Upstairs, Downstairs with Wright

Photos © Mark Hertzberg

I may have stumbled on one of the only aspects of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work that has not been mulled over (and over and over) when I was editing pictures I had taken in October during the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy Conference in Chicago. Taking pictures in the lobby of The Rookery Building on LaSalle Street was a bit like the proverbial “shooting fish in a barrel.” You couldn’t miss. I started digging in my files to see what other photos I had that show how Wright moved people up and down in his buildings. Some ideas are repeated. The photos are presented in chronological order of design:

Charnley House, Chicago (1891):

Penwern (Fred B. Jones Estate), Delavan Lake, Wisconsin (1900-1903):

Thomas P. Hardy House, Racine (1904/05):

The Rookery Building, Chicago (1905)

Avery Coonley Estate, Riverside, Illinois (1908):

American System-Built Duplex in the Burnham Block, Milwaukee (1916):

Fallingwater, Mill Run, Pennsylvania (1935):

SC Johnson Administration Building, Racine, Wisconsin (1936)…stairs from the Great Workroom down to the women’s lounge:

Stairs from The Great Workroom up to the Mezzanine:

Wingspread (Herbert Johnson House), Wind Point, Wisconsin (1937)…stairs to the second floor:

Stairs to the Crow’s Nest lookout tower (these look like the one’s to the women’s lounge at the Administration Building designed the previous year):

SC Johnson Research Tower, Racine, Wisconsin (1943/44):

Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin (1956):

Guggenheim Museum, New York City (1956):

Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, California (1957):

My thanks to SC  Johnson for giving me access to photograph their stairs today for this blog post.

Scroll down for earlier posts, including the recent “Frank Lloyd Wright in the Abstract.”