Bernard Pyron
The photos on this article which I posted on this site in the past disappeared, so I am posting it again.
William Storrer says that the "... Prairie School had died out by the early 1920s. In the Prairie era, Wright had created an American - some would say only a Midwestern - architecture. He had not, however, created a Democratic architecture (1)." Wright's democratic, more affordable and compact houses from 1936 to 1959 were called "Usonians." The Prairie homes of about 1901 to 1913 are larger than the Usonians, since they were designed for the Upper Middle Class. And because there was a lingering caste system at that time in America, in part because these mansions contained quarters for live-in servants they were larger than they might have been. In addition, many of the prairie homes had an extra entry for servants and delivery men, while the family and guests entered at another door.
(l) http://www.
Wright broke out of the box in steps. Over a period of a few years he developed ways of making interior space in his big Prairie houses flow in and around jogs in walls, into other spaces,and he varied the ceiling heights to structure space vertically. With its horizontal lines and hip roof, the Malcolm Wiley house (1934) of Minneapolis reminds us of the horizontal look of the Prairie houses. But the Wiley house can be considered as a direct forerunner of the First Jacobs house, known as the first of Wright's Usonians. Like the Jacobs house, the Wiley residence is compact and simplified to cut costs and to make it more functional.
WRIGHT'S WISCONSIN POPULISM
In his fall 1952 talk at the University of Wisconsin Student Union auditorium Wright said "A Democrat is born hating the government." By Democrat he did not mean the Democratic Party. He defined Democratic as the freedom and dignity of the individual, an ideology that came out his Wisconsin Populism and Progressivism. Progressivism, and Populism before it, had upheld the common people and were both critical of the rich - and what we would now call the ruling elite. The more agrarian populism of the Midwest, Texas and the South, as well as Wisconsin Progressivism were also critical of government. Wright's Usonian architecture for the common man was inspired by his Progressivism, which was influenced by the earlier agrarian populism. Progressivism taught that the common man is capable of improving himself and the whole society might be improved. To Wright, the Middle and Lower Class people might be raised up to appreciate great art and to develop as individuals in a free, democratic culture. His organic architecture, he thought, was a major way common people could be elevated. Wright thought his architecture would edify the Middle and Lower Middle Classes. He suggested to me in the fall of 1957 that I was studying his houses of the fifties for "my own edification." Progressivism rejected Social Darwinism, the position taken by many of the rich and powerful figures of the day. Social Darwinism was the philosophy which said that the rich deserve to rule over the common people because they have proven themselves fit to do so. Populism and Progressivism also opposed corruption in the financial and business worlds and in government.
THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF WRIGHT
On religion, Wright said: " I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing.(2) Romans 1: 25 points out that many people, like Wright, prefer to worship creation rather than the creator. Wright was clearly not a Christian. He was not a driver of an avant-garde art wrecking machine like most other Masters of Modern art, especially the surrealists, who attacked Christianity.. Wright drew inspiration from Taoism, and especially from Lao Tse. In his Autobiography, he claimed to have been into Celtic Druidism. His last wife,Olgivanna Hinzenberg, was into mysticism, a follower of the mystic Gurdjieff, who visited her and Wright at Taliesin. In addition, Wright's beloved mistress, Mamah Cheney, wife of Edwin H. Cheney, was as independent as Wright. She translated feminist books on free love, from German and Swedish, and promoted the early feminist agenda (3)
http://www.oprf.com/flw/bio/
In his review of the book, The Fellowship, by Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, Storrer says "Mamah was a translator of the work of Swedenborg, and it is that influence that fed Wright's spiritual world." Swedenborg was a mystic, and even a gnostic. So two of the four women in Wright's life were into mysticism.(4)
(http://www.
BY 1915 WRIGHT TURNED TO DESIGNING FOR THE COMMON PEOPLE
It is easier to see how Wright's Wisconsin Populism and Progressivism led him to finally turn from his Prairie houses for the Upper Middle Class to finding ways to create affordable houses for the Middle and Lower Middle Classes which also reached the level of art. Unitarianism, Taoism,. Druidism and mysticism are not populist, and neither is gnosticism. In fact, to a great extent mysticism comes out of gnosticism in which a small elite claimed to have the secret knowledge that can enlighten a few of the unenlightened. After he stopped designing Prairie houses, and got back from Europe, Wright turned his attention to designing homes for the lower middle class. His first designs were for Arthur l. Richards, using the American System Built home process. Four duplex apartment units and two bungalows were built in Milwaukee in 1915-1916. Lumber was cut at a factory and shipped to the sites to be assembled, which reduced the cost of the dwellings. Later, during the fifties, Madison builder Marshall Erdman constructed two versions of Wright's Pre-Fab Plan Number One in Madison. The first built was the Eugene Van Tamelen house (1956) on the south edge of Madison's Crestwood, which was largely surrounded by woods in 1956. This is the only Wright house I was in during its construction. Five houses were built using the Pre-Fab Design Number one. A second pre-fab in Madison, on the South Belt Line, the Arnold Jackson house, is based on the Number One pre-Fab Plan but uses stone rather than the masonite of the Van Tamelen house(1956). Wright's goal was to create houses that the common people could afford, and yet would also rise to the level of art. He did not fail in this goal, either in his pre-fabs of the middle fifties, nor in his Usonian square and diamond module houses of the thirties, forties and fifties, which did not use the pre-fab method of construction to any great extent.
WRIGHTS CONCRETE BLOCK CALIFORNIA HOUSES OF THE TWENTIES
In the twenties, a few years after the American System Built homes, Wright did his textured concrete block houses in California. These are the Millard, Storer, Freedman and Ennis houses. In these houses textured concrete blocks, many of which have designs on their surface, were laid on top of one another rather than staggered as in the conventional way of laying blocks. Wright wanted to use this concrete block system in his San Marcos In the Desert project which was not built due to the Stock Market crash of 1929. However, he did make use of a simplified version of his concrete block system - without the designs on the face of the blocks - in some of his Usonians of the forties and fifties. For Example, the Ward McCartney (1949) house of Parkwyn Village, Michigan, based upon the diamond module, is built of concrete blocks laid one on top of another.
FIRST HERBERT JACOBS HOUSE OF 1936
About a quarter mile northwest of the Duck Pond parking lot at the edge of the Arboretum on Madison's west side sits the First Herbert Jacobs house. I was in it in 1956 and drove by it numerous times. In this house Wright laid down a large part of his domestic architectural grammar for the Usonians to come. The First Jacobs house is based upon a unit system, in this case, a two by four foot module. Most of Wright's walls follow the unit lines, though a few walls fall between the lines of the grid system. The house has 1,500 square feet and the reported cost was $5,500 in 1936, including Wright's fee of $450. In the First Jacobs design the kitchen is small in size but it is at the center of the junction of the two wings of the "L" shape. A gap in the wall separating the kitchen from the living area allows easy access from one room to another, while another gap allows access to the hall of the bedroom wing. There are two larger bedrooms in the bedroom wing of the "L" and one smaller one at the end. The "L" shape of the house partially encloses a garden rather than the courtyard that a Prairie house might open to. Rows of tall French-window doors are found all along the side of the living room facing the garden, and there are some on the garden side of the bedrooms. The house tends to be closed to the street.
Part of the vocabulary Wright established for his Usonians in this house include the poured concrete floor with heating pipes embedded in it, and wood sandwich walls which make conventional 2 x 4 studs unnecessary, and the cantilevered carport, replacing the garage. He did not always use his system of wood sandwich walls, but sometimes substituted concrete block or stone. First of all, the 1936 Herbert Jacobs house is relatively small and compact, which is true of many of his Usonians though some are larger in size. Second, he put the bedrooms on the ground floor rather than in a second floor. And the entire house is made up of only one floor. A short bedroom wing runs off the central kitchen area with a hall along one side. The kitchen is decreased in size and Wright got rid of the Victorian dining room. The kitchen which Wright called the workspace adjoins the living space. The First Jacobs house has a flat roof, unlike many later Usonians with hip roofs.
THE UNIT SYSTEM HELPS CREATE COHERENCE
The box room is created by four 90 degree angles. So, to began breaking out of the box, Wright might have gotten rid of all or many corners that are 90 degrees, and replaced them with 120 angle corners. The hexagon is a six sided geometrical form with each side having 120 degree internal angles. And a octagon is an eight sided form with 135 degree internal angles. To find the internal angle of any polygon, multiply the number of sides by 180, subtract 360 and divide by the number of sides. To find the internal angles of a regular square polygon, that is, a box form, 180 times 4 equals 360. Divided by 4, we get four angles each of 90 degrees. The same formula worked out for a hexagon gives us 120 degree angles and for an octagon it yields 135 degree internal angles. Use of 135 or 120 degree internal angles breaks away from the strict box form to some extent. The octagon is close to being a circle and Wright eventually went to the circle or semicircle as his unit of design.
NONRECTILINEAR AREAS IN THE NAKOMA AND SAN MARCOS IN THE DESERT PROJECTS
Wright experimented with 135 degree angles in his Lake Tahoe Summer Colony of Emerald Bay in California in 1923. And in his Nakoma Country Club Project for Madison, Wisconsin of 1923 he used some nonrectilinear angles, as well as his "Wigwam" steeply pitched hip roofs. A central area of the Nakoma Country Club Project is an octagon form, with eight sides and internal angles of 135 degrees. The Lake Tahoe and Nakoma Country Club designs were never built (5) .
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/
Then in 1928 Wright created an interesting dining room for the hotel that was to be part of San Marcos In the Desert. Designed for Alexander Chandler, this complex was to be built at the base of the Salt River Mountains south of Phoenix. Wright designed the concrete blocks to be used in the hotel and in the individual homes. Fig One would show the 90 and 120 degree angles of the main part of the hotel dining room. He drew lines for the plan which form the double equilateral triangles,or diamond shapes, that we find in the smaller Robert Berger and Patrick Kinney homes of the early fifties. The upper level of the hotel also shows his use of the triangle(6)
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/
See this web site for the floor plan of the hotel of the San Marcos In the Desert Project. Individual homes were to be included in the San Marcos In the Desert complex, and Wright designed two of these homes. The Wellington and Ralph Cudney project floor plan of 1928 that would be shown in Fig Two was also created using the diamond module grid system, yielding 120 and 60 degree angles. The Cudney project of 1928 anticipates the 120 degree internal angles of the Paul R. Hanna house (1936) of Palo Alto, California, based on the hexagon, and the diamond module homes of the fifties. See http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/
THE PAUL R. HANNA HOUSE OF 1936
Fig Three would show the Hanna house floor plan with the interlocking hexagons drawn on the walkways around the house (7).
Stanford Historical Society Newsletter, Vol 2, No 2/autumn, 1977.
The floor plan of the Hanna house is within a pdf file and several pages into the file. In the Hanna house, Wright laid out his floor plan based upon the 120 degree angles of the interlocking hexagons. When a wall turned, it turned at a 120 degree angle and after the turn it was parallel to the opposite side of the hexagons. But by about 1950 and the Robert Berger house, Wright was using his diamond module floor plan. He started the plan of this house by drawing lines on paper, such that the intersecting lines create many diamond shapes. The diamond shapes are two equilateral triangles joined together. The angles within each diamond shape - double equilateral triangles - are 120 and 60 degrees. Unlike the Hanna house floor plan in which Wright used all 120 degree angles, in the Robert Berger house of 1950 he used some 60 degree angles, creating the sharp points of his plan. For example, the "fins" coming out of the Berger plan end in a 60 degree angle. The Stuart Richardson house of Glen Ridge, New Jersey, designed in 1941 but built in 1951, is another example of Wright's rare use of the interlocking hexagon unit system. This plan makes use of 120 and 60 degree angles.(8)
(8) http://www.savewright.org/
By the time Wright got his first fully nonrectilinear house built in
1936, the Hanna house, he had developed a new grammar for American domestic architecture. Even in his Prairie homes and later 90 degree angle houses, he had broken out of the box interior space.
Wright is said to call the architecture of the International Style
"Flat chested architecture." The buildings of the International Style
by architects like Mies Van Der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier had flat surfaces, and box interior space, even though they sometimes
put a lot of windows in the flat surface walls.
In his rectilinear 90 degree angle designs, Wright broke up the monotony of the four walls and ceiling which create the space of a room as a box. He jogged walls to avoid the monotony of long straight lines, created partial partitions within spaces, and created partial ceilings so that he broke out of box space in the vertical dimension. His lighting decks, many times decorated with greenery and Sung dynasty vases or contemporary pottery, broke space in the vertical and allowed it to flow above the deck. A whole wall was sometimes replaced by tall french-window doors. He put rows of windows up under the ceilings and eaves to replace the single windows that broke the continuity of a wall.. "Rooms" were opened to the next "room" by elimination of doors. Wright made space flow in and out and up and down. He created interior space that was ever changing as one moved through it. The sculptured external form of his buildings are expressions of his interior space. In many designs he carried an element of design used to structure interior space to the exterior to add to the complexity of the exterior. But he nearly always created a basic structure first of all, a theme, and/or a geometric modular system. His complexity did not become chaos because it was complexity within a system which structured complexity.
He used the hexagon and later the diamond module system to go farther than before in "breaking out of the box." He said something in one of his talks about his waging war on the box and having a delightful time of doing it. Her added that he had become a curiosity in dong so.
Nonrectilinear Modular Systems
For Wright the 120 degree hexagon, the 120 and 60 degree diamond module and the circular module - became means for creating more interesting interior spaces than is possible with the 90 degree angle structure. Adding the 120 degree and 60 degree angles to Wright's older vocabulary of interior space gave the viewer the possibility of even more unexpected unfolding of space before him as he walks in such a house.
The first secret of the unity of Wright's diamond module houses is their unit system. Parallel lines are first drawn on the paper and the floor plans are laid down on these lines which at their intersections form double equilateral triangles, or a diamond shape. Each area of the house is composed of a given number of units. The unit system makes it easier to work out proportions, and the consistent 60 and 120 degree angles add to the unity of the house. On top of this unit system, Wright added his genius in integrating the dimensions of architecture, the floor plan with three dimensional space, and interior space with exterior form.
The Hanna house, called a Usonian, is larger and more complex than the compact and smaller Robert Berger house of San Anselmo, California, designed in 1950. The Berger house is not based upon the interlocking hexagon system, but on the less complex diamond module. See Fig 4, the Robert Berger house floor plan I photographed at Hillside Drafting Room in 1958.
Fig Four Robert Berger House Floor Plan, 1951
Above Robert Berger House, From a Slide Bruce Radde Sent Me in 1958
Bruce Radde, Photographer
The Berger house was almost finished in 1958.
The wall angles of the Berger house are mostly 120 degree angles, except for the fins, the lower right hand corner of the shop (above) and the point of the terrace walls on the left. Look near the base of the terrace wall above. There is a second fin ending in that sharp 60 degree angle. Notice, though, that Wright did not use 60 degree angles as corners in the living, kitchen or bedroom area, but only for the shop. There is a fin with a 60 degree point extending out of the shop area. I believe these fins are open to the interior and are used for storage.
THE PATRICK KINNEY HOUSE OF 1951-1953
Fig 6 shows the floor plan of the Patrick Kinney house (1951) in Lancaster, Wisconsin. The Kinney house can be called a Usonian, and is a descendant of the rectilinear module First Jacobs house.
Floor Plan of Patrick Kinney House
The First Herbert Jacobs house of 1936 was an L shape, with the living area in one wing of the L and the bedroom wing in the other wing. The kitchen was located centrally at the junction of the living and bedroom wings. But in the Robert Berger and Patrick Kinney diamond module houses the kitchen, living room and a small bath were in the main hexagonal shaped area, while a bedroom wing ran off of this central hexagon, not as an L shape, but in line with the living-kitchen area. Designed in 1951 and completed by 1953, the Patrick Kinney house was on the north edge of Lancaster, Wisconsin when I visited it in October of 1958. Margaret and Patrick Kinney had covered their outdoor plants to protect them from the Wisconsin October chill so they would show up better in my photos. The main part of the Kinney house is the central hexagonal area. Within this hexagon, an almost solid hexagonal rock stack rises above the shingled roof line providing a vertical element to the more horizontal hip roof lines. This stack has within it the kitchen, small bath and laundry. Following the modular lines, the living space flows on three sides of the central stack. And at the northeast corner of the hexagon, Wright placed the master bedroom, which connects to the hall that flows around the central stack A triangular 'fin' with its 60 degree angle point, extends out from the master bedroom. See Fig 6. Again, following the modular lines, a triangular carport is developed out of the east side of the central hexagon. In Fig 7 the Kinney house is viewed from the south with the bedroom at the end of the bedroom wing coming to a sharp 60 degree point. The wider hexagonal main area is shown beyond the point of the bedroom wing. Look to the left of the cars of the fifties under the carport. Patrick Kinney stands there in the shadows.
Photo I Took of Patrick Kinney House From the South in 1958
Black and White Photo of Patrick Kinney House from the Northwest
View of Patrick Kinney House From Northwest.
This photro shows the central hexagonal stack that is open by French Window Doors to the countryside on the west. The bedroom wing can be seen to the right.
Above Is a Photo of the Kiney House Seen from the Northeast
Then Fig. 10 looks directly at the northwest part of the living area and to the left at the master bedroom part of the hexagon. Note that the stack that rises above the shingle roof is open in part by glass to the north. There is something 'Indianesque' to me about this view of the house, something that reminds me of Wright's 'Wigwam' projects of the twenties.
Above: . The 1949 Ward McCartney house in Parkwyn Village, Michigan belongs to this family of small diamond module houses. Wright used his Usonian concrete block system in the McCartney house, which also has a central hexagon-like central area with a bedroom off of it. I photographed the McCartney house when I was in Parkwyn Village in the summer of 1958 while seeing the Brown and other Wright houses there, but I do not have a photo of its floor plan.
Finally, Fig 11 shows a little of the interior of the Kinney house, especially the interior rock work. The Kinney house has very good Wrightian rock work and I wonder if stone masons can now be easily found who can do Wright's type of stone laying? Patrick Kinney was the contractor for his own house. In an April 2007 phone conversation Margaret Kinney told me that during the construction of their house Patrick got up early and hauled rock to the house site from west of Lancaster before going to his office for the day.
THE 1949 WARD MCCARTNEY HOUSE
The 1949 Ward McCartney house in Parkwyn Village, Michigan belongs to this family of small diamond module houses. Wright used his Usonian concrete block system in the McCartney house, which also has a central hexagon-like central area with a bedroom off of it. I photographed the McCartney house when I was in Parkwyn Village in the summer of 1958 while seeing the Brown and other Wright houses there, but I do not have a photo of its floor plan. See Fig.12 for a photo of the McCartney exterior.
Above, Flooir Plan For Ralph Moreland Project
1949 RALPH MORELAND PROJECT FOR AUSTIN, TEXAS
In 1956 Wright drew up plans for a relatively small diamond module house for Ralph Moreland to be built in the hills west of Austin, Texas, across the Colorado River to the west. Unfortunately, the bids of the contracters were about twice the $40,000 estimate that Wright gave to Moreland and it was not built. Fig 13 shows the Ralph Moreland floor plan. Then Fig 14 has Wright's perspective drawing for Ralph Moreland. The Moreland project has in common with the Robert Berger, Patrick Kinney and Ward McCartney houses a main hexagonal living-kitchen area, with the kitchen stack rising above theroof line. In all four diamond module designs - of the period of 1949 to 1956 - Wright ran a bedroom wing off of that main hexagonal area open to the interior living area by tall french-window doors. That dark structure to the left is the fireplace. On the floor plan and perspective drawing there is the kitchen structure that rises above roof line, like those of the Berger and Kinney houses. There is entry through a narrow way between the fireplace stack and the kitchen stack that allows space to flow on the other side of the living area. Behind the fireplace is a room, probably a bedroom. to the left of that room there is marked, the master bedroom,with a bath in between it and the bedroom to its left. There is also a fourth room that might be a guest bedroom, which points out from the main wall to the left. In Fig 13, notice the 'prow' of the house which is the terrace wall, that looks like a ship sailing on this Texas hill.
Above Ralph Moreland Project Perspective Drawing
Fig 14. Ralph Moreland Perspective Drawing - for this house designed to sit on a hill west of Austin, Texas
REFERENCES
(1)William Storrer on the Prairie Houses. (l)
> http://www.
(2) Wright's Religion. http://www.ronaldbrucemeyer.
(3) Mysticism of Two of Wright's Women: Mamah and Olgivanna.
(4) Storrer On Mamah's Mysticism. http://www.
(5) Nakoma Country Club Project, 1923.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/
(6) San Marcos In the Desert Project, 1928.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/
(7) Paul Hanna House, 1936. Stanford Historical Society Newsletter,
Vol 2, No 2/autumn, 1977.
(8) Stuart Richardson House, 1941.
http://www.savewright.org/
Report on April 11, 2007:
"I just talked on the phone a long time with Margaret Kinney, widow
of Patrick Kinney, of the house in Lancaster, Wisconsin. She is now
in Florida, but plans to return to Wisconsin this month, I assume to live
in her Wright house. Original Wright owners who are still alive and still
living in their houses are rare.
I asked her to confirm some information I had heard. She said Patrick
did act as his own contractor and himself mined the Wisconsin
limestone for the house from a site nearby to the west of the house.
She said every morning he brought in a load of stone before going to
his attorney's office.
As I had heard, Patrick Kinney and Mr. Arnold who owned another Wright house
NE of Madison both took courses in Art History under Professor John F.
Kienitz who turned them on to Wright. Patrick is dead now and so are
both Mr and Mrs Arnold. I also studied under John Kienitz at
Wisconsin.
Margaret Kinney had worked for one of Wright's sisters, which I had heard before.
The Kinney house had another bedroom wing added to the northeast she said.
She agreed that their house is a gem of a small diamond module design
and the rock work is excellent. She said that many trees have grown up
around the house since I was there in 1958. I saw a photo taken from
the south in recent years by Peter Beers with a large tree obscuring
the view I took in 1958. The Peter Beers photo is at:
http://www.peterbeers.net/
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