Wright Chat

Listing on Airbnb:

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/13189361?sug=51

I clicked on "view photos," and the screen just turned gray.

Try it again. There are 14 interior photos. The main-space ceiling features a linear pattern of long narrow lights which mimic the clerestories . . . to my eye.

SDR

Sweet house.
Not been so familiar with this one myself.
Would love to go

3600 Belleview Ave
KCMO

Photo 4/20 "lounge" is the original 1939 living room...the original dining alcove was to the extreme left in the photo. Curtis Besinger noted in his book that Sondern construction was overseen by John Howe; that Wright and the Fellowship visited the house one evening ca.1940-1, with Thomas Hart Benton joining them; and that it was one of the best crafted of the early Usonians.

1940 construction shots.
Check out the team of horses:

http://www.roanokekc.org/SondernAdlerCo ... onPics.htm

Nine rows down, third shot from left: steel suspended fireplace corner!

Best shots of roof framing I've ever seen. ... I imagine that many of his houses have construction shots like this and that they're laying around in remotely located boxes waiting to be found in some shed like this one was.

Anybody got a plan of the original house?

This cache of pictures was noted in another thread...Beware: many pictures are mirror image (1939-40 pics mostly), some are from the original 1939-40 construction, some are from late the 1940's addition.

From the earlier thread:

The pics seem to be of BOTH the original construction and the later Adler addition. In some of the pics in the series, completed and time weathered portions of the house can be seen adjacent to new work. From a quick review, I believe pictures (read left to right, line by line) 8,11,30,32,33,34,35,50,53,54,55,56,57, and the last 9 pics, to be of the addition.

The plans (original and with addition) are here:
http://savewright.org/wright_chat/viewt ... ion+photos

The Sondern pics toward the bottom of this page are the right orientation (not mirrored):
http://www.steinerag.com/flw/Books/houses.htm

Thanks DRN

The Sondern House was a terrific piece of work, but its fate was built into it. The 2 bedrooms are tiny (10'x12'), there is only one bath and the kitchen is hardly more than a kitchenette. It would have been good if the place had been kept as it was. The Adler addition didn't improve the house (beyond square footage) at all.

Those old construction photos really are great. Really, really great.

One interesting thing we see is the truck delivering a board & batten wall segment. Presumably pre-fabricated off site at the facilities of the Pacific Mutual Door Company. (So, the door supplier was also contracted to supply the exterior walls)

Then, we see a wall segment leaning in anticipation of being installed, with the bottom board tailored to fit around the short brick wall.

it's house as furniture.

And now, that same corner buttoned up.
I wonder what's going on at the bottom. Perhaps they've taken off that little board for a minute to install that flexible flashing membrane.

I'd like to get a closer look at that corner piece that resolves the intersection.

The only reliable way to make these panels off-site is to give up the mitered corner, no ? The only way I'd accept the job of mitering them in the shop would be to make the cut after the boards and battens have been assembled to the back panel. And that would take a monster tilting horizontal sliding panel saw, with a 16' throw. Or, a custom-made clamp-on sliding saw rig that could tilt -- like something Festool might come up with ?

SDR

presumably, this is more typical, and assembled in the field.



Not pre-fabricated off site, and reliant on mitered corners with fasteners to lock it together. I'm not sure how they would wrap the corner with a continuous flashing membrane/air barrier without having to disassemble the outer layer. It would be like trying to slip in a piece of cheese without removing the sandwich bread. I need to look back at the details in monograph 6.

Quite so. And yet that's what Wright initially suggested as the (on-site) assembly: Make the walls on horses, on the slab, ideally under the shelter of the roof already made and held up with props !

The rusting nails or screws weren't part of Wrigth's recipe, for sure, yet understandable given the nature of wood and exterior miters. In my house these miters will be splined, and glued with polyurethane adhesive.

The Sondern photos above seem to show panels that are not mitered but have extensions, perhaps of the center ply ? Does the house have mitered exterior corners ? I can't find a photo of one. The plan seems to show that there are few such panels in the house, in the original construction, the majority as interior partitions ?

SDR