Wright Bookshelf June 2023

© Mark Hertzberg (2023)

There are two new books to consider adding to your Frank Lloyd Wright bookshelf: Kristine Hansen’s Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wisconsin: How America’s Most Famous Architect Found Inspiration in His Home State (Globe Pequot Press, 2023) and the catalogue that accompanies the “Wright Before the ‘Lloyd’: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Search for Himself” exhibit at the Racine, Wisconsin, Heritage Museum, published by the museum.

(As a journalist I believe in disclaimers…Hansen worked as a reporting intern at the Racine newspaper in the 1990s when I was Director of Photography there. After she contacted me when she was writing her book, I introduced her to Minerva Montooth and stewards, past and present, of the Hardy House, A.P. Johnson House, Keland House, and Penwern. She quotes me extensively, drawing from my books, and used a number of my photographs.)

Hansen at Boswell Books in Milwaukee on June 9. Her mother, left, beams in the front row.

Hansen described her book as a “guidebook” rather than an “academic” book in an email to me. That is an apt description. She is a travel writer based in Milwaukee and became aware that Wright’s work in his home state is not as well known as, say, Fallingwater, to people across the country who do not live and breathe Frank Lloyd Wright every waking moment. The book is rich in anecdotal descriptions and histories of many of Wright’s commissions in Wisconsin, as well as several Wisconsin buildings by other architects, including by Wright apprentices James Dresser. and John Rattenbury.

Her Introduction was born during a traditional Wisconsin Friday night fish fry when someone asked her, “Who was Frank Lloyd Wright?” Then,  “I realized that most people connect Wright with his architectural projects but not necessarily his character and personality.” Fortunately, the book concentrates on his work, rather than rehashing the same-old, same-old about what a difficult man he was. I know several Wright clients who passionately disputed that characterization of Wright, so best to move on from that.

Although there is a listing of all of Wright’s Wisconsin commissions, along biographical notes about his life, in the three page “Timeline of Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin” chronology in the front of the book, the text is not inclusive of all of them. “My dream book would have been to include every project Wright designed in Wisconsin. I actually did not want to discriminate. But some people did not get back to me and as they are stewards of private homes I didn’t think it would be fair to have a chapter about a house without interviewing the person who lived in it, especially in contrast to chapters where I interviewed the stewards of other homes,” Hansen wrote me.

I emailed her about the subtitle of the book, writing her that I thought the book shows what came out of his inspiration rather than how he was inspired by his home state.  She replied, “In my talks I am further addressing this question, such as how growing up on so many acres of land likely led to his organic-architecture philosophy. If this were a more academic book, and not a guidebook, I might have included a chapter that answers this question in essay form, pulling together the tenets of each project.”

There are a few errors in the first edition, which sold out quickly. Although Hansen caught them when proofing the book, her editor did not correct them before going to press. She has been assured that they have been corrected for a second printing due out in July.

I come from a visual background, so I look at more than the narrative of a book. How is it presented to the reader? Several aspects of the design and production of the book are disappointing. I wish each chapter included the date of the commission in the heading and, in the case of the non-Wright buildings, the name of the architect, rather than introducing his name lower down, in the narrative. (Hansen breaks with convention by using the date of completion for the buildings rather than the accepted practice of the date of its design.) The book’s designer included some completely and partially blank pages in the book. The “Statewide” chapter about the Wright in Wisconsin organization has four photos which are not captioned. I recognize one as Wright’s Lamp House in Madison, but I have to guess at the names of the buildings and non-Wright architects of the other three from the text. The quality of the photo reproduction varies from excellent to poor. Muddy tones in some of the darker photos would not be hard to correct.

Scholarly treatises about Wright’s work abound, and I am aware of at least two more in the pipeline. Hansen’s book is for a different audience. It is a good overview of Wright’s work in Wisconsin for a general audience that is not going to delve into endnotes and debate about his work ad infinitum. A Wright scholar criticized one of my books for being too anecdotal. On the contrary, I replied, I believe that it is important to let Wright’s clients and the stewards of his homes tell how they experience his architecture, how they live and work in his buildings. Hansen’s book accomplishes that through her dogged efforts as a journalist to track down her subjects.

To order: https://www.boswellbooks.com/book/9781493069149

The “Wright Before the Lloyd” exhibit, which runs through 2024, was curated by Tim Samuelson, the City of Chicago Cultural Historian Emeritus. The exhibit draw on his vast knowledge and extensive collection of Wright and Louis Sullivan artifacts. Samuelson cut his teeth in preservation as a student in the 1960s, helping the late Richard Nickel salvage artifacts from Sullivan building that were being demolished in Chicago.

Samuelson, left, with Eric J. Nordstrom of the bldg.51 archive, at the exhibit opening.

The exhibit focuses on Wright’s early career, when he signed his work “Frank L. Wright.” He worked for Joseph Lyman Silsbee and Adler & (Louis) Sullivan before his dismissal from Adler & Sullivan. It also focuses on Cecil S. Corwin, Wright’s dear friend who he met soon after moving to Chicago form Madison.

The exhibit catalogue, written by Samuelson, with an Introduction by museum curator Allison Barr, is a summary of many of the text blocks from the exhibit and includes some of the exhibit’s photographs and drawings. It also includes photographs of some of  Wright’s pre-“Lloyd” work and some of Samuelson’s rich collection of artifacts that are on display. The chapter entitled “A Tale of Two Houses” is about Corwin’s H. G. Mitchell House in Racine and Wright’s F. R. Bagley House in Hinsdale, Illinois, both from 1894. The chapter raises the question of how much involvement Wright had in the design of the Mitchell House, with no definitive answer.

Museum curator Allison Barr helps set up the exhibit.

This slim book – it is just 23 pages – is a fine overview of the exhibit and Corwin and Wright’s relationship for people who cannot travel to Racine to see the exhibit for themselves. It ends with Wright’s tribute to Corwin in 1958, just a few months before Wright died, “…the best friend, perhaps I’ve ever had.”

To Order:https://www.racineheritagemuseum.org/product/wright-before-the-lloyd-exhibit-catalog/214?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false

Please scroll down to read previous posts…

Shaking Words Out of His Sleeve

© Mark Hertzberg (2023) except photo from Paul Hendrickson of him in his home office

Frank Lloyd Wright told his client for Midway Gardens that “The thing (design) has simply shaken itself out of my sleeve.” Paul Hendrickson, author of the 2019 book about Wright, Plagued by Fire – The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright, is not much different than Wright in that respect.

We became friends when he was writing Plagued. I have subsequently read many of his books because I am captivated by his writing style. After getting to preview his forthcoming (2024) Fighting the Night about his father in World War II, I wrote him that I think that just as Wright claimed to shake designs out of his sleeve, I think he has a gift to shake words out of his sleeve, letting them flow magically through his fingers and across his keyboard. He is often described as a former reporter for The Washington Post, but Paul was a writer, not just a literal reporter of facts. He now teaches writing at the University of Pennsylvania.

Hendrickson does not pontificate or lecture the reader. His books are more of a conversation with his readers. He often walks readers through the building blocks that make up the story with explanations in the narrative, eliminating the need to constantly refer to the end notes.

Hendrickson’s first exposure to Wright was when he rode his bicycle past the B. Harley Bradley House near his home in Kankakee, Illinois:

https://wrightinracine.wordpress.com/2019/04/10/an-advance-peek-at-plagued-by-fire/

He came home to Kankakee last week as a guest of Wright in Kankakee to talk about the book. The reception for him at the Bradley House and his lecture at the Kankakee Public Library were originally scheduled for March 2020. Then came the Pandemic. This was the first time I heard Hendrickson lecture, no, not lecture, rather, have a conversation with his readers.

Hendrickson, left, with Gaines and Sharon Hall who bought and restored the Bradley House, and then made it possible for Wright in Kankakee to acquire it.

Hendrickson dedicated Plagued to Tim Samuelson, City of Chicago Cultural Historian Emeritus.

I close asking one favor from you…when you order Hendrickson’s or anyone’s books, first try a local bookshop rather than reflexively ordering from the Big A. We need to save our local bookshops.

Wright in Kankakee’s website:

https://wright1900.org

Please scroll down to see previous posts or articles, including the last one about Tim Samuelson’s “Wright Before the Lloyd”exhibit which just opened in Racine, Wisconsin. It is a reinterpretation of the exhibit he had in Elmhurst, with an emphasis on Wright and Cecil Corwin. 

“Wright Before the Lloyd”

© Mark Hertzberg, Tim Samuelson, and Racine Heritage Museum (2023). Images of individual artifacts cannot be reproduced without permission.

A few weeks ago I teased you with this photo of a U-Haul truck, and told you that a bunch of “stuff” was being delivered to the Racine, Wisconsin, Heritage Museum for a major exhibit about Frank Lloyd Wright and Cecil Corwin. Museum executive director Christopher Paulson and curator Allison Barr worked tirelessly with Tim Samuelson for over a year to bring it to life.

Now it is time to pull the curtain back on the exhibit which opened May 4, and runs through 2024.

Racine designer Robert Hartmann originally designed the exhibit space with  a sense of “compression and release” in 2011.

“Wright before the ‘Lloyd,’” highlights the young Frank L. Wright and his friend Cecil Sherman Corwin, the forgotten architect and mentor who did much to shape him into the architect we know as Frank Lloyd Wright.   

Wright wasn’t always Frank Lloyd Wright. In his youthful years of architectural practice at the end of the 19^th Century, he was very different from the brash, self-confident public celebrity who several decades later gave Racine its landmark S.C. Johnson & Son campus. Born Frank Lincoln Wright, the young architect signed his works prosaically as “Frank L. Wright.”

He had arrived in Chicago in 1886 as an inexperienced and self-doubting nineteen-year-old aspiring architect. He was warmly welcomed into employment with the office of architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee by Corwin, the firm’s chief draftsman. Both Corwin and Wright were sons of  much-traveled ministers. Corwin’s father, the Rev. Eli Corwin, was the popular pastor of Racine’s First Presbyterian Church from 1880 – 1888.

Corwin and Wright quickly discovered they had much in common, including similar passions for architecture, culture and music. They became inseparable friends. They shared ideas in their practice of architecture for 10 years. For many years, they shared a small office in downtown Chicago. Each had projects and clients of their own, but critiques and comments were freely shared. In later years, Wright often recalled his appreciation for the guidance, confidences and camaraderie Corwin provided in guiding his personal life, and shaping the professional identity that later gave him fame. In An Autobiography (1932) Wright wrote that he had found “a kindred spirit” when he met Corwin.

The exhibit is curated by Tim Samuelson, the City of Chicago’s Cultural Historian Emeritus.

Tim Samuelson, left, David Jameson, and Eric O’Malley of O A + D at a planning meeting for the Racine Heritage Museum’s exhibition about the Racine-related work of Alfonso Iannelli in 2018,

It is comprised of his extensive collection of early Wright architectural salvage, drawings and images, The exhibit, on the museum’s main floor center and north galleries, runs through December 30, 2024.

Hartmann, left, and O’Malley preview the exhibit April 30.

Sponsors of the exhibit are the Arch W. Shaw Foundation, Racine Community Foundation, WE Energies Foundation and the Racine Arts Council.

The museum is located at 701 Main Street in Racine. Museum hours are: Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm, Saturday 10am-3pm, Sunday Noon-4pm.  Admission is free. The museum, built as a Carnegie Library in 1904, is a historically preserved building and is not ADA accessible. For more information call the museum at 262-636-3296 or visit their website, www.racineheritagemuseum.org

“Wright in Racine” was allowed to document the installation of the exhibit:

Museum curator Allison Barr was instrumental in putting the exhibit together.

Please scroll down to see previous posts on this blog or website…

 

 

What is in the U-Haul Truck?

© Mark Hertzberg (2023)

I could tell you a lot. And I could post lots of photos, but I won’t yet. For now, this is a teaser. Suffice it to say the “stuff” in the truck is “stuff” for an exciting exhibit about Frank Lloyd Wright and Cecil Corwin that will run at the Racine, Wisconsin, Heritage Museum until December 2024. The museum is at 701 Main Street in downtown Racine.

The exhibit is comprised of artifacts from the collection of the incomparable Tim Samuelson, the Cultural Historian Emeritus for the City of Chicago. It has been in the planning since late 2021.

Tim Samuelson, left, David Jameson, and Eric O’Malley work in Samuelson’s archives as they prepare an exhibit about Alfonso Iannelli at the Racine Heritage Museum in 2018.

The exhibit was slated to open May 2, but there have been some unexpected hiccups which will likely delay the opening until later in the week. So, as the cliche goes, “Watch this space for updates.”

https://www.racineheritagemuseum.org

Please scroll down to view earlier posts on this blog or website.

Wright Books + 1 + 1

© Mark Hertzberg (2023)

Sometimes the night does things to you. I woke up at 4:30 this morning reconsidering my last post in terms of what I wrote about Elizabeth Wright Heller’s book, The Architect’s Sister – The Story of My Life (Brushy Creek Publishing Co.: Iowa City, 2019). There are arguably two ways to interpret the title, and it occurs to me that I did it wrong. I took it to mean the book would tell us about “The Architect,” which it does not do in much detail. It does tell us in vivid detail about Frank Lloyd Wright’s star crossed father, William Carey Wright. And that is important in the canon of Wright.

William Carey Wright was both a musician – which is certainly something that led to Frank’s love of music – and a minister. Sadly he could not hold a pulpit long, and the family was itinerant. His first wife (Heller’s mother) died and his second marriage, to Anna, was a nightmare. I did not give enough weight to Heller’s description of Anna’s abuse of her. The divorce petition filed by William Carey Wright is chilling. The divorce left young Frank with his domineering mother.

We are as familiar with Frank and his flaws as we are with his architecture. We do not escape our childhoods. How much did Anna shape Frank’s personality? How much did she poison her son against his father?

While most of Heller’s book is about her life other than growing up, and she did not know Frank well, after rethinking my essay, I now recommend you read it to get a better understanding of Frank’s lesser known parent, the father we have been led to forget about.

Frank was drawn to Cecil Corwin when Frank moved to Chicago. They had a very close relationship. Corwin’s father, Eli, was also a preacher. He was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Racine, Wisconsin from 1880 – 1888. Frank’s first commission in Racine was his unrealized 1901 commission to remodel Herbert and Flora Miles’ house. The commission had first gone to Corwin two years earlier. We do not know how Wright and Thomas P. Hardy met (the Hardy House, 1904/05 was Wright’s first realized commission in Racine), but it is entirely possible that it came about through the Corwin – Racine / Corwin – Wright connection. Two architects, two fathers who were preachers.

So, make it Wright Books  +1 + 1.

The Racine Heritage Museum will be mounting a long-term exhibit curated by Tim Samuelson that reprises his 2020 “Wright Before the Lloyd” exhibit in Elmhurst, Illinois. The emphasis on the Racine exhibit will be on Corwin and Wright. The museum is located just two blocks from the Henry Mitchell House (1894) which, though in Corwin’s name, is likely a collaboration between Corwin and Wright. Details will be announced.

Scroll down for previous posts.

Mitchell House: Corwin/Wright’s Coda?

© Photos and text Mark Hertzberg (2021) unless otherwise noted

The Mitchell House in 1895, from the Racine Headlight, a railroad publication. Courtesy Racine Public Library. Note the second and third floor porch railings in this photograph and the 1908 one.

Perhaps no house linked to Frank Lloyd Wright has generated as much give-and-take about its provenance as the Henry G. and Lily Mitchell House at 905 Main Street in Racine, Wisconsin. Note that I wrote “linked to” and not “designed by.” 

Paul Hendrickson devotes four pages to the Mitchell House in Plagued by Fire (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019, pp. 75-78) in the context of his writing about Corwin and Wright’s close friendship and professional association:

“This is the greatest house Cecil Corwin will ever design…”

“Call it the Last Fine Building Moment of Cecil S. Corwin.” 

There is no documentation of Wright’s involvement – if any – in the design of the stately house, but there is much thought that Corwin likely designed the house in collaboration with Wright. A definitive answer to “Who Did What?” remains the proverbial “million dollar question” even after 20 years of sometimes contentious discussion. The lack of documentation means that the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation is unable to ascribe any of its design to Wright.

John Eifler, a well-known Wright restoration architect who grew up in Racine and practices in Chicago, in 2001 was one of the first to suggest Wright’s influence on the design. He told me in an interview in 2003 that “It was Corwin and Wright who did that job together. I imagine that it was Corwin who was responsible for presenting the thing to his client because he probably got the job through his Dad.” (The Mitchells were members of the First Presbyterian Church in Racine. Corwin’s father, the Rev. Eli Corwin, was the pastor of the church from 1880 -1888). “This collaborative thing that happens between architects happens a lot. It’s a collaboration, I think between two people, two young architects.”

His conclusions were bolstered this summer with the discovery of a 1908 photograph of the house. The photograph is in a photo album that also included 1908 photos of Wright’s nearby Hardy House [scroll down at the end of this article to see a post with those photos]. The album pages were acquired for the Organic Architecture + Design archives to ensure their preservation and accessibility for research. I will give more history about the sometimes contentious history of the house before I get to Eifler’s reaction to the 1908 photograph .

Courtesy of, and copyright by, Organic Architecture + Design (2021). All rights reserved.

In terms of official records, the house was designed by Cecil Corwin in 1894. It was so stated in the April 15 Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper and in the March issue of the Journal of the Inland Architect. This was the year after Wright left Adler & Sullivan, so he no longer had any reason to hide his work. In fact, his Bagley House is listed in his name a few lines below the Mitchell House listing in the Inland Architect.

In addition, Corwin’s proposal to remodel Herbert and Flora Miles’s house in Racine in 1899 shows a mini-Mitchell House grafted onto the existing house (the remodeling commission passed on to Wright in 1901 but was not realized).

Corwin’s 1899 proposal to remodel the Miles House. Copied by the author at the McCormick Library of Special Collections at Northwestern University.

The “Who Did What” intensified in 2002 when William Allin Storrer visited the house on July 12. He photographed it extensively and declared it to be by Wright in a story in the Racine Journal Times and in stories that ran in USA Today and on the Associated Press news wire. Storrer was quoted as saying “Maybe it (the design) is only 75 percent Wright’s, but it’s still Wright. If it’s 51 percent, it’s still Wright’s.” He included the house in a subsequent edition of his The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalogue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). 

Storrer once speculated that Wright may have designed the house as a gift to Corwin to thank him for letting Wright use his name on his “bootleg houses.” Those were houses that Wright surreptitiously designed while at Adler & Sullivan because his contract forbade him from taking on private commissions. 

As the discussion about the provenance of the house intensified, I asked Edgar Tafel about the house on April 7, 2003. Tafel, one of the original Taliesin Fellowship apprentices (1932 – 1941) told me, “On the very first trip to Racine (in 1936 for the SC Johnson Administration Building) we came down Main Street. In all the times I was there, we came down the Main Street, any number of times. He never mentioned anything about any house other than the Hardy House (four blocks south of the Mitchell House).

Fast forward to May and June 2021 after Eric O’Malley [of OA+D] emailed the 1908 photo to Eifler:

“Eric sent the photograph to me as well, and when I saw the railings on the second and third floor, as well as the little bit of ornament adjacent to the dormer I became even more convinced of Wright’s involvement.  Most architects of the period would have interrupted the continuous rail with newel posts, or intermediate supports – I believe only FLW would have run the curved rail continuously.  I have also attached a stair photo from the Goodrich House in Oak Park (1896), with identically shaped balusters.” (Email to me June 17).

The stairs in the Goodrich House, courtesy of John Eifler

For comparison, my 2002 photo of the stairs in the Mitchell House:

And, in a follow-up email on June 21: (interspersed with more of my 2002 photos of Mitchell and 2019 photo of the Blossom House, left, and McArthur House, and a vintage photo of Blossom and McArthur, courtesy of John Eifler):

“1. the Bagley House in Hinsdale and the McArthur House in Hyde Park both utilize Gambrel Roofs and date from the same period.

2. The Front Porch is similar to that on the Blossom House from one or two years before.  The continuous railing on top of the porch matches Blossom, as do the shapes of the “pickets”.

3. The trim on the interior of the Mitchell House has many similarities with Blossom and Charnley – for example, the window and door heads all align with the picture rail, there is no trim where the wall meets the ceiling.

4. The Art Glass in the south facing study of Mitchell is similar to some of the art glass in the living room of the Charnley House and McArthur.

5. The wood used in the study is Santo Dominco Mahogany, a favorite of Wright (and Sullivan) and matches the Charnley Hs. Dining Room.”

Eifler elaborated in a followup email July 7: “It [an old photo of the Blossom House] shows a front porch on the Blossom House that is very similar to Mitchell – most notably it shows a railing on the second floor is continuous, with no intermediate supports, which is very unusual, and a continuous string of “pickets” or balusters, that are uniquely shaped with spheres, matching the 1896 Goodrich House in Oak Park by Wright.  Finally, the first floor of the porch is capped by a narrow projecting eave, or cornice (in classical terms) which projects out over the frieze – the proportions of which are unique, I think, to Wright.”

Tim Samuelson, the City of Chicago’s Cultural Historian (and a dear friend of Paul Hendrickson’s…Plagued is dedicated to him), offers his thoughtful perspective, as well.

Tim Samuelson, left, David Jameson, and Eric O’Malley in 2018.

“As we all know from Wright’s autobiographical accounts, Cecil Corwin was a close and valued friend. We also know that they shared room 1501 in Adler & Sullivan’s Schiller Building to conduct their respective architectural practices. The room 1501 was very small – essentially 12′ x 12′.  It’s possible that they also occupied the connecting room 1502 which didn’t have corridor access, but even with that, it was pretty close quarters. (1502 could have been an used by the tenant of adjoining room1505 and had nothing to do with Wright and Corwin at all). (Floor plan courtesy of Tim Samuelson)

“The Mitchell House indeed displays many elements characteristic of Wright’s work of the period. But at the same time, there are many aspects that do not.” (I am breaking up Samuelson’s comments with some of my 2001 and 2002 photos of the Mitchell House)

“In my personal opinion, what you see is a matter of personal and professional osmosis between two architects sharing the same space.  Would they look over each other’s drafting boards and make comments and suggestions?  Sure!  Would Wright sometimes help Corwin with difficult design issues?  Of course!

“On the basis of Wright’s autobiographical writings, Corwin recognized and admired Wright’s unusual architectural gifts. Sharing the same space and personal camaraderie, Corwin would have learned from Wright and naturally tried to emulate aspects of his work.  And for a substantial commission on the main street of Corwin’s home town, he naturally would have welcomed comments and help from an admired colleague literally close at hand to create the best design possible.

“In such a closely shared environment between friends, it’s conversely possible that Corwin might have commented and critiqued Wright’s own work. We’ll never really know, but it’s a reasonable possibility.

“There’s always the temptation to skew perspectives to advocate the presence of a “lost” Wright work. But as a result, Cecil Corwin’s presence as a competent architect and a creative person gets lost. Sadly, it’s the story of his life.”

And,  Robert Hartmann, a friend of mine who is an architectural designer and Wright scholar in Racine, weighs in, as well: “The existence of the 1908 photo offers new evidence that the Mitchell house is a  unique one-off collaborative effort between Cecil Corwin and Frank Lloyd Wright. A dichotomy design with the more inventive parts of the house (the porch, and first floor interior detailing) either attributed to Wright or Wright’s influence on Corwin. Cecil Corwin never-the-less produced a masterful house that should be celebrated on its own merits and testifies to the close friendship between the two architects.”

Let us turn to Paul Hendrickson again, and we realize that Wright was concurrently designing his masterpiece Winslow House and Corwin was on the verge of moving to New York and to some measure of architectural obscurity. 

And so, there we have it. We will likely never know exactly who did what, but let us give Cecil Corwin his due for having designed a notable house, likely with help from his good friend Frank Lloyd Wright. 

This collaboration was not only a professional collaboration. It was also arguably the coda of their one-time close relationship (Hendrickson has a rich history of their relationship, elaborating on what Wright wrote in An Autobiography). 

The “Who Did What?” debate will continue with some discounting Wright’s possible involvement, absent documentation to the contrary (Tafel’s remarks keep reverberating in my mind), and others agreeing with the perspectives offered above.

Game on!

https://www.oadarchives.com

I appreciate the willingness of the Pettinger family, stewards of the Mitchell House, to allow me time to set up lights and photograph their home in 2001 and 2002.

— 30 —

(Scroll down for earlier posts on this website, including the 1908 Hardy House photographs)

Winslow…and Charnley

(c) Mark Hertzberg (2020)

“The Winslow House had burst on the view of that provincial suburb like the Primavera in full bloom. It was a new world to Oak Park and River Forest. That house became an attraction, far and near. Incessantly it was courted and admired. Ridiculed, too, of course. Ridicule is always modeled on the opposite side of that shield. The first house soon began to sift the sheep from the goats in this fashion.” – From Frank Lloyd Wright’s “An Autobiography,” P. 152 of the 1977 Horizon Press edition.

I opened the 1963 Horizon Press edition of the Frank Lloyd Wright Wasmuth Portfolio which my dear friend Gene Szymczak (steward of the Hardy House) gave me a few months before he died, when I began writing this piece. The first three of the 100 plates are the landmark house he designed for William Winslow (1893, River Forest, Illinois, T.9305):

What were you doing when you were 26 years old? As for Frank Lloyd Wright, well, he “shook out of his sleeve” a landmark house.* The Winslow House was not his first commission, but it was the first one he could proclaim as his. He had quit or been dismissed from Adler & Sullivan, and no longer had to hide behind Cecil Corwin’s name or Adler & Sullivan’s names (the latter, as in the case of the James Charnley House – Chicago, 1891, T.9101). I was given the privilege of photographing the house two weeks ago by its stewards who I am not naming, to protect their privacy.

This post was originally going to be solely dedicated to my recent Winslow House photos, but it evolved as I thought about Tim Samuelson’s “Wright Before the Lloyd” exhibition at the Elmhurst Art Museum. The exhibition includes a large photograph of the front of the Charnley House. I knew I would be photographing Winslow soon when I saw the exhibition. When I looked at the photo below, I thought that the entrance to Charnley was a bit like what Wright would design for Winslow two years later. Looking at the square windows on the third floor of Charnley also made me think of the windows that flank the front door of Winslow.

As I looked at my 2014 photos of Charnley this evening, I saw enough to make me think that some of Charnley’s details seem to lay the groundwork for some of Winslow details. Since I started exploring this thesis and emailing scholars, they have affirmed my notion that in some respects Charnley can indeed be considered a rough draft of what Wright would do for his first client after he hung out his architect’s shingle.

And, the front doors, both highly oranmented (although Winslow is not as stylized as the more narrow Charnley door):

Charnley:

Winslow:

And what about the arches that flank the inglenook and fireplaces that warm us after entering each house? In each house the left arch precedes a staircase. First, Charnley, then Winslow (Winslow is undergoing interior restoration which is why some wall surfaces are unfinished):

Arched passageways, first in Charnley, then in Winslow:

Unlike Winslow, Charnley has an atrium, but both have wood screens on their staircases:

Winslow:

After those comparisons of Charnley and Winslow, I return to the original theme of this post, a photo gallery of my new Winslow photos:

Back inside the house, we start at the inglenook again:

This original thermometer (Winslow was a metal fabricator) still works:

I am not showing many interior spaces, to respect the stewards’ privacy:

One of my favorite features of the house is the octagonal staircase in the stair tower:

Allow me one more comparison, to the ceiling in the drafting room at the Home and Studio (Oake Park, 1897, T.9506)…both are octagonal:

The stable, first viewed through the dining room bay windows and through the windows on the rear stair tower:

The stable, framed by the porte-cochère:

I photographed the fireplace in Unity House (at Unity Temple) a few weeks ago. Heidi Ruehle told me that there supposed to be a mural around the fireplace. Unadorned, it made me think of the entry to the Winslow House where I would be taking pictures that afternoon:

“When I first laid eyes on the Winslow House from the street (as a 22-year-old architecture student), I felt like I was in a church, the presence viewed from the street was so powerful. I don’t think I have ever seen a Wright building that impacted me in that manner. It was a powerful experience.” – Randolph C. Henning, architect and Frank Lloyd Wright author and scholar, in an interview with the author, November 10, 2020.

*There are numerous references in the Wright literature to him “shaking” designs “out of his sleeve.”

Web Links:

The stewards of the Winslow House sent me this link to a comparison between Charnley and Winslow after I wrote them that my essay was turning in that direction:

http://chicagopatterns.com/louis-sullivan-frank-lloyd-wright-charnley-house-part-3/

“Wright Before the Lloyd” Exhibition at the Elmhurst, Illinois, Art Museum:

https://www.elmhurstartmuseum.org/exhibitions/wright-before-lloyd/

Wright Galore in Elmhurst

(c) Mark Hertzberg (2020)

Elmhurst, Illinois is not the first Chicago suburb that comes to mind when devotees of Frank Lloyd Wright play “name that house and location.” It is no Glencoe, Highland Park, Oak Park, or River Forest. After all, it has only (!) one house designed by Wright, the F.B. Henderson House, a fine Prairie-style house designed in 1901. But playing the numbers game is no reason to pass up a visit to the city, west and slightly north of the Big Two, Oak Park and River Forest, especially on October 24.

Let’s start with some photos of the house, which was recently sold to new stewards:

October 24 is designated as “Frank Lloyd Wright Day” in Elmhurst. There will be two concurrent museum exhibitions to see. One, “Wright Before The ‘Lloyd,” opened at the Elmhurst Art Museum in September, and runs until February 14. It is curated by the incomparable source of Chicago architectural knowledge and artifacts, Tim Samuelson, the City of Chicago’s Cultural Historian. If the Smithsonian Institute is truly “America’s Attic,” as many people say, then Samuelson’s office and storage spaces are “Chicago’s attic” The second exhibition, “Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture of the Interior,” opens at the Elmhurst History Museum on October 23, and runs through December 20. This is a national touring exhibition. The history museum showed its Wright-related chops with a fine exhibition, “In Her Own Right: Marion Mahony Griffin,” in 2016-2017.

“Before The ‘Lloyd'” focuses on Wright’s early career, before he formally replaced his given middle name, Lincoln, with “Lloyd,” in honor of his maternal family heritage. The artifacts come from Samuelson’s collection. Some – those from the Adler and Sullivan Schiller Building or Garrick Theater, and Wright’s Harlan House – were salvaged by the late Richard Nickel. [Samuelson asked me to clarify about the name: “There is some dispute about Wright’s middle name initially being “Lincoln”. It all depends on who you talk to.

“By the time of the exhibit’s theme, Wright definitely considered Lloyd his middle name.  There are some very early ink renderings where he signs them “Frank Ll Wright”.

“But when he went into architectural practice, he signed his drawings, press notices, etc. with the prosaic “Frank L. Wright”.  Just the initial. He never started signing drawings, press notices, etc with a full blown “Frank Lloyd Wright” until 1897-98. The exhibit is themed around a more modest period where he just used the initial “L” instead of writing out a more distinctive “Lloyd”.]

You doubtless have read about the Froebel gifts umpteen times, but you may have never seen them except in illustrations in books. Now you can:

How many of us thought of the game manufacturer Milton Bradley in any context other than “Chutes and Ladders” when we were children? Think again, they introduced the “gifts” to America in 1869.

There are artifacts and historic photos of the Charnley House (1891-1892) and the Rolson Rowhouses (1894), among others. I have seen the Charnley House and I have seen many photos of it, but this is the first time that its entrance made me think of Wright’s Winslow House entry (please use the comments link to tell me what you think!).

The floor plan, below, shows the layout of Adler and Sullivan’s offices when Wright worked there, showing how close Wright’s drafting space was to his “Leibermeister’s” office.

Samuelson is the curator of record, but he refuses to take sole credit for the exhibition’s artifacts. Quoting from an email he wrote me, “But Eric O’Malley has a big presence in the show. His computer and graphic design skills were what created the electronic re-draws of patterns gleaned from burned and shattered original fragments, and putting them in a format to facilitate laser-cut complete patterns as they appeared on the buildings.  Wisconsin wood finish master Stan John Zachara recreated original wood finishes perfectly.

“Much of Wright’s early ornamentation for exteriors was fret sawn wood, which weathers and deteriorated severely if not maintained.  And for those that were maintained with diligent painting have the patterns clogged to the point that it’s often no longer to discern the patterns.

“I chose to remove layered paint that compromised the design – and each piece was returned to its original color and finish.

“I never wanted to restore the pieces too much.  Repairs were made where damage compromised  the design, but I still maintained the effects of damage over time.”

This window is from the Rolson Rowhouses:

The two museums are architectural opposites. The History Museum is in the historic Glos Mansion (1893), designed the year Wright left Adler and Sullivan. The Art Museum is in a contemporary building  (1997) designed by DeStefano + Partners of Chicago. It complements an architectural bonus for visitors to the Wright exhibition, the McCormick House, designed in 1952 by Mies van der Rohe, and later moved to the museum campus.

For more information:

https://www.elmhurstartmuseum.org

https://elmhursthistory.org/