Well, you may not know it, but today is Frank Lloyd Wrightis birthday. Donit worry if you forgot, heis been dead since 1959, and probably wouldnit want to be bothered with cakes and candles and good wishes anyway. After all, heid be 138 years old. Nope, not considered prime time for celebration. But I bet he would still like to be remembered, and for more than the Solomon Guggenheim Museum and the E.J. Kauffman House, Fallingwater. Thatis not to say that these buildings are unworthy in anyway, theyire both amazing examples of Wrightis vision and progression, itis just that theyire not his whole story.
Wrightis legacy seems to be stripped down to arts and crafts or these buildings of sculptural movement and total surprise. But the thing I love about Wright are those buildings that he made as homes for average people. The man was Welsh and grew up in Wisconsin. Itis a simple values sort of background, granted his was infused with dreams of architecture and strains of Bach and Beethoven almost from birth. The point is, he cared about common people and wanted to create mass-market affordable homes for middle-income buyers. He made the Usonian House, a one level family home with a kitchen, public areas, private bedroom areas, and gardens at the cost of, in 1940, about $5,000. (Although, he was infamous for going over budget and these homes, only 60 were built, generally actually cost about twice that in the end.)
He had an early notion of the idea of democratic design now as commonplace as the Targets that tout it so successfully. But the Usonian Houses were not a great success at the time. Wright did not see them begin to cover the landscape and change the way common people felt about design and architecture. People still wanted a house described with a specific, detail recalling name: a colonial, a tudor, a cape. Wrightis homes had their own name and his vision, one we in Buffalo are lucky to be surrounded by in as a close to his dream for the Usonian Houses as possible.
Regular families lived in three of the four Wright homes in the Parkside area neighborhood I grew up in. They slept there, woke there, entertained there, planted things in their gardens out front. They always seemed different to me. I walked by with my dog or pedaled past on my bike, craning my neck to see them. I wanted to get a good look at their faces, their clothes, the way they walked. Really, I just wanted to know if they were like everyone else, or if they had something extra, something I could perhaps recognize, that they got from living in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. I still donit know the answer. But Wright thought that by giving common people beautiful, well- and meaningfully designed architecture, he could improve their lives, make them happier. Tonight, for his birthday, Iim going to take a stroll through my old neighborhood, Iill listen for music, sniff the air for smells of outdoor cooking, and keep my eyes peeled for all the signs that he was right.
Related Links:
Pull no punches
Graycliff: Now Thatis A Summer Place
Architecural Legacy And Esmonde’s Good & Bad Days
Inside The Fence: A Hard Hat Tour of The Darwin Martin House
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