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The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, Fourth Edition: A Complete Catalog
The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, Fourth Edition: A Complete Catalog
The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, Fourth Edition: A Complete Catalog
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The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, Fourth Edition: A Complete Catalog

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From sprawling houses to compact bungalows and from world-famous museums to a still-working gas station, Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs can be found in nearly every corner of the country. While the renowned architect passed away more than fifty years ago, researchers and enthusiasts are still uncovering structures that should be attributed to him.
William Allin Storrer is one of the experts leading this charge, and his definitive guide, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, has long been the resource of choice for anyone interested in Wright.  Thanks to the work of Storrer and his colleagues at the Rediscovering Wright Project, thirty-seven new sites have recently been identified as the work of Wright. Together with more photos, updated and expanded entries, and a new essay on the evolution of Wright’s unparalleled architectural style, this new edition is the most comprehensive and authoritative catalog available.
Organized chronologically, the catalog includes full-color photos, location information, and historical and architectural background for all of Wright’s extant structures in the United States and abroad, as well as entries for works that have been demolished over the years. A geographic listing makes it easy for traveling Wright fans to find nearby structures and a new key indicates whether a site is open to the public.
Publishing for Wright’s sesquicentennial, this new edition will be a trusted companion for anyone embarking on their own journeys through the wonder and genius of Frank Lloyd Wright.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 2, 2017
ISBN9780226435893
The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, Fourth Edition: A Complete Catalog

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    The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, Fourth Edition - William Allin Storrer

    The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

    The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

    © 1974, 1978, 2002, 2007, 2017 by William Allin Storrer

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.

    Published 2017

    Printed in China

    26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17    1 2 3 4 5

    ISBN-13: 978-0-226-43575-6 (paper)

    ISBN-13: 978-0-226-43589-3 (e-book)

    DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226435893.001.0001

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Names: Storrer, William Allin, author.

    Title: The architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright : a complete catalog / William Allin Storrer.

    Description: Fourth edition. | Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2017. | Includes index.

    Identifiers: LCCN 2016039453 | ISBN 9780226435756 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226435893 (e-book)

    Subjects: LCSH: Wright, Frank Lloyd, 1867–1959—Catalogs. | Prairie school (Architecture)—Catalogs. | Organic architecture—Catalogs.

    Classification: LCC NA737.W7 S83 2017 | DDC 720.92—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039453

    This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

    THE ARCHITECTURE OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

    A COMPLETE CATALOG

    WILLIAM ALLIN STORRER

    FOURTH EDITION

    THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

    CHICAGO AND LONDON

    This book is dedicated to Patricia Storrer

    who has read everything I have written

    and helpfully corrected my too-long sentences.

    CONTENTS

    INTRODUCTION

    IT’S ALL IN THE PLAN

    CATALOG OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT BUILDINGS

    LIST OF THE EXTANT WORK OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT BY ZIP CODE

    CREDITS FOR PHOTOS NOT OTHERWISE IDENTIFIED

    NOTES

    INDEX

    INTRODUCTION

    A CATALOG

    A catalog is a naming and numbering of items with a common subject or source. This is a catalog of the built work of Frank Lloyd Wright. The works are numbered from 000 to 433 to suit this digital age, are essentially in chronological order of construction, and are prefixed with S. because this is the Storrer Catalog of the Built Work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

    NAMING OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S BUILT WORK

    The name given to each project is that on the plan drawn by Wright and his drafts-persons, with a few exceptions. For those houses that were built on speculation or initially for rental, the first owner who was resident in the structure gives his or her name to the building. This principle was established with the first edition of The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog, and has been followed by Taliesin Archivist Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer for their archives ever since. This applies particularly to the naming of the Ravine Bluffs project (S.187–S.192) and the various prefabricated house projects for Arthur Richards (S.203–S.204) and Marshall Erdman (S.406–S.412). Rental apartments are of a different nature and are named for the builder-client/renter, such as works for Edward C. Waller (S.030 and S.031).

    CATALOGING OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S BUILT WORK

    The S number at the head of each listing in this publication is the only catalog number ever assigned the built work of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It arranges the built works of Wright essentially in chronological order. Information is not sufficient to make this a perfect chronology. The chronology is clearly broken for certain geographically related works, including the cottages at Delavan Lake in Wisconsin and White Lake in Michigan, and for community projects, such as Galesburg Country Homes, Parkwyn Village, and Usonia Homes, as well as Taliesin West. This cataloging system identifies all the built work and was first published in 1974 in The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog. A version completely suited to computerized documentation first appeared in The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion, published in 1993.

    Taliesin project numbers identify projects as designed, not as finished by Wright and his subordinates. It is not an opus number, as some writers try to claim, for it is not only partially chronological but also discontinuous; the first two numbers identify the year the plan was apparently finished by Wright, but the second two numbers arrange the clients of that year in mostly alphabetical order. Further, anomalies occur because some plans could not be accurately dated at the time this numbering system was created. The system is used for filing materials, not for arranging them as an opus listing.

    Use of these two different systems defines a clear distinction between the finished architectural work and the idea from which it was created.

    GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM COORDINATES AND ZIP CODES

    When The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog, Third Edition, was published, GPS was in its infancy. Standing on the sidewalk in front of a building, I took many of the GPS readings that were listed in that edition. Coordinates could be off as much as 300 feet. In 1999, the governing agencies concerning satellite usage opened GPS readers to wider satellite access, increasing device accuracy to within 30 feet.

    GPS coordinates have been omitted from this edition on the assumption that most readers have either an iPhone (which always knows where you are) or a smart-phone that uses GPS. One can type in the address for any listing in this book and find the location of the structure.

    With an iPhone and my Wright Guide app, which is keyed to the text in this catalog, the reader can access driving instructions to any extant work. This app can be downloaded from the Apple iTunes App Store.

    With the first edition of the catalog, back in 1974, I pioneered a geographical index organized by ZIP code. For this edition, the list by ZIP code has been reinstated where the maps used to reside, and it now includes information on public access. As the first two numbers of a ZIP code identify the major region, the third the postal mail sorting center, and the last two the towns within the ZIP region, this list can be used for planning Wrightian tours around geographically related structures. The list begins on page 467.

    DEMOLISHED, ALTERED, AND RESTORED STRUCTURES

    In this publication, a color picture indicates a building that remains largely as it was originally constructed or that has been faithfully restored to that condition on its original site. A structure that has been significantly altered from its original condition or that has been altered significantly from its original form through renovation or demolition is presented in black and white.

    Sometimes the distinction among these possibilities is not clear. For instance, the interior of a building may remain unaltered while the exterior has received additions or alterations. As an example, the J. Kibben Ingalls residence (S.161.1) has been faithfully restored, but with an addition to the rear. Since the addition does not change the interior living spaces, this house is considered to be largely as it was originally constructed.

    Or conversely, the exterior is as built, but the interior has been modernized. Such is the instance with the Roloson Rowhouses (S.026). It is expected that plumbing and electrical systems will need updating, but that should not normally include a total redesign of a bathroom or kitchen. Enclosure of a once-open porch, such as at the Bradley residence (S.052) does not, for me, constitute a major change. Changes from original construction are usually described in the text, which, we hope, will make distinctions in changes clear to the reader.

    STRUCTURES BUILT FROM WRIGHT’S PLANS SINCE HIS DEATH

    The Taliesin (Associated) Architects continued Wright’s work on in-construction projects after the master’s death. Typical of such projects is the Marin County Civic Center (S.415–S.417). The interior of the Hall of Justice is largely the work of Wright’s San Francisco Associate, Aaron Green, who is also responsible entirely for the new county jail inside the hill that forms the northern terminus of the Hall of Justice. Because Wright had assigned Green the task of supervising the project as well as much of its design, this is considered a Wright work. Further, Green designed the basic plan for the field office (S.348), which Wright made his own by revising its traffic pattern to suit his needs. This field office is considered sufficiently altered because it is not at the original site nor does its new situation conform to the second floor with view of the original site. Its restoration in Pittsburgh, however, is nearly perfect: the photo of Wright’s private office, which had no such view and provides the same effect to a visitor as it did at its original site, is accordingly presented in color. The last building from Wright’s plans to be constructed to his specifications on the original site is the Aime and Norman Lykes residence (S.433), which, as the Taliesin architect John Rattenbury asserts, could only have been fitted to its specific site by Wright.

    Decades after his death, Taliesin architects authorized redesign to current building standards of designs in their archives. Since these have many changes from the original plans, often to conform to differing climates and sites than those for which the buildings were designed by Wright, none of those are included here. An excellent example is a cottage for original clients Don and Virginia Lovness (S.391). The cottage has a full basement never envisioned by Wright. It is otherwise a clone of the Seth Peterson Cottage (S.430).

    No other publication lists all of Wright’s built work and serves also as a field guide to the extant structures in a single volume. For more information than is provided here, one should consult The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion, which contains many interior photographs of Wright’s buildings as well as plans of all buildings for which such can be generated.

    IT’S ALL IN THE PLAN

    EVEN GENIUS NEEDS NURTURING

    When Frank Lloyd Wright was asked how he came up with a design, he would often draw a seed and then develop it into a design. A seed has within it the plan of what it will be, but it needs to be pollinated in order to become what is in that plan. So, too, geniuses must master their vocational tools before they can work their magic in their chosen career.

    So it was that Frank Lincoln Wright, who came into the world in Bear Valley, Wisconsin, June 8, 1867, was surrounded with photographic images of architectural structures placed in his bedroom by his caring mother. Youthful time in Massachusetts would have revealed to him wondrous structures in such styles as Colonial and Federal.

    Where then, one must wonder, did Wright learn the basics of architectural design and the running of an architectural office? For this, we must look to when Wright was in Madison, Wisconsin, and at the two people who were his earliest influences, Lew Forester Porter and Allan Darst Conover, a.k.a. Alan Conover.

    Lew Forester Porter was educated at Beloit College and the University of Wisconsin. He was, later, the supervising architect of the Wisconsin State Capitol, the second-highest domed capitol in the country (shorter than Washington, DC, by 19 inches out of respect). Porter was a principal in the firm of Conover and Porter from 1885 to January 1899.

    Alan Conover, son of a classics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, followed a successful science, mathematics and engineering career by teaching engineering and building construction at the University of Wisconsin in the 1880s. He became interested in architecture with the construction of Science Hall by Milwaukee architect Henry Koch, who also designed Milwaukee’s city hall. Conover served as the local architect and altered Science Hall during construction, though by how much we do not know. In 1885, Conover began practicing architecture while he continued teaching. It was then that he took on Lew Porter, a talented former student, as partner. Conover handled most of the political connections while Porter handled most of the true architecture.

    Frank Lloyd Wright commenced his formal education in 1885 at the University of Wisconsin School for Engineering. He took classes part-time while apprenticing under Conover. His exposure to the ideas of Alan Conover and Lew Porter must have opened up a treasure chest of ideas for him. The fact that he was in the office for over two years (perhaps more) left an indelible impact on his formative mind. This experience was a complete college education unto itself since Wright could learn about historical backgrounds, world culture, engineering, client agendas, and construction materials, along with the ins and outs of commercial and residential architecture.

    HENRY KOCH’S MILWAUKEE CITY HALL

    This education must have seemed like a godsend to Wright. The firm began a pattern for him that would be repeated throughout his early career and apprenticeship: that of having two powerfully gifted men as mentors, one oriented more toward business and engineering, the other steeped in design and aesthetics. Alan Conover and Lew Porter formed such a team. Then came Joseph Lyman Silsbee and Cecil S. Corwin. And finally, Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan.

    Perhaps the most important single building that contributed to Wright’s development was Conover and Koch’s Science Hall. The mark Science Hall had on Wright’s thinking is unmistakable. Science Hall was built with a frame made completely of steel beams, three-foot thick walls, double-wall air pockets and little interior wood. It was the first completely fireproof building at the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus and is one of the oldest surviving buildings in the world that makes substantial use of structural steel.

    Here are a few seminal ideas that Wright could have learned from Madison and its Science Hall:

    1. Science Hall is built into the hill not on top of it. This thematic core stayed with Wright his entire life, including for Taliesin (S.172), Fallingwater (S.231) and Marin County Civic Center (S.415–S.417).

    2. The approach and entryway to the building take the visitor up a series of dramatic turns before compressing space at the entryway and exploding it in the interior. This is standard with Wright from his Prairie works onward.

    3. Excess interior and exterior ornament is stripped away. This is decidedly not a Koch contribution to the design, but it is what Conover did as part of his alterations. Unlike many Victorian architects, Conover and Porter found that the integrity as well as beauty of a building lay in its fundamental truth as an architectural statement. Throughout his career, Wright exhibited a proclivity for removing exterior details and simplifying form. Wright laid claim to having designed the Heating Plant building behind Science Hall, a structure that embodies all the fundamental principles espoused by Conover and Porter. In fact, Conover’s alleged drawing of a balanced beam structure was reiterated precisely the same way in one of Wright’s Madison boathouse projects a few years later.

    4. Science Hall uses bricks as bricks, stone as stone, wood as wood. This technique does not attempt to disguise or tease these materials into something they are not. Here we have the essence of in the nature of materials, later the title of a book collaboration between Wright and Henry-Russell Hitchcock.

    5. Science Hall revels in soaring space that virtually hollows out the interior and makes it seem as light as a feather. What Koch-Conover-Porter achieved here is that old Asian proverb (attributed to Lao-Tse) about architecture not being defined by the walls of a building, but rather the space contained within the walls. This flowing, free-form space would become one of the hallmarks of Wright’s practice. Unity Temple (S.096) is an excellent example of how this lesson was put into practice years later.

    6. Congruent with masterful and dramatic use of space in Science Hall is the atrium. The whole central core—out of which the logic and interior of the building grow—is open and soaring. The earliest example of this open core in Wright’s work is Dr. Harlan’s home (S.018). It is interesting to note that in Corwin and Wright’s collaborations, only Wright seems interested in this theme, which he repeats in the Roloson Rowhouses (S.026), and later on a grand scale, in the Larkin Administration Building (S.093).

    7. Science Hall features innovative use of building materials. It is one of the first buildings in the United States to use a steel understructure to frame the building, which was at the time an almost unprecedented use of this material for practical and aesthetic purposes. This steel made the building fireproof, allowed the exterior and interior walls to be dissolved into flowing space, created an inner world inside the outer shell and became an integral exposed design element. Is it surprising that Wright never separated engineering from aesthetics in his commissions?

    SCIENCE HALL

    One can imagine Conover being frustrated by his protégé: Frank, that won’t work! Do it this way, the way I demonstrated in class! Apparently Conover was not always pleased with Frank Wright, who now used Lloyd as his middle name, though Conover enjoyed the younger man’s enthusiasm and originality. Fifteen years after he had solved a problem with an elegant post-and-beam structure, Wright would solve the same problem with a cantilever, which Conover had said couldn’t be done.

    What Wright may have contributed to Conover’s designs cannot be ascertained reliably, but one cannot help noticing that Conover’s designs gained flair, a liveliness lacking from his pre- and post-Wright years.

    The groundbreaking ideas that underpinned Conover and Porter’s projects were unparalleled in Wright’s education. Wright may have later embellished and expanded on Conover and Porter’s fundamental truths, but he learned and thoroughly assimilated them in Madison first.

    Wright’s next mentors were J. Lyman Silsbee and Cecil S. Corwin. Silsbee came from upstate New York to Chicago as the doyen of the shingle style. Corwin, a decade older than Wright, was a Silsbee draftsman and later an architect. Given that Wright boasted that all he needed to design a building were his T square and triangles, we must assume that it is Corwin working with Wright when we find interior spaces contained by a compass. When Wright began his own architectural practice, Corwin was nearby. In Chicago, their offices were side-by-side.

    Examples of their collaborative work are sprinkled throughout Wright’s work—S.014, S.020, S.028 and S.039 are the most obvious—up to 1896 when Corwin decamped to New York City. In Chicago’s Hyde Park, there are rows of buildings by Corwin that show Wright’s handiwork in geometric detail.

    But there was yet another duo that influenced Wright: Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, whose great Auditorium Building was in design and construction during Wright’s short time at their office. It was here that Wright designed a score of buildings, many of which are considered moonlighted or bootlegged works, as Wright’s contract specified no outside work. One does have to wonder, however, how Sullivan could not have known of Wright’s work outside the office, as the hardware—door knobs, hinges, plumbing fixtures—was bought by Wright from the same supply source used by his Lieber Meister.

    With its main entry in an extreme corner and centrally located fireplace, Frank Lloyd Wright’s own house plan gives us the first example of what was spatially important to the young architect.

    Over some drawings shown here, a green square has been drawn as an aid to the reader in following the incorporation of Wright’s home plan into later designs, such as the one for the Parker residence (S.017). The square, to Wright, meant integrity.

    Note that in both these plans Wright placed the entry and stairs to a corner of the house. Many Victorian houses had a central entry and stairway that split the house in two. Wright’s simple relocation of the entry to the side created a greater flow of interior space, the space within to be lived in, which became a standard that he carried even into the Usonian structures.

    This relocation became a signature of many a Wright design. Sometimes he located the entry to the side of the house, fully away from the street facade, as in the McArthur (S.011) and Harlan (S.018) homes. This carried through to his later development of the square house in the Fireproof House for $5,000 and its variants.

    The Prairie house turns the square inside out but, again, the entry is placed in a wing where it does not interfere with the flow from room to room. Finally, in his reduction of Prairie to his Usonian ideal, a simple L, the entry is placed under the carport roof (creating the first compression of space so essential to Wrightian space from Prairie onward) at the outside of the L corner so that, once entrants step inside, they find further compression to the sides, only to be released upon entry to the high-ceilinged living room.

    FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOUSE (S.002)

    PARKER RESIDENCE (S.017)

    AMERICAN FOUR-SQUARE WITH RIGHT-SIDE ENTRY.

    The Prairie era ran from Willits (S.054) through Tomek (S.128), the predecessor to the more famous Robie (S.127), and on to 1909 when Wright left for Fiesole, Italy, a small town overlooking Florence. Mamah Borthwick Cheney also headed to Europe having left her husband (S.104). She was researching Swedish philosophies including those of Emanuel Swedenborg.

    FELLOWS RESIDENCE (S.179.21a).

    When (Frank) Lloyd Wright (Junior) was asked to design the Swedenborgian church in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, a.k.a. Wayfarers Chapel, and a.k.a. The Glass Church, he said he needed to do no research into the religion, because it was, as Lloyd told me, what his father had taught him as a boy on his knee.

    In Fiesole, Wright, with his son Lloyd and an office draftsman, produced the great Wasmuth Portfolio. Its two volumes contained 100 lithographs of Wright’s work. Its actual title was Ausgefürte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright. Including works as early as 1893, but looking heavily at the work of the first decade of the twentieth century, this collection amounted to Wright’s celebration of and epitaph to Prairie.

    RUSSELL RESIDENCE (S.179.12a), WHERE THE WIDE SQUARE STRETCHES INTO A NARROW RECTANGLE.

    WARD WILLITS RESIDENCE (S.054): CRUCIFORM OR PINWHEEL? VIEWED FROM THE SKY, THIS IS A CRUCIFORM PLAN, MARKED BY THE BLUE LINES, BUT THE SPACE WITHIN TO BE LIVED IN, THE GREEN-SHADED AREA, IS A PINWHEEL. THE CRUCIFORM OF THE RELIGIOUS CATHEDRAL IS TRANSFORMED INTO A DOMESTIC TEMPLE WITH ITS ALTAR, THE HEARTH, AT ITS CENTER.

    He now broke from working for wealthy clients and for a decade strove to find a way to meet the needs of middle-class clients. From River Forest to Glencoe to Madison, he sought but didn’t find the answer.

    You must be wondering why I have not mentioned any of Wright’s nondomestic work: Larkin Building (S.093), Unity Temple (S.096), City National Bank and Park Inn Hotel (S.155–S.156), for instance, all built in the Prairie era.

    GENERIC TRIPARTITE SPATIAL ARRANGEMENT

    Or Midway Gardens (S.180), the Imperial Hotel (S.194), the Johnson Wax complex (S.237–S.238), Florida Southern College (S.251–S.258), the Guggenheim Museum (S.400) or the Marin County Civic Center (S.415–S.417), later well-known works.

    It is not because they are not important works. It is because Wright’s goal in all his architecture was to create a Democratic American Architecture.¹ To Wright, this had to be done for the home, the domestic temple.

    UNITY TEMPLE (S.096)

    LARKIN ADMINISTRATION BUILDING (S.093)

    What is important to know about Wright’s commercial and religious buildings is their tripartite arrangement of spaces. Everything is divided three ways, with the main room the largest, most open space. This is the tripartite arrangement of Unity Temple (S.096), the Larkin Administration Building (S.093), the Johnson Wax Administration Building (S.237), and the Guggenheim Museum (S.400).²

    JOHNSON WAX ADMINISTRATION BUILDING (S.237)

    GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM (S.400)

    It would be foolish to think that what Wright makes a standard in one area of design is not carried through to other areas. So, as we now move on to the Usonian era, this presentation of tripartite space should be easily transferred in your, the reader’s, mind:

    1. Living room

    2. Workspace-entry

    3. Quiet space (bedrooms)

    A completion of our journey through Wright’s creation of a Democratic American Architecture must now follow. After designing in the style of Silsbee, learning from Corwin and Sullivan, then experimenting as his clients would allow, Wright achieved Prairie architecture with the Ward Willits house (S.054). Then came the square houses with entry half outside the basic square. Turning his back on Prairie with the publication of the Wasmuth Portfolio, he still continued designing square houses, sometimes elongated into rectangles for narrow sites.

    Then in the 1920s, four clients, possibly coming first to his son Lloyd, who had developed a reputation as a designer of sets for Hollywood movies, approached Wright and he created the first Usonian textile-block houses.

    Four houses (S.214–S.217) were all on hilly sites, a problem Wright previously had only needed to solve extensively for Taliesin (S.218). But even that was not as steep as the hillsides for Harriet and Samuel Freeman (S.216) and for John Storer (S.215), or the deep ravine for Alice Millard (S.214), or the hilltop of the predecessor of Usonian in-line designs, the Mabel and Charles Ennis residence (S.217).

    That these houses were templates for later Usonian structures can be demonstrated in their geometry. Most clearly, one needs to see how the Samuel Freeman house is the forerunner of what most Wright historians (even I for a while) called the first Usonian, the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs First residence (S.234).

    Below is S.216, the Freeman house, geometrically altered from its hilly site to a flat site. How did I get this? By transforming a design for a steep hillside into what it could have been on a flat site.

    Here is the lower level of S.216:

    Here is the upper level, which at ground level has the garage:

    Remove the garage, and then flip the plan horizontally:

    Simplify the size. The smaller living room now gains the terrace of the lower level:

    Rotate the flipped upper level 90 degrees, and then elide (no stairs needed).

    Now, look at the first diagram of the Freeman house, where both axes have been flipped to get an image that can be seen in direct comparison to the Jacobs First residence:

    This arrangement—living room, workspace, quiet (bedroom) space—became the signature of all Usonian homes. If this seems complex, it was simple to Wright while he used only his T square and triangles to create his house plans.

    While we are looking at the transformation of Wright’s architecture from Prairie to Usonia via Samuel Freeman to Herbert Jacobs, we must step back to the cruciform to see how it became the Usonian L:

    The servants’ space is removed, because there are no servants in Usonia, and the formal dining room is no longer needed in the casual family-oriented Usonian home:

    Note the grid. Used from Prairie on as a means of simplifying design and an aid in construction, it is scored on the flat concrete floor in Usonia. Walls are placed on the lines:

    The bedrooms are brought down to ground level, and the porte cochere is turned into a simple carport, cantilevered from the main masonry core:

    And here we are, back to the Jacobs L-plan Usonian home.

    Once we have the basic L-plan Usonian, it can be varied many ways. Straighten it out, for example, as in the Euchtman residence (S.270). If you add a triangle or an equilateral parallelogram (diamond), you get some nice additional angles to 90 degrees and 180 degrees, as seen in the Hughes residence (S.303).

    EUCHTMAN RESIDENCE (S.270)

    HUGHES RESIDENCE (S.303)

    R. L. WRIGHT RESIDENCE (S.358)

    When Wright learned in the late 1930s that plywood soaked in water could be curved, he began using the compass (see, e.g., the R. L. Wright residence [S.358]). It is all so simple, yet too many obfuscate the obvious. See the Lykes residence (S.433) for an example of what Wright could do stretching an in-line into a circular plan. This is just one of the themes that runs concurrent with Wright’s development of modules other than the square.

    Having developed the textile-block system, Wright could not resist resurrecting it in the late 1950s. See, for example, the Tonkens and Jackson residences (S.386 and S.407.1). For clarity in the drawings, each of these works has had its carport/garage and grid removed. The Jackson is the Tonkens with the workspace moved to opposite the living room, as in the Willey (S.229), which immediately preceded Jacobs I.

    LYKES RESIDENCE (S.433)

    TONKENS RESIDENCE (S.386)

    JACKSON RESIDENCE (S.407.1)

    WILLEY RESIDENCE (S.229)

    Note that Tonkens is textile-block construction and the Jackson uses Masonite paneling. So now, as in the Samuel Freeman block to Jacobs I paneling, the Tonkens block becomes the Erdman Prefab #1 (S.406–S.411) paneling. Wright comes full circle. He was not about to let a good idea go to waste.

    As you should now see, the plan reveals so much. Yet we must go one step further: Wright did not see just the plan in its two dimensions, but the three-dimensional building that would be built from it. This is the full flowering of his genius.

    So go back to the plans, and image the buildings built from them. If you need help, consult the body of the catalog. Of course, images of all the items shown here by plans are in this

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