Sunday, May 22, 2016

Frank Lloyd Wright in Buffalo

Even though I went to the Darwin Martin House in Buffalo just last fall, I was eager to return when my friend Nanette visited recently from Florida. We made an entire day of it by looping in Graycliff Estate, as well.

I found I had forgotten more of the previous tour than I recalled, although it’s also possible that each docent emphasizes different things. For example, Wright’s architecture for the 1.5 acre site was meant to “act as recuperation,” to appeal to Darwin Martin’s desire for a true home (which he hadn’t had during his challenging childhood from a broken family). Martin dreamed of uniting his fractured past in Wright’s design of spatial openness, tempered by a warm, human scale (although the main house is anything but warm!). I was reminded of Wright’s fondness for hiding the front door, to make visitors really examine the house, and of his art of lowering the entrance to a room so that you would feel a sense of “compression and release.”

Art glass windows
The house fell into disrepair after it was abandoned by the family, after their financial ruin in the Great Depression. Curiously, Wright, who owed Martin a considerable sum of money, never repaid the debt, but instead purchased back furniture and art glass from Martin’s wife, Isabelle, to try to keep her afloat… This house was built before Wright began “client-proofing” his houses by building most of the furniture in, to prevent the residents from deviating from his floor plan! In the intervening years, three of the structures were bulldozed to make room for apartment buildings, to finance renovations on the main house (the apartment buildings have thankfully since been razed).

Several of the spaces I’d previously seen were off limits, due to the ongoing $50 million restoration project (when asked when the project was projected to end, the docent replied, “at $50 million”!). The 15,000 piece glass mosaic for the fireplace should be complete by the end of this year, so another trip in 2017 will probably be in order…

Isabelle Martin had poor eyesight, so when the Martins engaged Wright to design their 6800 s.f. “lake cottage,” she was the client of record, and worked with the architect to design a more open house with lots of light (and none of the customary art glass), and lots of passive solar. Construction took advantage of free matieral: some of the Tichenor limestone of the cliff that had fallen to the beach, complete with fossils and the rust from the stone’s ore content. Other novel features included one room’s recycled slate from Buffalo sidwalks, when they were being replaced by concrete; a 16-story steel tower to descend from the house to the beach; a separate heat hut for the steam heat; recessed radiators; and octagonal doorknobs.

model of Graycliff
fossils and rust
The Martins continued to occupy Graycliff for five years after they abandoned the city house. In the 50’s, it was bought by Hungarian priests for student boarding, and their modifications upset Wright the one time he visited. The Graycliff Conservancy is in the midst of several phases of restoration, so this house will also continue to evolve and be worthy of return trips. The lake setting was beautiful, even in late winter, and I can only imagine what it will look like when I visit again some summer, and everything is in bloom.

A cool house on Old
Lakeshore Road
For Nanette’s version of the visit, click on DarwinMartin House and Graycliff Estate.

No comments:

Post a Comment