Hardy: Light, Shapes, Shadows

Photos © Mark Hertzberg (2023)

One of my favorite things in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Thomas P. Hardy House (1904/05) in Racine, Wisconsin, is the bank of seven windows in the front hall. I am taken both by the design – Robert McCarter has written that the floor plan of the house is articulated in white* – but particularly how the shadow of the pattern is projected into, and around, the front hall by the afternoon sun.

The first photo, below, is a file photo of one of the original windows (the windows have since been replicated and replaced). It was protected from vandals, who had previously thrown stones at it, by a layer of plastic. Next, are photos of the patterns I was delighted to find yesterday afternoon when I stopped to drop something off at the house.

*The square in the middle represents the public spaces (the two story living room and the dining room below it) and the thin rectangle that bisects it shows us the private family rooms at both ends of the house.

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