course, it's location, location, etc. Channel Heights was built in San Pedro, never a sought-out locale. Nor, for that matter, was Marseilles. The Pittsfield neighborhood could either have nurtured Cloverleaf or defeated it. What's it like? Too industrial?

Reidy · Post by **Reidy** » Sun Oct 26, 2014 5:32 pm

Government housing projects have a tendency to become slums if they are not demolished. Chances are good that one or the other of these would have happened here.

I read years ago - don't remember where - that this had happened to UnitÃ© d'Habitation. If it didn't, or if the place has subsequently gentrified, I'm glad.

egads · Post by **egads** » Sun Oct 26, 2014 10:08 pm

It has been my observation that government infrastructure never has enough maintenance funding. The strategy seems to be to wait until the situation is dire and then spend twice or three times as much rehabbing.

Almost all of Channel Islands is gone. I have been there in search. While one might think: "well it's San Pedro" in fact it is more like middle class Palos Verdes. The land the housing was on is now upscale condos. The views are incredible.

The problem with subsidized housing is it just does not seem generate enough money to do the maintenance. During the last MAK center tour we saw a Schindler duplex (triplex?) that was in really sad shape. Even though it was privately owned, it was subject to rent control. I bet if the current tenant left, it would rent for three times as much and some caulking and roofing could be done. Of course if I lived there, I would not leave either.

Roderick Grant · Post by **Roderick Grant** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 12:07 pm

True, the Fed loses interest in project housing once it is no longer politically advantageous. This is why HUD should be eliminated, perhaps replaced by state-run agencies, even though they aren't much better.

egads, which RMS duplex did you visit? The four in West Hollywood are, I believe, all owner-occupied. From the exterior, the two that are in original condition look good. (The other two have been seriously remodeled, one of which recently sold for big bucks.) Or was it DeKeyser by the Freeman House?

egads · Post by **egads** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 1:51 pm

Ok, a fourplex. The Falk apartments, 1939-40
1631 Carnation Ave, LA 90026

And I would like to stress that, in this case, I only observed some deferred maintenance, hardly wasting.

We also saw the Droste house, on Killingsworth in Silver Lake. I loved seeing it in it's current state, and thank the owner who let us see it. It is being brought back, probably slowly as funds and time allow, much like my own house. Everyone cannot necessarily afford to hand Marmol Radziner a hefty budget to make it better than new like the Elliot house, nor is that desirable in every case. I like it real myself. That said, some primer, paint, caulk and flashing can go a long way in halting the ravages of time.

Roderick Grant · Post by **Roderick Grant** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 2:10 pm

Falk was originally owner-occupied, which makes all the difference in the world when it comes to maintenance. Sad if it's deteriorating. I think it's one of RMS's masterpieces.

egads, you bring up another question! What did Marmol Radziner do to the Elliot House? Restored religiously, Elliot would be perfect. Radziner could not alter it in any way to make it better.

peterm · Post by **peterm** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 2:28 pm

I've only seen one restoration by Marmol Radzinger that I have liked and that is the Kaufman house in Palm Springs. Their approach is generally too glitzy for my taste...

Formerly a Cliff May house:
http://www.marmol-radziner.com/restorat ... ntal-ranch

The Elliot house is not bad, but they still took liberties that bother me a bit:
http://www.marmol-radziner.com/restoration/elliot-house

Roderick Grant · Post by **Roderick Grant** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:37 pm

Actually, Elliot looks great. I see no liberties taken.

peterm · Post by **peterm** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 11:28 pm

In person, the wood and the finishes were not correct. The paint was bright white.

There's a guy who bought the Bubeshko apartments who obsessively and meticulously restored the apartments and recreated the stain colors, sheen and paint colors so accurately that it is astounding. "Almost archeological" sÃ id the judges:
http://www.residentialarchitect.com/awa ... geles.aspx

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LkivejvQvmI

The MR restoration ignores Schindler's subtle Southern California dusty colors in favor of a generic bright white and a too orangish tinted stain on plywood that as I recall is not Douglas Fir, which was always Schindler's veneer of choice,

Of course, one can say it's just paint, but it's important to remember that Schindler was a master colorist.

Roderick Grant · Post by **Roderick Grant** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 11:52 am

That would be disturbing. RMS can be confused with the Internationalists because of the massing of his mid-career work, but his colors were more nuanced than Corbu et Cie.

Duncan · Post by **Duncan** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 4:12 pm

Back on the subject of maintenance of public housing. The problem is not so much that public housing does not generate enough revenue to maintain properly, it is more that government in this country does not manage well. Government can govern; it can't manage. Property management is a 24/7 job and a civil servant who goes home at 5 pm Friday night and returns 9 am Monday morning just doesn't cut it. Today all Below Market Rate housing in San Francisco is built and managed by very capable non-profits, on land with a long-term lease from the City. They hire excellent architects, actually screen and police the tenants, maintain the buildings, and actually collect the rent. They are typically better designed and built than market rate spec condos because the non-profit is going to own them "forever." The City is currently in the process of closing down the Housing Authority which manages thousands of poor projects, and turning them over to the non-profits, who demolish them and build new, often mixed income, projects. Architects such as David Baker, Leddy Maytum Stacy, Dan Solomon have done a number of the privately done BMR units.

The last time I was in Marseille (late '80s) the Unite was undergoing a complete rehab. The one in Firminy (Lyon) was in fine shape, as was the one in Berlin. In Europe where most new housing is what they call "social housing", they generally do an excellent job at managment. The temporary degeneration of Marseille was an exception not the rule.

In the former Soviet union virtually all housing was built by workers associations (unions). The quality of the construction and maintenance varied widely from excellent to terrible, depending on the particular union. And of course there are housing projects built in NYC early in the 20th c. by unions that are still successful.

DRN · Post by **DRN** » Thu Jan 05, 2017 2:14 pm

Two articles in the Conservancy's SaveWright magazine, delivered in December 2016, address Wright's Quadruple Block plan from 1901-03 and the later Pittsfield Cloverleaf adaptation of Suntop Homes. I came away from the magazine with the following thoughts:

-the 1903 Quadruple Block looked great as a drawing or a tessellation, but was wasteful in that so many short blocks were created...literally double the number of streets when overlaid on a comparable neighborhood.

-the garage/stable at the center of each 1903 block with its cross shaped party wall, two exterior walls for each quadrant, blissfully private from the adjoining unit, was the best part.

-Suntop was a masterful use of the 1903 garage concept as a multifamily residential building, particularly when studied in section.

-Pittsfield was a regression from Suntop: The pulling away of the living unit from the crosswall to create the inner yard, eased distribution natural light and air to the interior, but created a shaft like outdoor space enclosed on two sides by 28' tall masonry wall extensions which contained no utilities and supported nothing other than themselves. The house's total length of actual party wall was minimal.

-Combined with the wastefully tall masonry "backyard fences" at the buildings' centers, the Pittsfield scheme repeated or expanded upon the 1903 plan's excessive amount of drives per acre. The solution to the miles of paving would be a centralized parking lot for each 4 unit building along the feeder roads, but that ran contrary to Wright's car in every carport vision.

I suspect the Government reps who received the drawings immediately saw the inefficiency of the scheme and rightly (no pun) passed.