The Chicago MaroonA Maroon special edition February 7,1979 Vol. 88 No. 33jjiow>y “ Gardens •mh iAnewinterpretation ofthe old masterBy Chuck SchilkeFrank Lloyd Wright: His Life and Architecture may bethe best place to become familiar with the most laudedarchitect of the twentieth century. It is an imaginative at¬tempt to make Wright's work comprehensible in the con¬text of the architect's life. With remarkable intuition.Twombly penetrates the semi-divine persona whichWright created for himself and which several generationsof uncritical critics have perpetuated. The more humanportrait which results enhances rather than diminishesWright’s stature as an artist. As Twombly writes, “Themore Wright is demythologized the more satisfying he be¬comes.”Most accounts of Wright’s childhood follow the lead ofthe architect's autobiography and focus on Wright’smother. Twombly has chosen to concentrate on Wright'sfather, the Reverend William Wright. Described by mostWright biographers as a shadowy, introverted musician,William Wright was actually a highly regarded publicspeaker who was gregarious enough to be elected to aseries of minor political posts. Unfortunately his salary asa minister was small, and although Reverend Wright sup¬plemented it by giving music lessons, he was unable tosupport his family in the manner to which he, and moreespecially his wife, aspired. Frank Lloyd Wright’s earlychildhood thus was spent in a succession of small New Eng¬land towns, as Reverend Wright migrated from church tochurch, seeking one that would pay him adequately.This unstable situation led to discord between ReverendWright and his wife, Anna. They finally decided to returnto Anna's native Wisconsin, where the presence of herfamily, the numerous Lloyd-Jones, would hopefully pro¬vide a more stable environment.The move to Wisconsin, however, failed to eliminate thetension between the Wrights. In April. 1885 WilliamWright filed for divorce, charging that Anna was abusiveand money-hungry. Anna made no defense, and FrankLloyd Wright never saw his father again. Bitter, Anna toldFrank that his father had walked out, never revealing thefact that he had divorced her.Thus, it is not surprising that Frank Lloyd Wright belit¬tled his father and idolized his mother. Moreover, Annaspoiled Frank; part of her “money-hunger” was undoubt¬edly the desire to give her son the best. She had high aspi¬rations for Frank and, if Wright’s autobiography is to bebelieved, decided even before he was born that he was tobecome an architect. Encouraging her son in this direction,she provided him with the Froebel “gifts,” a set of geo¬metric toys which Wright later said were crucial in devel¬oping his sense of form. Twombly points out that the musi¬cal influence of his father was probably also central indeveloping Frank’s sense of form.f ‘ 11 1 * >The Chicago MaroonThe five Frank Lloyd Wright buildings con¬structed in Hyde Park-Kenwood are a remarkableslice of the architect’s work. Wright's earliestwork is represented (the Blossom and McArthurHouses), as is his best (Robie House). All five areimportant expressions of the style of the manwidely acclaimed the most influential architect ofthe twentieth century.With the presence of the excellent exhibition,“The Decorative Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright,”at the David and Alfred Smart Gallery this winter,it only seems appropriate that we familiarizeourselves with the work Wright did in our owncommunity. The Wright buildings in Hyde Park-Kenwood can bring us an appreciation of the beau¬ty and utility of all of Wright’s buildings. Bycelebrating Wright’s work, we can hope to in someway encourage the preservation of what remains ofWright’s work.Eric Von der Porten, editorPeter E ngChuck Schilke-2 — The Chicago Maroon — Wednesday. February 7, 1979 photo courtesy Herman Pundt, formerly of the CommitteeFrank Lloyd Wright in Robie House in 1957. of Architectural Heritage, University of Illinois Cham-paign-UrbanaFrank Lloyd Wright; His Life and ArchitectureBy Robert C. TwomblyJohn Wiley and Sons, 1979444 pages, with 150 illustrations and a bibliography,$19.95By the time of his patents’ divorce, Wright was workingin the architectural office of Allan Conover, a Universityof Wisconsin professor of civil engineering. Conover prob¬ably helped Wright gain admittance into the university.Wright was an indifferent' student, however, and in 1887he ran away to Chicago. There he landed a job in the archi¬tectural office of J. L. Silsbee, where he gained valuableexperience in residential design.However, Wright left Silsbee to work in the office ofAdler and Sullivan. Working with Louis Sullivan, the firm'sdesigning partner, proved a formative experience ideallysuited to the young architect’s increasingly obvious tal¬ents and inclinations. Sullivan, at the height of his powers,was rethinking the skyscraper in terms of the newly avail¬able technology and developing his ornamental design ina uniquely abstract mode. Wright found his own ideas con¬cerning the nature of materials and organic art corro¬borated in Sullivan’s own architectural thought.More than just a stimulus to Wright’s imagination, thefirm gave Wright considerable latitude in putting his ideasinto practice. Directing most of its attention to large com¬mercial ventures, Adler and Sullivan's office left itssmaller residential commissions to Wright to design. TheCharnley House on Chicago's North Side, with its straight¬forward planes and wide cornice, dates from this period,and demonstrates how much Wright had become takenwith the problem of the house. In one of the most thought-provoking passages in his book, Twombly relates Wright’spreoccupation with the house to a fixation upon whatfamily life should be resulting from the ambiguities of thearchitect’s own childhood family situation.A more immediate reason for Wright's concern with thefamily during the nineties was that he had started onehimself. He had impetuously married Catherine Lee Tobinof Kenwood in 1889 and a brood of Wright children fol¬lowed rapidly. Financially strapped to support his familyand to build his new residence in Oak Park, Wright brokehis contract with Adler and Sullivan by moonlighting, de¬signing such houses as those for Warren MacArthur andGeorge Blossom without the firm's knowledge. When Sul¬livan discovered the moonlighted Harlan House only a fewblocks from his own house bearing the by now unmistak¬able stamp of Wright, an angry scene ensued, and Wrightleft the Adler and Sullivan office.Once established in his own studio in Oak Park, Wrightentered what was perhaps the most creative period of hislife. Much more urbane than one would ever suppose fromthe country-boy image of himself which the architect proj¬ects in his autobiography, Wright was influenced particu¬larly by Japanese art and the arts and crafts movement.By all appearances, Wright was as happy personally as hewas productive architecturally. Between 1893 and 1907, aspate of great “Prairie Houses” came rolling off his draft¬ing table — Winslow, Heller, Heurtly, Cheney, Robie, Coon-ley. ifDisproving the widespread myth of Wright as a solitarymisunderstood artist, Twombly carefully documents theconsiderable critical acclaim Wright’s work received dur¬ing these years. Yet the praise was superficial; it failed totake adequately into account Wright’s organic philosophywhich lay behind the building. Wright sought to getDeyond the whole business of architectural “styles” andarrive at the single ideal solution to a given architecturalproblem. His critics, on the other hand, felt that he had merely created a new ana pleasing style comparable toGothic or Baroque. They liked Wright's work. bu. for whatWright considered the wrong reasons.Whatever his motives, Wright ran off to Europe withMamah Cherey, the wife of one of his clients. As he be¬lieved his own father had done, Wright callously aban¬doned his wife and children. The resulting scandal, thefirst of many, in large measure wrecked Wright’s architec¬tural career. He returned from Europe in 1910.Retreating to the Wisconsin valley of the Lloyd-Joneseswhere he had spent so much of his childhood, Wright builta new home, Taliesin, for himself and Mrs. Cheney. But thenew home was fated to a short life: in 1914, while Wrightwas in Chicago supervising the Midway Gardens project, acrazed servant murdered Mrs. Cheney and burnt Taliesento the ground. Wright was shattered.Fortunately, Wright soon had a major commission, theImperial Hotel in Tokyo, to absorb his attention. Here,even more than with the Midway Gardens, he could ex¬press his architectural ideas on a grand scale. There was inaddition the challenge of adapting to a new region, achallenge also posed by the California terrain whereWright built several Mayan-influenced “textile block”houses in the early twenties.The twenties were marred by yet another stormy loveaffair, this time with Miriam Noel. Only five months aftermarrying her, Wright filed for divorce, charging that hiswife was mentally unstable. She counterfiled, charging as¬sault, and the whole affair dragged on until 1930 and wasfurther complicated by Wright's falling in love with Olgi-vanna Milanoff.Apparently, the architect found in his relationship withOlgivanna the stability needed to propel him into a sec¬ond great creative period. In the Depression yearsWright’s attention focused on Broadacre City, his proposal(never implemented) for a community of self-sufficientfarms. Residents of Broadacre City were to live in “Uson-ian” houses, which shared the horizontal character of theprairie houses but were simpler, less formal, and less ex¬pensive.This second creative period began in earnest, however,in 1936. In that year he completed both Fallingwater, asummer home which hovers over a waterfall in southwest¬ern Pennsylvania and the Johnson Wax Company Adminis¬tration Building in Racine, Wisconsin. Wright, now almostseventy years old, could still triumph in both residencesand'large public buildings.Wright’s later projects, except for the Usonian houses,exhibit a pronounced tendency toward monumentalism.The Beth Shalom synagogue, Annunciation Church, andperhaps most of all the Guggenheim Museum are in largemeasure striking pieces of architectural sculpture.Twombly makes no apology for Wright’s rather blatant de¬sire for architectural immortality in his late works.Twombly is highly critical of Wright’s proteges, knownas the Taliesin group, who have attempted to continuewith Wright’s work since the architect’s death in 1959. Bycorrupting some of the designs that Wright left uncom¬pleted, the Taliesin group has marred Wright’s reputationand obscured his true achievement. Twombly is even morecritical of the group’s efforts to make access to the Wrightarchives difficult for scholars (like himself) who are criticalof Wright’s work.Despite such constraints on his researach, Twombly hascaptured Wright very effectively in his new biography. Hisattempts to analyse Wright’s emotional life and relate itto his architecture are always judicious, and although attimes these attempts may be misdirected, the book neverdegenerates into a vulgar form of psychohistory. Two-mbly’s previous book, Frank Lloyd Wright: An InterpretiveBiography, set a new standard in Wright Scholarship. 11 it,new book sets an even higher standard mf"Organic"interiorsBy Chuck Schilkeand Louise Mutterperl Chair from the Larkin Company Administra¬tion Building, Buffalo, N.Y., 1904. Photo by John Pai“The Decorative Designs of Frank LloydWright” promises to stimulate a reevaluit-tion of the architect’s work that is long over¬due. As contemporary architecture movesfrom a period in which the InternationalStyle has been dominant to a period ofgreater architectural pluralism, a reassess¬ment of the major figures of modern archi¬tecture is central in any attempt to divinethe presently clouded future of the art.Wright's decorative designs demonstratethe aspect of his work that diverges farthestfrom the universal space concept of the In¬ternational Style, and as such show withparticular clarity the continuity betweenWright and the contemporary pluralist ar¬chitects.The exhibit begins with the mid 1890’s, atabout the time Wright broke away from thearchitectural firm of Adler and Sullivan tobegin his own practice. Wright’s debt toLouis Sullivan is still evident: the terra cottaornamental blocks from the 1895 Francisapartments are very similar to the stylizedfoliage which was a hallmark of Sullivan’s.Soon, however, as Wright developed his ownapproach to ornamentation, Sullivan’s influ¬ence faded.Wright’s goal was that his buildings be“organic,” — a word to which he attached anumber of meanings. In the broadest sense,the “organic” building was constructed as acomplex set of changing interdependent re¬lationships, analogous to an organism. “Or- Lamp, window, and print display table from the Susan Photo by John PaiLawrence Dana House, Springfield, Illinois. 1903.Photo by John PaiWindow from the Darwin D. MartinHouse of Buffalo. N.Y., 1904. game” also meant that a building should berelated to its surrounding natural environ¬ment. Finally, some of the forms of the “Or¬ganic” building were inspired by the formsof living things.In the organic building both the landscapewithout and the furnishings within were tobe integral parts of the total architecturalscheme. Whenever the budget permitted,Wright designed the furnishings for his proj¬ects. As the Smart Gallery exhibit shows,“furnishings” meant not merely tables andchairs, but silver, china, linens, carpets,lamps, and perhaps even a dress for the pa¬tron’s wife.Wright continually tinkered with furni¬ture; he thought nothing of rearranging thefurniture at friends’ houses when visitingand the assertion of control over his clientsthrough his designs was not the least ofWright's considerations. The exhibit organ¬izers have thoughtfully provided detailedplans of furniture arrangement for severalhouses, such as that for the rugs in the BogkHouse. The viewer can thus see the prodigious amount of thought Wright gave to theproblem of furniture placement.Wright employed a number of devices tomake his buildings “organic ” A favorite onewas “conventionalization,” the use of per¬mutations of the same pattern for several features of a building. An example is thesubtle manner in which the art glass in RobieHouse corresponds in form to the plan of thehouse. A more obvious instance is the waythat the boat-shaped hassocks in the R. L.Wright House reflect the shape of thehouse.Another device was the reduction of a nat¬ural object to simple geometric terms in astylized manner, creating what was in effecta metaphor of the original object. This was acommon feature of Wright's art glass, suchas the sumac windows in the Susan LawrenceDana House.Like the individual buildings themselves,Wright’s decorative designs are all of apiece, clearly all the product of the same ar¬chitectural mind. Wright used certain favor¬ite design types, such as the slatback chair,throughout his career. He faithfully adheredto an honesty in materials — the woodalways shows the grain, the art glass isnever used to portray three-dimensionalscenes but is instead articulated abstractlyso that it frankly admits its flatness.One can perceive certain progressions,however, in Weight’s decorative designs.There is. for example, an interest in roundedforms which begins with the barrel-shapedchairs for the Darwin D. Martin House andpeaks in the superimposed circles of theCoonley Playhouse windows, Midway Gar¬dens murals, and Imperial Hotel china. Theelimination of art glass and the formal din¬ing table in the Usonian houses is the prod¬uct of changing economic and social condi¬tions.The exhibit is organized so that the chro¬nology of these and other historical devel¬opments can be easily followed. Large pho¬tographs placed behind the display objectsconvey a good sense of what the objectslooked like in their original setting. Moreexplanatory plaques to guide the viewerthrough the show would have been helpfulthough. For this reason, the exhibition cata¬logue by David Hanks is indispensable.“The Decorative Designs of Frank LloydWright” may well prove to be a landmarkexhibit in the development of late 20th cen¬tury architecture. With the failure of thegrandiose urban planning scheme of the1960’s and earlier, architects have begun toreevaluate the aims of their art. Perhapsthese relatively neglected decorative de¬signs of Wright’s will provide a fresh start¬ing point for that reevaluation.“The Decorative Designs of Frank LloydWright” will be on view at the David andAlfred Smart Gallery. 5550 Greenwood Ave.,through February 25. The Gallery has specialhours for this exhibit: Tuesdays andThursdays. 10 to 8; Wednesdays, Fridays,and Saturdays from 10 to 4; Sundays fromnoon to 4.The Chicago Maroon — Wednesday, Feburary 7, 1979 — 3_ For Sale:A Count r y Estatein the Cit\By any measure, the 22 room Manse built forJulius Rosenwald in 1903 is a commandingpresence.A curving driveway sweeps under theglass and copper roofed porte cocher at theentrance of this rectangular three-story brickbuilding. The property is in the heart of Kenwood,on a 1.8 acre site on the Southeast comer of 49thand Ellis Avenue. Lot size is approximately 298feet (49th Street frontage) by 247 feet (EllisAvenue frontage).A two-story coach house on the easternboundary of the site is connected to the main housewith a 90 foot brick and wood vine covered Pergola.The open stone porch, with its stone flower urnsand porticos and commanding views of thegrounds, has changed little since business giant andphilanthropist Rosenwald stood there. The lilyponds are gone, but a copse of fruit trees and lushplantings remain, as do tennis courts in thesoutheast comer of the lot.The property is zoned R. 1.The Rosenwald property may be sold asa whole or it may be divided between the mansion,the coach house, and a buildable 36,000 (approx.)square feet of vacant land.The Rosenwald Mansion was the designof architects George C. Nimmons and William K.Fellows. With strong horizontal lines, Romanbrick and sparse terra cotta and copperornamentation, it stands as a striking example ofthe Prairie school architecture inspired by FrankLloyd Wright. Banks of windows placed withoutdecorated sills and broad overhanging roofs were the trademark of English architect Vosey, and themansion shows that source of influence as well.Architectural historians point out that RosenwaldMansion “occupies a unique position in the historyof Chicago residential architecture.”The main house offers 17,000 square feetof living space, on four levels, designed andarranged during an age when hospitality andfamily life revolved around the home. Manyoriginal interior features are intact in the house.There are seven wood burning fireplaces. Thereare ornate wall sconces. A wood-beamed ceiling inthe living room and oak paneling in the diningroom add drama. There is a formal open hardwoodstaircase as well as a servants staircase in the rearof the house. Floors are oak and maple. The hugekitchen contains marble counter tops andwainscotting. Reminders of another age are a silversafe and a walk-in refrigeration room. Thebathrooms abound in original fixtures—oldporcelain rolled top lavatories, ceramic tile,marble topped vanities.Specifically, there are seven rooms and avariety of “spaces” on the first floor of the mainhouse: a large paneled entrance hall, with fireplaceto welcome guests; a living room; a music room; adining room; a solarium; a kitchen with butler’spantry and refrigeration room; a bedroom andbath, and a powder room. On the second floorthere are eight rooms: a library, a parlour, twositting rooms, four bedrooms, and four full baths.A total of seven rooms are located on the thirdfloor: a 20 by 40 foot paneled ballroom with coveceiling and fireplace, five bedrooms, a sittingroom and two baths. The 4300 square foot basement iscompletely finished except for the utility andfurnace rooms. It includes a wood paneled billiardsroom with its own fireplace and built-in cabinets,as well as laundry rooms, several baths, and asmall dormitory.The six room coach house apartmentand garage is 3100 square feet, plus a 1500 squarefoot basement. The building has its own modemheating plant and utilities. The first floor containsthe original tack room and turntable used forturning carriages. Architectural plans are availableto translate the space into a four bedroom, 2Vi bathhome, with a dramatic 14 foot ceiling height on thepublic floors.The property is being sold as is. Thestructures have a great deal of deferredmaintenance.Hyde Park-Kenwood was Chicago’sfirst suburb. Today, this tree-lined neighborhoodwhich surrounds the University of Chicago is filledwith fascinating examples of 19th Centuryarchitecture. The mansions of Chicago’s earlybusiness leaders have become the homes ofprofessionals, professors, and business men andwomen. They are confirmed city dwellers w^oenjoy the best of two worlds. Kenwood. 1979 is asgreen, lush, and uncongested as the suburbs. It isalso a diverse, intellectually stimulatingcommunity only 12 minutes by car or train fromthe heart of Chicago.Price: $500,000.00 (may be divided).The information contained in this advertisement has been supplied by reliable sources and is considered accurate, but we accept no liability for error. Your inspection and verification is invitedPorte Cocher AMusic Room. 15T1” > 14'0 „Solarium27'5" * 14 4♦4— -» 4 ' *-* -4-Open PorchRosenwald MansionMain House — Ground FloorExclusive Agent:sXX Urban Search CorporationShown by appointment only. Contact Diane Silverman at One IBM Plaza, Chicago, Illinois 60611 • Phone: 337-24004 _ jhe Chicago Maroon — Wednesday, February 7,1979 Broker cooperation is invited.60th and Cottage GroveBy Karen HornickOf all Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings, perhaps none wasmore spectacular in overall conception than Midway Gar¬dens, an entertainment complex built in 1914 on a three-acre site at 60th St. and Cottage Grove Ave. Ironically,none was more short-lived than Midway Gardens; it wasdemolished less than a decade and a half later.The Gardens included an orchestra hall, dancing facili¬ties, a restaurant, and a bar. It was never completed ac¬cording to Wright’s original plans but enough photo¬graphs, drawings, and plans exist for it to be includedalways on lists of Wright’s best grand scale works.The outer facade of the Gardens was as solid as the prin¬ciple materials — reinforced concrete and tan-coloredbricks — could make it. Yet photographs suggest it was notan overwhelming structure; there are many open gapsand much ornamentation; its outline against the sky risesand falls erratically with bulky towers of various shapesand sizes and tall, skinny needles. The Gardens havetherefore been described by critics as a mass of complexi¬ties and ambiguities. In An Interpretive Biography ofFrank Lloyd Wright, Robert Twombly writes: “At the sametime playful and dignified, spacious and intimate, theGardens’ union of opposites and its orderly arrangementof disparate pieces gave functional coherence and a pleas¬ing aspect to the ofttimes bewildering complexities ofurban living.”The Gardens are inevitably compared not to other per¬manent structures of its kind in America (there are none)but to the temporary pavilions and exhibit houses ofAmerican expositions. Henry-Russell Hitchcock argues inhis monograph on Wright, In the Nature of Materials, that“the Gardens provided an American model which shouldhave been borne in mind in designing the expositions ofthe thirties. For they (the exposition buildings) were dis¬mal examples of the general American incapacity toachieve a festive spirit in anything but folk building.’’ “A festive spirit." That is certainly evoked by the evi¬dence of the Gardens that remains. It was huge — a blocklong on the side facing the Plaisance. Terraced walls sur¬rounded an open square full of white dining tables — the“summer garden.” The “winter garden,” a roofed restau¬rant, sat in the middle of the wall facing the Plaisance. Thebar was conveniently placed at the busiest entrance, atthe corner of 60th and Cottage Grove. This was the cannyidea of Edward Waller, the originator and financier of theGardens project.Waller was a Chicago entrepreneur and the heir of oneof Wright's first private clients. It was Waller’s father whoonce offered to send Wright to the Bep.ux-Arts Academy inParis, then the arbiter of orthodox architectural tastes.Waller, Sr. proposed to provide for Wright’s tuition andliving expenses in France, and even to support Wright’swife and children at their home in Oak Park. Flattered,Wright refused. He knew he was to be a pioneer of styles,not an imitator of traditional ones.Education at the Academy would assure him respectabil¬ity and commercial success but Wright believed that onlythe style he developed on his own could reveal genuinearchitectural sophistication. He refused to study formallyin Europe, but he travelled there and, in his later work onthe Gardens for Waller, Jr., tried to show what he con¬sidered a continental influence.Wright was attracted to the work of early Modernistslike Braque. It represented for him what was best aboutcontemporary art — it was progressive, appropriate to thetimes, and pleasing to his sensibility — and he attemptedto incorporate the best of it into his plans and decorationsfor Midway Gardens. The designs were all his own, ailoriginal, yet he felt obliged to introduce the avant-gardein painting and sculpture to America. Statues of humanfigures scattered around the Gardens and executed by anItalian, Ianelli, were clearly influenced by the Cubists. The Japanese architectural style also had a major influ¬ence on Wright’s work. According to Hitchcock, the Gar¬dens was a direct progenitor of many of the Japanese-inspired ideas Wright used a decade later in designing theImperial Hotel in Tokyo. Like the hotel, the Gardens wasbuilt with terraces and an emphasis on the horizontal line.But the Japanese influence was lost on many of the firstvisitors to the Gardens; in his autobiography Wright ex¬pressed amusement at their attempts to identify “Mayan"or “Egyptian" motifs.Waller chose the Gardens's site for its ready availability(it was the northernmost section of “old" Sans Souci, adecrepit -amusement park) and proximity to the MidwayPlaisance, a place fresh in the minds of his potential pa¬trons as the setting of the 1893 Chicago Exposition. Wallerwanted to capitalize on the festivity Chicagoans associat¬ed with the Plaisance — festivity was to be the Gardens’sraison d'etre. Chicago, Waller felt, needed it.According to Wright’s autobiography. Waller said:“ ‘ Frank, in all this black old town there's no place to bebut out, not any place to come but back, that isn't bareand ugly unless it's cheap and nasty. I want to put a gar¬den in this wilderness of smoky dens, car-tracks and sa¬loonsWaller had a specific model in mind for his project. Hetold Wright that he was looking for “ \ . . an outdoor gar¬den something like those little parks outside Munichwhere German families go.’ ” The Gardens was thus thefirst attempt to introduce to America an open-air resortcomparable to those found even today in most Europeancities.Waller knew that if the Gardens made money, most of itwould come from the sale of liquor. Still, he envisionedthe Gardens as a center of high culture: Pavlova will dancehere, he promised Wright in 1913 — and she did. two yearslater.Waller also knew he had to depend on a very exclusivepatronage. Only the members of the upper class — thenburgeoning at the peak of what historians call the Age ofExpansion — could be relied on. They had travelled andwere familiar with the Gardens's continental prototype.They would appreciate Culture, they would establish tren¬diness and fashionability.For two years all went according to plan. In his autobio¬graphy Wright described the Gardens as an “ArabianNights in architecture": he was Aladdin and Waller thegenii. He wrote:The thing had simply shaken itself out of mysleeve. In a remarkably short time there itwas on paper — in color. Young Ed gloated overit.T knew it,’ he said. 'You could do it and thisis itDesign was completed late in 1913. Construction com¬menced immediately and progressed rapidly. The Gardensopened in August, 1914, even though many decorative fea¬tures were not complete.In July of 1914. The Chicago Evening Post claimed theGardens were “the finest thing of the kind in the country.. . if not in Europe, to boot." To Waller's delight, the open¬ing was widely considered the pinnacle of the social sea¬son. 'Even at this early stage, money was short Wrightlater complained: “Gay colored balloons of various sizes ingreat numbers were to have flown high above the scene.. they couldn’t get these. . that little was too much atthat time.” Nevertheless, he describes the Gardens'sdebut as "as brilliant a social event as Chicago everknew.”Wright, however, was not there to participate. He hadrushed to Taliesin, his home and studio in Wisconsin whereone of his servants had murdered Wright's mistress, hercontinued on p. lOphoto by Gilman LaneThe Summer Garden: over an acre ot white enameled dining tables enclosed by terraced walls.The Chicago Maroon — Wednesday, February 7, 1979 — 5By Libby MorseFrank Lloyd Wright once described the FrederickC. Robie House as “a masonry of tawny brick andstone, with a red tile roof, eaves of copper andwoodwork of oak throughout.” This is accurate, butsays little about the house that, as the culminationof a style, permanently changed the look of Ameri¬can domestic architecture.Robie House was designed with the client’s specif¬ic wants in mind. But it was designed not just as “a”house for “a” man but as The House, designed forMan. Its roofs give shelter in a physical and figura¬tive sense. The pit-like hearth and chimney are atthe heart of the home. The entryway is dark andlow, cavelike. There is an appeal to the primevalfeelings of a home as shelter, a place of securityand warmth.As provider of this shelter, Wright gives the roleof architect an overtly paternalistic twist. He takescomplete care of the residents, putting a roof overtheir heads, and more: Robie House came equippedwith furniture, carpeting and decorative trim.There is no place in the house for personal knick-nacks. Wright’s total concept tells the residentsthat what he provides is sufficient. He is architectturned Father Knows Best.Yet Robie House is not simply a retreat; it reachesout to be a part of nature and to make nature partof the house. Horizontal lines span the lot, huggingthe house close to the ground. Vines and smallbushes that once filled all the planters and urnswere always visible through the stained glass win¬dows, themselves ornamented with stylized stemsand flowers. The inside of the house is filled withearth tones of honey-colored plaster (now paintedwhite) and rich oak trim. Even the artificial lightingis reminiscent of the outside. The globes were in¬tended to look like small suns. “Moonlight” is pro¬vided by bulbs that shine through rice paper andthrough wooden screens that scatter the soft lightalong the walls and carpets.The third floor looks out over the red roofs intothe trees. It is high above the ground, but it is notdetached from its surroundings. Looking throughthe third floor windows, wrote one critic, “is to re¬capture the excitement of peeking over the edge ofa child’s tree house and seeing the earth farbelow.”Wright establishes an intimate relationship be¬tween the house and nature, but the house is neversubservient to the outdoors. William Jordy writes inan essay on Robie House that Wright’s buildings“exist in nature, but as formal entities, proclaimingman’s profound sympathy for his natural environ¬ment, while also asserting his conceptual indepen¬dence.” This attitude is best typified in the outsidestructure of the house. The layers of the differentfloors seem to float in nature's space, but they arerestrained and unified by the hearth’s massivechimney.Wright brings this spaciousness indoors, butkeeps it similarly under control. The entire house isan experience in the capture and release of spaceby the architect. The main stairwell is dark andclose, but not uncomfortable. It opens out into thevast spaciousness of the dining room, which is lit byrows of stained glass doors and windows. It is im¬possible to feel in control of these kinds of spaces inRobie House but at the same time they are notoverwhelming. The subtlety of these manipulationsof space were Wright’s genius. Mr. Robie and Mr. WrightFrederick Robie, a 27-year-old manufacturer ofmotorized bicycles, turned to Frank Lloyd Wright todesign his house only when left with no other alter¬native. Robie first contacted several friends in theconstruction and manufacturing businesses. He re¬called in a 1958 interview published in ArchitecturalForum:They said: “No, we’re not in for that kindof job. We build big stuff of steel, of con¬crete, and all this kind of stuff — bronzeelevator gates and all that kind of bric-a-brac.” So they were out.Robie next approached several architects andmet with more frustration:I did a little traveling around and ranacross a constant fillip: ‘I know what youwant, one of those damn Wright houses.’It was a good advertisement for Mr.Wright. I contacted him, and from thefirst we had a definite community ofthought. When I talked and thought inmechanical terms, he talked and thoughtin architectural terms. I thought, well,he was in my world.Robie knew he wanted to build his house in HydePark since his wife was a University of Chicagoalumna and liked the neighborhood. But he re¬marked his concept of the house was “so nebulousthat I could not explain it to anybody.” Actually,Robie seemed to have quite a definite idea of whathe wanted. Perhaps his difficulty stemmed from thecomplexities of that ideal.Robie recalled:I definitely wanted it fireproof, andunlike the sort of thing prevalent inhomes of that period. The ideas of mostof those houses was a kind of conglo¬meration of architecture, on the outside,and they were absolutely cut up inside.They were drafty because they hadgreat big stairwells, occupying a lot ofvaluable space, interfering with outsidewindow gazing. I wanted no part of that.I wanted rooms without interruption. Iwanted windows without curvature anddoodads inside and out. I wanted all thedaylight I could get in the house, butshaded enough by overhanging eaves toprotect from the weather. I wanted sun¬light in my living room in the morningbefore I went to work, and I wanted tobe able to look out and down the streetto my neighbors without having them in¬vade my privacy.I certainly didn’t want a lot of junk — alot of fabrics, draperies, and what not. orold-fashioned roller shades with thebrass fittings on the ends — in my line ofvision, gathering dust and interferingwith window washings. No sir. I didn’twant any wide trim on the doorways orphoto courtesy David Phillips, the ChicagoArchitectural Photo CompanyExterior of Robie House showing southeast wall intact.♦6 — The Chicago Maroon — Wednesday, February 7, 1979 The stylized flower windows at the wetwindows. I wanted it narrow, to bring ina wider window, to give me more light.I wanted to have the bedroomquarters and nursery activities separateand exclusively for the use of the chil¬dren, all this to be offset on the side by amaster bedroom with a fireplace. I want¬ed a brick wall to keep the children fromwandering out of the yard and gettinglost,Robie realized that such a house could not be de¬signed quickly. He met with Wright in late 1906, andthey agreed that sketches would be ready in a rea¬sonable time. “I told him flat I didn’t expect to buildimmediately. Take his time — which he did — andhow," Robie recalled. “He spent a great deal of en¬ergy and thought and time, and he became moreenthusiastic about the possibilities as he was ableto work out the puzzle of placing the rooms.”When the plans were complete, the house hadjust about all the features Robie wanted, if notmore than he wanted. The light flowed in throughthe rows of stained glass windows and doors on thewest, south, and east. Yet their placement high upin the house under the overhanging hip roofs pro¬vided both privacy and storm protection. The bed¬rooms (including a master bedroom with fireplace)were tucked up into the third floor of the house andthe children got their walled-off play area on the58th St. side of the house.In addition, Wright designed built-in cabinets,sideboards, and drawers.Construction of the house did not begin untilMarch, 1909, “By then, Mr. Wright and I were inhearty accord,” Robie said.After a “meticulous” search, Wright picked H. B.Barnard (later a trustee of the University) to be hiscontractor. Robie said Barnard “was a go-getting,two-fisted, high-spitting sort of guy and was a thor¬ough mechanic in the art of household construction,having been in it from the day he was about 16.”Robie remembered construction moving rapidly,with horse-drawn carts bringing in the materials.The core chimney went up first. Barnard carefullychecked the level of the brickwork throughout theexterior.As Robie recalled:There wasn’t any by-guess-or-by-Godbusiness. It developed into what I want¬ed, and what was satisfactory to Mr.Wright. The architect was responsible forthat, and he took his responsibility veryseriously. I know he was often on the jobbright and early in the morning andstayed as long as he and Mr. Barnardwanted to settle things. The plans wereso perfect that Barnard afterward told f ’me he might as well have been making apiece of machinery.jse perfected. Photo by John Paiwest end of the Robie House living room.The Robies were settled in the house by June,1910, eyen though much of the decorative work wasnot installed until later.The house cost a total of $59,000. Robie had set abudget in his mind of $60,000. “It was one of thecleanest business deals I ever had,” he said.Reflecting on his acquaintance with Wright, Robieadded, “Relationships with Mr. Wright were ideal.It seems inconceivable that the foresight, theknowledge and the intense desire to do just theright thing could have been imbedded in a man likehim. Possibly it was in his hair — remember, it waskind of long.’’Unfortunately, Robie’s plans for a motorized bi¬cycle business were not as successful as those for hishouse. The business declined, so Robie sold his com¬pany to “a Mr. Schwinn’’ and moved to Detroit,where he worked for the Ford Motor Company.Robie House, which Wright called “a good house fora good man,’’ was sold to the W. Taylor famHy.Declining yearsWith the sale of the house, the darker period ofRobie House’s history begins. The Taylors lived inthe house for only six months. Mr. Taylor died andthe family sold the house to the Marshall Wilbersfamily which occupied the house from 1911 to 1926.The house was then sold to the Chicago TheologicalSeminary for $102,000.The seminary purchased the house, “not sus¬pecting its future fame,” wrote Arthur CushmanMcGiffert in No Ivory Tower, a history of the CTS.The purchase was actually made for the lot under¬neath Robie House, which the CTS hoped to use toexpand its campus. In the interim the house wasused as a dormitory, refectory, and conferencecenter.In 1941, CTS made plans to replace Robie Housewith a new building, but World War II put a stop tomost private construction. Meanwhile, Robie Househad deteriorated. By 1957, the seminary estimatedthat the house needed $75,000 in structural repairs.Another $25,000 would be needed to bring the build¬ing up to Chicago Building Code standards.In 1957, the growth of CTS’s married student popu¬lation made the construction of a new dormitory anecessity. In March, plans were announced to razeRobie House.Protests poured in, most of them accusing theseminary of aesthetic irresponsibility. Most of theprotests, however, were not backed up with fundsto provide for the house. “The Seminary, with itslimited funds finds it economically impossible tomaintain the house as an architectural monument,"McGiffert told the press.“The facts have been ignored by irate critics whohave contributed not one dollar toward the preser¬vation of the ‘most important house ever built inthe United States.’ ” wrote one defender of CTS to the Sun-Times. “It is time to put up, or shut up.”The protest found a charismatic spokesman: octo¬genarian Frank Lloyd Wright himself. He visited thehouse in mid-March, 1957, and proclaimed it “soundas a nut.” He told reporters, “Give me $10,000 or$15,000 and I’ll make it like new.” Wright later of¬fered to go under bond for the money if RobieHouse could be turned into a museum or some kindof “clubby little rendezvous” for architects.Wright’s tour of the house was met with glee fromthe media, who hoped to sample some more of thearchitect’s flamboyance and, as one writer termedit, his “characteristic modesty.” They were not dis¬appointed.“This is one of the best-built houses in the world,”said Wright as he toured his creation. “It’s the cor¬nerstone of what we call modern architecture.”“All that is wrong with it,” Wright said, “is theresult of bad janitorship. The house is really in mar¬velous shape considering the abuse it has suffered.The students came in here and made whoopee, youknow.”And finally, Wright had words for the house’sowners: “That it has survived the treatment it hashad at the hands of its owners is a miracle. Profes¬sional religionists are the last people to recognize athing of beauty. The destruction of a thing like thiscould only be done in America.”In April, Wright offered to design a new dormi¬tory for CTS without charge if they would spare hisPrairie House. Other plans were proposed. Someadvocated making the house the official mayor’sresidence. Phi Delta Theta (the fraternity Wrightjoined while a student at the University of Wiscon¬sin) offered to trade its house, then three doorsnorth, for Robie House. Other swaps were offered,and also eventually rejected.In mid-April, CTS offered to give Robie House tothe city if the city would pay to move the house to adifferent location. But moving would have cost atleast half a million dollars and the plan wasscrapped.The CTS scheduled demolition for September. Ar¬chitecture groups reacted by hailing Robie House alandmark, in one case voting it one of the two mostinfluential residences built in the United States inone hundred years. The city of Chicago also desig¬nated the house a landmark and, although no solu¬tion had been found by September, demolition waspostponed.Robie House was saved in late December, 1957, by William Zeckendorf of Webb and Knapp, the firm incharge of the Hyde Park Redevelopment Project.Zeckendorf offered to buy the house for use as anoffice during the project. When the sale was com¬pleted (at $125,000), Wright hailed Zeckendorf as a“saviour.”Zeckendorf presented the deed to Robie House toUniversity president George Beadle on February 4,1963. But the University got more than a landmark —it got a headache.Wright had overestimated his house somewhat.Immediate repairs were needed on the roof, plumb¬ing, gutters, masonry, and electrical system. Theheating system did not even work for the deed pre¬sentation ceremony. A restoration committee esti¬mated it would cost $250,000 to put the house in itsoriginal condition.A committee headed by Ira Bach raised an initial$57,000 and work began. Contractor for the projectwas the H. B. Barnard Company, the company thatbuilt the house.Work was completed in 1967. In that year, theAdlai Stevenson Institute for International Studiesmoved into Robie House and the second majorphase of the renovations began. Under the direc¬tion of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Robie Housewas turned into an office for the Institute. Walls wereadded and torn down and the rooms took on new func¬tions. The play room on the ground level, for exam¬ple, became the principle seminar room of the In¬stitute.Architects and art historians were chagrined thatthe house was not being used for its original pur¬pose and that some of its features were beingchanged, but the Prairie School Review reported in1967 that the house was “safe.” The article said,“While the optimum use of the Robie House wouldhave been for it to have remained private for use asa family residence, it is extremely doubtful that itsperpetual care and preservation could have beeninsured under such conditions.”Robie House was safe from total destruction, butnot from vandals. In May, 1970, it became the targetof the Students for Democratic Society. Claimingthat the Stevenson Institute had taken part of theU.S. government’s involvement in Southeast Asia,students broke a few of the house’s windows, de¬stroyed some furniture and ransacked the Insti¬tute’s files. Clean-up was partially carried out byother students, who arrived at the house soon afterthe raid.The University Development Office moved intoRobie House in fall, 1975 and has been ensconcedever since. Robie House is open for tours by ap¬pointment, although much of the house is off-limitsto visitors. It is far from the ideal situation for thePrairie House, but at least a secure one. Not all ofWright’s buildings have had similar good fortune.Wright grouped Robie House with the Unity Tem¬ple (in Oak Park) and the Imperial Hotel in Japan(razed in 1968) as his most important contributionsto architecture. “These,” he remarked once, “arewhat I had to say.”Robie House dining room set looking west along the house. photo courtesy the University of ChicagoOffice of Public InformationThe Chicago Maroon — Wednesday, February 7, 1979 — 7g «*, The Chicago Maroon — Wednesday, February 7, 1979F:?..——— —————— — - -Heller House:a search for a stylePhoto by John PaiThe east end of Heller HouseBy Eric Von der Porten1888. Twenty-one year old Frank Lloyd Wright tours OakPark. The houses scream at him: “Nobody home! Nobodyhome! 'They’ stay here but they don’t live here. We neverknew life. But we are just as good as anybody's houses,just as good: just as good as ‘they’ are — better, maybe. ”Later Wright recalls: “I walked along the miles of thisexpensive mummery, trying to get into the thinking pro¬cesses of the builders, but failed to get hold of any think¬ing they had done at all. The forms were meaningless”(quotes from An Autobiography).In designing the Isidor Heller House, built in 1897 onWoodlawn Ave. in Hyde Park, Wright set out to create ahouse not ‘‘just as good as anybody’s”, but unique. The in¬terior living and working spaces would be tailored to therequirements and tastes of the Hellers. The exterior de¬sign and the ornamentation would reflect the interior ar¬rangements as well as the nature of the materials used inconstruction and the character of the house’s environ¬ment.These concepts are the keys to Wright's “organic”theory of design They will later find full expression in the Frederick C. Robie House and in the other mature ‘‘PrairieHouses”, but they are not fully articulated in 1897. fiellerHouse was an experiment, as were the other buildingsWright designed between 1889, when he designed his firsthouse, and about 1900. These buildings show the directionin which Wright was heading with his art, but they alsoreveal much about the origins of that art.Wright designed a number of houses while employed bythe Chicago architectural firm of Adler and Sullivan but itwas not until he set up his own office in 1893 that he wasable to give free rein to his quickly-developing style andphilosophy of architecture. Wright's unique philosophicapproach to architecture was as important as his stylisticapproach, if not more important because his philsophydirected his style.One of the primary tenets of Wright’s organic theorywas that a house’s interior is the architecture. Wright wascritical of his contemporaries because, he said, too muchof their work involved creating a beautiful exterior for ahouse and then manipulating the necessary interior ele¬ments to fit the exterior design.Wright executed what he saw as a dramatic reversal ofcontemporary architectural practice: he designed housesfrom the inside, out. Precedence should be given to thedesign of the interior of a house, Wright argued, becausea house is, after all, something to live in, not just some¬thing to look at, and the comfort of the residents shouldbe the architect’s primary concideration.In Heller Hose, Wright put this theory into practice. Thehouse is carefully laid out so that the service area — thekitchen and servants’ quarters — is far at the end of thehouse. It is convenient because the kitchen leads directlyinto the dining room, but it is out of sight and earshot.Similarly, the family's private living quarters are on thesecond and third floors, separate from the entertainmentareas.The living room is on one end of a central main floorhall, the dining room on the other end with the mainentry, reception room, and staircase in between. None ofthese rooms are the small boxes separated by small door¬ways that Wright saw and despised in so many housesEach of the main floor rooms in Heller House has a distinc¬tive character, in part because of the spatial separationmade possible by the central hall.In addition, Wright designed each room to fulfill its ownspecial function. The living room has a wide entry in thewest wall; a large brick hearth against the north wall: or¬nate bookcases protruding from the east and west walls;oak trim, particularly around the windows on the east andsouth walls; and a two-level ceiling that is lower on thenorth and south ends to prevent the rooms from becomingcavernous. This room, like the others in the house, doesnot need to be assigned a function, it is a living room.The idea that this type of interior design should begiven precedence in planning a house was well worked outby Wright by the time he designed Heller House. It wasprobably an idea developed while he worked with LouisSullivan — the man who invented the expression “form fol¬lows function” — and expressed even in Wright’s earliestdesigns.But Wright was still experimenting with the “form” ofhis houses. He knew that the Queen Anne, neo-classical,and other styles popular at the end of the nineteenth cen- photo by Gilman LaneEntrance to tLe Heller House.tury were not appropriate. He knew he would have to de¬velop a style that would be his own, but he wanted it to bean American style, one that would reflect and comple¬ment the character of the people and the land.Heller House is a road marker in Wright’s search for anew architecture. The house is in many ways awkward.Some elements contradict, some are borrowed from hiscontemporaries and will be discarded in later houses,others are clearly experimental. Yet all the ideas Wrightlater unifies to create the mature Prairie House architec¬ture are present in Heller House.The wide, hip roofs, the band of white stone along thebase of the walls, and the rows of windows are all charac¬teristic of Wright’s Prairie Houses. The idea is to “marry”the house to the earth through a pediment that anchors itand roofs that spread the house out and seem to bring itback down to flat plains.The intermediate area heightens this illusion throughan emphasis on horizontal lines. The arches prevalent inWright’s earlier buildings have been almost entirely dis¬posed of. Bands of stone circle the second and third floorsjust below the window sills. Bands of buff and white havebeen created by using long, thin buff-colored bricks, buff-colored mortar in vertical stripes, and white motar in hori¬zontal bands.The rows of windows start to dematerialize the walls.Wright wanted the sides of his houses to be zones of tran¬sition between the inside and the outside, not barriers. Inlater houses, the windows wil become “screens” of leadedglass that open the house to the outside while retainingthe privacy of the interior. In Heller House. Wright experi¬ments with the windows, using one style of glass in thestairwell windows, another in the second and third floorwindows, and plain clear glass in the first floor windows.Wright further experiments with the idea of breakingdown the walls by alternating rows of light gray brickswith the buff bricks in the second and third floor walls. Theeffect is to make the walls seem lighter, less substantial inthe upper regions of the house and thus to emphasize therelation of the house to the ground.Similar tentative expressions of Wright’s ideas are pres¬ent throughout Heller House. Even the landscaping be¬came part of Wright's scheme. He used plants as an inte¬gral part of the house in an attempt to emphasize theinterrelation between man, his home, and nature.But not all of the design elements in Heller House areWright's. The large mass of the first and second floors isbasically Victorian, despite Wright's articulation of thebasic rectangular shape. The third floor frieze with its in¬tricate fluid design, winged angel bas-reliefs, and archedloggia could have come off Sullivan’s drafting table. Thecolumns around the windows are also not Wright’s. Heplays with them — some are square, some octagonal — but,as with the frieze, they will not last long as elements inWright's architecture.Wright was of course not designing houses in the ab¬stract; each specific job included practical problems thatWright had to take into consideration. In designing theHeller House, for example, Wright had a 50'xl75’ lot towork with so the house had to be long and narrow. It alsomeant that Wright had to place the house on the lot toprovide the best perspectives and to develop shapes to en¬hance those perspectives. It is no accident that most pho¬tographs and drawings of Heller House show the buildingfrom the southeast. That was the direction from whichWright intended the house to be viewed.The clients, of course, also had specific demands thatWright had to satisfy. This in one sense was not a problemfor W'right. In his article. In the Cause of Architecture.continued on p. 10The Chicago Maroon — Wednesday, February 7, 1979 — 9Midway Gardensfrom p. 5child, and five other employees, then set the buildingsafire. During this forced absence, others began to ruin theGardens. The long-promised balloons were supplanted bya gaudy electric sign proclaiming “Midway Gardens.” Itwas erected high above Wright’s building, and he loathedit.The same month the Gardens opened, the war began inEurope. The United States did not immediately become ac¬tively involved in the conflict but pre-war society hadbeen disrupted and the Gardens suffered. The war, howev¬er, had less of an effect on the Gardens than did the rapiddecline of Hyde Park’s status as an elite community. In lessthan two years Waller and company were forced to sellout to the Edelweiss Brewing Company.The Gardens became an ordinary berr garden. It wasnow frequented by a less “respectable” clientele, peoplewho were less likely to spend lots of money. Wright’s brickand stonework, meant to remain as natural-looking aspossible, was painted over in reputedly grotesque shadesof red, white, and blue. But the final blow was dealt byProhibition. Changing hands several more times, the Gar¬dens became a “dry” restaurant, then a garage, then a carwash. Finally, and seemingly inevitably, the Gardens wasdemolished.Wright was glad to see it go. He had been disgusted bywhat the Gardens’s later proprietors had done to it. Heconsidered the complete destruction of his structure anact of mercy.They began to tear it down in 1923, but work wasn’t fin¬ished until 1929. The Gardens was too solidly built. Wrighttook an almost sardonic pleasure as six demolition compa¬nies went bankrupt trying to knock it down.Today the original site is occupied by a gas station, va¬cant lots, and a building called, rather pathetically, Mid-wav Gardens Apartments.Heller Housefrom p. 91908, Wright says.There should be as many kinds (styles) ofhouses as there are kinds (styles) of peopleand as many differentiations as there are dif¬ferent individuals. A man who has individuali¬ty (and what man lacks it?) has a right to itsexpression in his own environment.Yet in the same article he writes.Nevertheless, I believe that only when one in¬dividual forms the concept of the various proj¬ects and also determines the character ofevery detail in the sum total, even to the sizeand shape of the pieces of glass in the win¬dows, the arrangement and profile of themost insignificant of the architecturalmembers, will that unity be secured which isthe soul of the individual work of art.Wright resolves this seeming contradiction by arguingthat a client's first expression of his individuality is in hischoice of architect. A client and architect who are in sym¬pathy with one another’s aims should be able to work to¬gether to create a house uniquely suited to the owner,even though the architect retains artistic control.Virtually nothing is known about the Hellers, but evi¬dence in the house indicates that their relationshipwith Wright was anything but harmonious. Wright pre¬ferred swing-out casement windows to what he termed“the poetry-crushing characteristics of the guillotine win¬dow” and in his autobiography he wrote, "I used it (theguillotine wndow) once, in the Winslow house (of 1894),and rejected it forever thereafter.” Yet it is there in theHeller House: guillotine windows on the first and thirdfloors and in the stairwell, casement on the second.Wright also preferred to design built-in sideboards andstorage units as well as the furniture so that everything inthe house reflected the same thought. It is not knownwhether any of the furniture shown in the plans for HellerHouse was ever built. It is clear, however, that a side¬board designed for the dining room and whatever otherbuilt-in furnishings (except for the bookcases in the livingroom) Wright might have planned were not constructed.But at the same time, the house adheres to Wright’s beliefthat simplicity should be stressed and extra rooms such asclosets avoided. As a result, the bedrooms in particularhave very little storage space.What Wright did not plan for in his original design ofHeller House was a back porch, an elevator, and “Mrs.Heller’s Room.” The porch and elevator were tacked ontothe north wall of the building. “Mrs. Heller’s Room” ap¬pears first in-the final plans for the building. The west end10 — The Chicago Maroon — Wednesday, February 7, 1979 of the second floor was redesigned, apparently to accomo¬date Mrs. Heller. The room is the only one on the secondfloor that does not have leaded glass in the windowsthough it does have a very un-Wrightian oak cupboardtucked in one corner.This strange combination of styles and tastes, experi¬ment and convention — both Wright’s and the Hellers’s —created problems for the house. It is by no means the un¬ified “ship of the prairie” that it presaged. The confusioncreates other problems today, when restoration isplanned and it is not clear what is “original” becauseWright’s plans for the house were never fully implement¬ed and alterations were made during construction. Theseproblems are pertinent now because some restorationwork is underway and more is being planned. But thehouse did not always receive this kind of respect.The Hellers sold the house in 1913 and it has changedownership quite a few times since then. In the period1945-1970, the area around Heller House was in decline andmaintenance on the house was sporadic. Finally, in thelate 1960’s, the house was threatened with destruction.Like any 70-year old building that had not received thebest of care, Heller House was showing its age. The plasterwas cracking, the roof leaked, the fireplaces were sinking,and the brickwork was starting to crumble. National Land¬mark status was conferrred on the building in 1971, savingit from demolition. But the condition of the house made itunlikely it would have survived for long except that it wassold in 1972 to a family that cared about the house andbegan the long process of restoration.Heller House was sold again last fall. A Hyde Park fami¬ly, happily settled in a cooperative apartment building forsix years, saw the building and fell in love with it. Theybought it, without even first getting a contractor’s esti¬mate of the amount of work needed: “It would have beentoo depressing."Restoration is a high priority, but where to begin? Somedecisions were easy to make. The sewers backed up, waterpipes burst, plaster flaked down from the ceilings. “Some¬times I came home from work wondering, ‘What has gonewrong today?’ ”Simply arresting deterioration became a major concern.Crumbling gutters and a sagging decorative wall alongthe south property boundary now have priority. Fortun¬ately, the house walls are sound, thanks in part to a feder¬ al grant — applied for by the previous owners — that sub¬sidized the much-needed tuckpointing. Thanks to Wright’simaginative mind, the tuckpointing turned out to be noordinary job. The masons had to mix three different colorsof mortar and make adjustments in areas where the brickshave faded.Some decisions on the interior work were relatively sim¬ple also, though the work itself is time consuming. Thebasement turned out to be a gold mine. Leaded glass win¬dows for the north porch, the original push-button lightswitches, and parts of some light fixtures all turned upand can be replaced without much hesitation. Similarly,there was little question that the oak trim that through¬out the house had been painted over or had simply turnedblack with dirt should be cleaned.Then there are the difficult questions. Was the plasteron the living room walls stained indigo red (as it appearswhen several layers of paint are scraped off) even thoughWright’s specifications call for a green stain? Should theglobe-capped lampposts designed for the living room anddining room be reconstructed? Were they constructed ac¬cording to Wright’s drawings? Should they be placedwhere the marks on the floor indicate r where Wright'sdrawings indicate they should be placed? Should the din¬ing room sideboard be constructed, even though there isno evidence that it was ever built?Many of these and similar questions will not be an¬swered for some time. The owners believe other mattersare of more immediate importance and, besides, “thereare several years worth of unskilled labor to be done” be¬fore it is even worth thinking about the more refined de¬tails of the restoration. Meanwhile, they said, they justwant to move slowly and avoid doing anything that wouldbe irreparable if it later turned out to be a mistake. /Someday, perhaps, Heller House will once again be allthat Wright intended it to be. In the interim, the housewill cause its owners plenty of grief. But it also offersrewards. The house is almost as comfortable as when itwas built and restoration will do much to improve that sit¬uation. In addition, the restoration itself provides aunique opportunity for the owners to get to know thehouse and to understand its architect a little better: “Wekeep finding hidden little details that reveal a mind atwork.”■■. . ■ .■Wright's plans for the Heller House. ■,mKKKKM f e*aphoto courtesy the Prairie School Pres7)1 S Dearborn, Cnicaqo— ■■■ ■The discovery of preferencesThe Blossom house The McArthur houseBy David MillerThe George Blossbm House is another ofthe nine homes Frank Lloyd Wright designedprivately while concurrently working for thefirm of Adler and Sullivan. Like the adjacentMcArthur House, the Blossom House wasdesigned and built in 1892 and is still a wellcared-for private residence.The Blossom House is Wright’s only realiz¬ed work in the Colonial Revival style. Sinceits origin in the 1870’s, the Colonial Revivalstyle became increasingly academic and for¬mal, characteristics reflected in the BlossomHouse. In form, the house is a cube, inter¬rupted only by a semi-circular front porchand a semi-circular rear wing. The overallsymmetry is most obvious along the southside; Wright divided the wall vertically inthree equal parts, and centered in each aPalladian window on the first floor and asingle window on the second. The Palladianwindows, without precedent in Colonial orColonial Revival architecture, serve a specialpurpose. The arch over each of the center win-1 ! !i J ( -111 1 r ^i iL-.. 1 LThe Palladian window and plan of the Blos¬som Housedows replicates in small scale the semicir¬cular front porch and rear wing; in the case ofthe porch, the arches replicate position aswell.4 Having departed from the Colonial modelonce in choice of windows, Wright did soagain with the roof. Instead of the customarygambrel roof as is found in the McArthurHouse, Wright selected a low hip roof. Thechange is significant: a gambrel roof wouldhave detracted from the structure’s cubicalform, and thus would have broken theanalogy between the house's basic visualdimensions and the rectangular portion of thePalladian windows. Wright later came toprefer the hip roof with all-encompassingeaves to any other roof style; the BlossomHouse roof does not project over the frontporch because Wright wanted to retain the in¬tegrity of that semicircular appendage.With what degree of success Wrightemployed these unifying techniques is ques¬tionable. Although the Palladian windowssuggest the overall form, they do so either toosubtly or too obviously, depending upon theviewer’s consciousness of the analogy. But ifthe Blossom House is not a complete success,the interior is even less of one.The library, living room, and dining roomrun along one long horizontal line, but Wrightcuts up this space with small doorways so itcannot be seen as a whole. The rooms remaindiscrete entities.Judging each room on its own merits, thedining room best realizes Wright’s intentions.Its generous exposure to the southernsunlight and its continuous circular band ofwestern windows make it light, airy, andcheerful.Wright’s use of the Colonial style in theBlossom House, and his departures from it,show his attempt to find a functionally andaesthetically unifying scheme for hisdomestic architecture. But having used thestyle once, Wright abandoned it forever. AsWright began to develop lower, more horizon¬tal architectural forms, columns, strong ver¬tical elements, and symmetrical window ar¬rangements similar to those in BlossomHouse found only sporadic use. Thus whileBlossom House does not realize Wright shopes for unity, it develops two elementscrucial in many of his later works: the hip roofand the main axis. After he had realized thepossiblities inherent in these forms, Wrightnever again had need for a traditional style:he had his own. The southern exposure of Blossom Ho*»«o displays a sym The Mo Arthur House diningmetrical-"oHow ?”-rangement. The third story dormer is a room window,later addit'on By David MillerThe Warren McArthur House in Kenwoodis one of the “bootlegged” houses that FrankLloyd Wright designed without the knowledgeof his employers, Dankmar Adler and LouisSullivan.The 1892 commission gave Wright his firstopportunity for total design: he planned thedining room sideboard and some furniture.When the McArthur House was remodeled in1902, Wright included many leaded glassdoors and window decorations. Today theMcArthur House is occupied by its thirdowners and remains a private residence.Basically rectangular in shape, the housefaces Kenwood Ave. to the east, with itslongest dimension running away from thestreet. The front doorway is at ground levelhalfway along the south side. Once inside, animmediate right-hand turn and four steps leadup to a hallway at the first floor level. Wrighthad in effect brought the porch inside,thereby avoiding any interruption of the ex¬terior surface.By placing the front door along the side ofthe house, Wright was able to reserve threecorner positions (NE, SE, SW) for importantrooms (living room, parlor, dining room), andthereby ensure good natural lighting and aworthwhile view. In comparison with the eastand west exposures, the darker and moreobstructed center of the house contains thehallway and the staircase.Wright further capitalized upon the ad¬vantages of light and view in the living room,parlor, and dining room by including at theoutside corner of each a protruding five-sidedwindow. Otherwise the living room and parlorare unexceptional. In them, Wright did notshed the conventional box-like conception ofa room: the doorways may be large, but theynevertheless divide the space.Except for one detail, the same is true of thedining room. Here the east wall backs the hallfireplace, thus the wall is several feet thick.Two sets of identical wood-framed glass doorsflank the fireplace and are flush with the din¬ing room wall surface. Those to the north leadinto the dining room from the hallway; thosePlan of the Southwest quarter of McArthur,with the entrance hallway on the right and thedining room on the left. The dotted line in¬dicates the horizontal free space, with themirror on the right.The dining room wing of the Blossom House with its continuousuninterrupted eaves later became a standard Wrightean feature. windows. The wideOne ot two leaded glass winuows Hanking tne entranceof Blossom House. The Southeast quarter of the mcArtnur house, with themain entrance in tne ouuui o»ue wau. »ne front porch isaccessible from inside the house to the south lead onto a tiny landing almostdirectly over the front door. The latter allow¬ed the master of the house to greet his guestsas the servants admitted them, withouttroubling to go to the door himself.Wright placed a large mirror or the hallwall directly opposite this small landing Itreflects the doors, even when they are closed,as well as the more distant five-sided diningroom window. The impression of unity is notstrong, yet in this linear combination of win¬dow, door, and mirror extending along two-thirds of the house, Wright had formulated anotion of integrated space that would laterbecome his hallmarkUnlike the interior, the exterior of McAr¬thur House does not remotely resemble thefree-flowing horizontals and intersectingplanes and solids of Wright’s later houses.The gambrel roof derives from Wright’s ex¬perience with the architectural firm of J. L.Silsbee in 1887; the external walls of darkbrick and brown plaster are a more customaryWright choice. In general, none of the ideasWright expressed in McArthur House were asfinely articulated as they might have been; insome sense he spent the next two decadesrealizing the potential embodied in the house.Tne Chicago Maroon — Wednesday, February 7, 1979 — 11I\ BanKWhere Hyde Parl^ShopsHYDE PARK'S DANK IN THE CO-OP SUPERMARKETHyde Pork's Bonk has come ro the Hyde Pork Shopping Center,at 55rh and Lake Pork, to offer even more professional, promptbonking service to our bustling community.Our modern, new facility is located just inside the Co-opSupermarket and is the latest in bonking concepts.Our Co-op facility is open from 11 AM to 6 PM, Monday throughSaturday, and is staffed to handle almost all your bankingneeds with speed and efficiency.With your Hyde Park Bank MAC Card, you can also use ourAutomatic Teller Machines to do your banking at any timeduring regular store hours. 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