Curtis Faville shares my interest in architecture, so I was not surprised to hear from him after my comments on the work in Chicago of Thomas Beeby, Frank Gehry & Frank Lloyd Wright.

 

Dear Ron:

 

Wright's Robie House was the first important example of the so-called "Prairie Style", though historically there were at least three other architects working in the Mid-West at that time who were associated with design of this kind, albeit much less talented (and self-aggrandizing) than FLW. Wright's houses typically cost 5-10 times more than traditional houses, often had "unbuildable" components, the roofs leaked, the floors sank, the doors stuck, etc., and each required the seduction of a "special" client with bottomless pockets and a flair for the unconventional. Most of FLW's important works were built for just such clients. The interiors were both stimulating and revolutionary, but ultimately proved uncomfortable for their occupants. One by one, the houses have passed into private or public trusts, run as institutional showcases or tourist destinations, which function they appear to serve admirably.

 

The next time you visit Chi, you should bop over to Oak Park and see the Wright House & Studio, and do the walking tour of the dozen or so houses (all within 3-4 blocks of radius) he designed circa the first decade of the century. My favorite is the Heurtley House, only two doors down. It's not open to the public, but (like almost all his works) can be toured in numerous excellent books which have been published mostly in Japan, where FLW's reputation is even greater than in America.

 

Not only was Wright not a particularly practical designer, he was a horrible teacher, as evidenced by the fact that no one of any note ever attended his Taliesin East (in Wisconsin), or Taliesin West schools in Arizona. Nevertheless, these are among his architectural masterpieces and if you have the opportunity, you should visit both. The one in Wisconsin, in Spring Green, is only about 50 miles away from where my real Father, John Calef, grew up in New London, and undoubtedly was the main reason John became an architect.

 

If you have the time, you should read a good biography of FLW. His life had as many turnings and abrupt crises as any artist in history, with great tragedies and triumphs all along the way. His second wife Mamah Borthwick was murdered, along with several others, by an ax-wielding servant one fateful night in 1914. Perhaps it was God's way of punishing Wright, who had carried on an ignominious affair with Mamah while still living with and married to wife number one and their several children in the Oak Park compound.

 

Truly a fascinating man, but not one to hire to build your house.

 

Chicago is a deeply divided city, with the notorious ghettos on the South Side as ingrown and regressive as they were 75 years ago. Police still routinely pick up black teenagers wandering north across La Salle into the western suburbs and drive them back over the "border." Downtown Chicago died in the 1950's like most other major American cities, and has never really recovered. It doesn't help that Michigan Avenue abuts the Lake and its ever-present gale-force winds. The old joke is that the chain links along the sidewalk are for people to hold onto during the winter to prevent being pushed southwest across the ice. I like the old red stone arts building across the street from the Art Institute, with its 1920's elevators, and echoing stairwells. I was equally stunned by the Seurat when I visited in 1994, and spent 30 minutes in front of it, as I'm sure my mother must have done when she saw it 57 years earlier.

 

Tally-Ho,

 

Curtis

 

There are two Wright projects in which I’ve spent a serious amount of time over the years. One is the Guggenheim & the other is his final project, completed after his death, the Marin Civic Center. Designed to harmonize with the surrounding hills, the structure inside is a serious comment on how architecture communicates values. It consists of two long buildings that connect at a central rounded dome. On the top floor under the dome is – or was, when I worked in Marin County in the 1970s – the county’s main library. On the floor beneath, in one of the most oppressive rooms I’ve ever been inside, is the boardroom of the county supervisors. Functionally the room is a fraction of the circle – literally a slice of a pie – & its interior uses low ceilings and a “sunburst” pattern of fluorescent lighting (radiating out from a point behind the supervisors’ seating) that makes the audience physically want to cringe whenever inside the room. The worst element, however, is that the county jail further below is built so as to have no windows & no access to natural light.