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rebecca - my own home

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Amritha Bharadwaj

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Guannan

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Shriwali

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Xavia

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VIOLA YUE QI

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Evie

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rebecca

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xin huang

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Andre

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MingTo TAI

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Ward Willits House

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internationally renowned couturier.
2 children
large dog
four staff
hosts extravagant soirees at home...
single level, large block..

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How often do you find yourself in McCook? It's 70 miles south of I-90, on the southern border of Nebraska. Unless you live close, probably rarely. Ours' turned out to be just that. On a recent trip with my daughter's family, driving from Chicago to Seattle, we found ourselves in North Platte at 3:30 pm on January 11. Timing was critical. My son-in-law and grandson had 5 minutes to find a restaurant with a television. The Seahawks/Saints playoff game was about to begin.
Knowing we had a couple of hours to kill, my daughter looked at me with a smile on her face, and asked if there were and Frank Lloyd Wright houses close by. What are the chances of having a couple hours to kill, and at the same time being within an hour of the only Wright home in Nebraska. Our enemy was daylight. Would we even make it there in time. With a returned grin on my face, we headed south.
In February, 1901, the Ladies Home Journal published A Home in a Prairie Town. Five months later they published A Small House with "Lots of Room in It", July both authored by Frank Lloyd Wright. "In these designs, Wright officially unveiled the Prairie House..." Manson, Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910, p.103. Manson continues, "These two original and revolutionary Prairie Houses, accorded the widest publicity then possible among American homeowners, had no immediate effect in the nation at large. They may have motivated some prospective clients in the Chicago area, but, with one exception, the Sutton house at McCook, Nebraska, no commissions came to The Studio (Oak Park) as a direct result of the publication of the model houses" (p.106).
But it did initiated an earlier project. Randy Stramel, a native of McCook, and at the time a student at the University of Nebraska School of Architecture, wrote his thesis on the Charles W. Barnes project."The Sutton House", Morgan, Altberg, 2008, p.9. According to Stramel's thesis (1991), after reading the article, Barnes contacted Wright's office inquiring about a smaller version of the home published in the article. Nearly a year later 1902, Wright's office responded that there were none available, but that Wright would be more than happy to design a smaller home for him,"The 'Other' house", Discoe, 2011. Another year passed before plans for the home arrived. It would not be until 1903 that the first set of drawing would arrive in McCook.
Changes were made to the initial plans, and according to Morgan, Barnes traveled to Oak Park in August 1903 to finalize plans. The final floor plans were very similar to the floor plans of the Horner Residence (1908). A basic cruciform layout. The front door opens to a Reception Room. Up a few stairs, the Dining Room is on the left, the Living Room with a large fireplace is to the right. Straight ahead are the stairs that lead to the upper floor. Behind the stairs is the kitchen. Glancing at the exterior drawings, there are similarities to the Sutton Residence. Correspondence between Barnes and Wright's office ended in January of 1904, and unfortunately the project was never completed.

The Barnes and the Suttons were neighbors and friends. It was through this relationship that the Suttons most likely were introduced to Wright. Eliza Sutton wrote in her first correspondence to Wright, "Having seen a plan you drew for Chas. Barnes and being favorable impressed, write to you to see if you can do something for me..." Morgan, p.12.
Harvey Putman Sutton was born in western New York State in 1860. When he was 8 years old, his father died. As a result, he and his mother moved to Dexter, Michigan, to live with an older brother who owned a jewelry store. His father was a musical instrument salesman, and past his love of music to his son Harvey, who traveled through Nebraska with the Forepaugh-Sells Circus band when he was 22 years old. According to the 1940 Who's Who, he was born on July 17, 1860. His parents were Joel C and Sarah (Robinson) Sutton. He married Eliza B. Munson on August 4, 1886 in Ainsworth, Nebraska. They had two children who survived, a son Harold P. and a daughter, Velma L. (Mrs. George Kisevalter Jr. Their son Robert Munson Sutton was born on February 22, 1891 and died on November 11, 1905.) From 1884-1889 he established and operated a jewelry store in Ainsworth. In April 1889 he established H. P. Sutton & Co., a jewelry store in McCook. From 1889-1924 he was the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad bandmaster in McCook. The band played at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha 1898-99. He was very active in the community.
It seems safe to assume that music was his passion, jewelry was his job. He moved to McCook in 1889, the year he had the opportunity to become the bandmaster.
It took three attempts to satisfy Elizabeth Sutton, who took the lead in communicating with Wright's Oak Park office. She acted as contractor and seems to be the impetus behind the Suttons building a Wright home. Morgan had the opportunity to review the original correspondence between the Sutton and Wright's office. In his article"A Wright House on the Prairie", The Prairie School Review, Third Quarter 1965, and his book "The Sutton House", 2008, he does an excellent job of documenting the transition from Scheme #1 through the final Scheme #3. We are indebted. The Suttons began with a request for remodeling their existing home most likely in January 1905. On February 8, 1905, Wright's office responded and acknowledged receipt of the letter from the Suttons. It is followed by a letter dated March 24, and indicated that the sketches were sent out (Scheme #1), but did not include a second story to the remodel.
Obviously not pleased, because Mrs. Sutton had requested a second floor, Wright's office responded on April 18, 1905, indicating the sketches for an alternate scheme (#2), included a second floor. Mrs. Sutton was still "very unhappy" and on July 17, Wright's office sent a third scheme for an entirely new house. Correspondence continued for the next three years, and the home was finally completed around September of 1908.
Text by Douglas M. Steiner, Copyright January 2014

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How often do you find yourself in McCook? It's 70 miles south of I-90, on the southern border of Nebraska. Unless you live close, probably rarely. Ours' turned out to be just that. On a recent trip with my daughter's family, driving from Chicago to Seattle, we found ourselves in North Platte at 3:30 pm on January 11.

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Frank Lloyd Wright

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Frank Lloyd Wright

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Frank Lloyd Wright

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Episode 247

Frank Lloyd Wright was never one to shy away from making grand statements about architecture, like: "The future of architecture is the future of the human race. The two are one. If humanity has a future, it is architecture." He also saw himself as vital to this essential industry: "I've been accused of saying I was the greatest architect in the world. And if I had said so, I don't think it would be very arrogant."

Wright believed that the buildings we live in shape the kinds of people we become. His aim was nothing short of rebuilding the entire culture of the United States, changing the nation through its architecture. Central to that plan was a philosophy and associated building system he called Usonia. [Note: Just tuning in? Listen to the prior episode below!]

"Usonia" was Wright's idealized vision of the United States of America: a country that celebrated individuality and personal connections with nature. Usonian homes were designed to be simple, affordable, beautiful, and custom-designed to fit the needs of homeowners. The first such home designed by Wright cost just $5,500 in 1937 (about 85K in today's dollars), made for the Jacobs family in Madison, Wisconsin.

In the years that followed, Wright built a number of Usonian homes around the country. None of these were as inexpensive as the first, though. And once the Great Depression was over, Wright became busy with other projects. A group of Wright's apprentices would be the ones to push Wright's vision forward, by establishing an entire community shaped by these ideals, right outside of New York City.

Nestled in leafy hills near Pleasantville (about an hour north of Manhattan) sits Usonia, NY. Its unique homes feature low, flat roofs and are tucked into the trees so you can hardly see them on lush summer days. There is no big welcome sign or gift shop, but in the middle of the community there is a plaque:

This community was started in 1944 by a few of Wright's disciples who had studied at his school, Taliesin - most notably a man named David Henken. He sought out similarly-minded people who would invest in and join this new community.

Would-be residents were drawn to the project by a combination of factors, including the promise of affordable housing, shared democratic ideals and (of course) the involvement of Frank Lloyd Wright, a famous architect.

The land for this new community was acquired in 1946 and Wright finalized its site plan in 1947. The plan was unusual: it featured space for dozens of houses situated not on rectilinear plots, but on circular lots. The idea, in part, was to let properties flow organically into one another, and discourage yard fencing, which would divide homes from their natural surroundings.

This design project was unique not only in its layout and architecture but also in its legal structure: it was based on a communal mortgage. Residents would pay for the houses together, which would be built on land they all owned. Those who joined the community faced shared risks and challenges, including social ownership and construction costs, the latter of which grew beyond initial projections.

As the economy rose out of the Great Depression and World War II erupted, materials and labor became increasingly expensive. The custom nature of Usonian houses, from construction methods to unique fixtures, required more work as well. Many of the homes ended up costing over two or three times their original estimates.

Nonetheless, participants in this experimental endeavor were optimistic and stuck with the project. Wright himself ended up designing three of the houses in Usonia.

One resident, Roland Reisley, still lives in the house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed specifically for him. He remains grateful to this day: "I came to realize after some years living here that there'd not been a day in my life when I didn't see something beautiful. Even on the terrible days that occur in every life."

Reisley's house is quintessentially Usonian, featuring a simple carport, wooden walls and an open floor plan (but small kitchen). Big glass windows and overhanging roofs draw the eye outside, making the inside of the place feel more strongly connected to its environment.

Reisley loves his Usonian home. For him, Wright's notion that better architecture could create a better way of life has proven personally true. And not just within his own home but also with regards to the community more broadly: from the start, Usonia was a tight-knit group of young families who relied on each other and shared a vision for the future.

Indeed, during the first 40 years of Usonia's existence, only 12 of the 48 houses changed hands (and half of those went to next-generation residents). Reisley jokes that there were few divorces because couples couldn't decide who would get to keep their Usonian home.

Over time, though, life started to move at different paces for people living in Usonia. Younger families grew older and generations shifted.

And when people did decide to sell their homes, prospective buyers were thrown off by the cooperative nature of the village - in the first decades of Usonia, members didn't even own their homes. A compromise was eventually reached: the land would remain communal but the houses would become individually owned (thus easier to sell).

For newcomers, whose homes were not built specifically to their needs, life in a Usonian home could require a bit of adjustment. Most of the houses in the community have been expanded or remodeled. However, the board of Usonia ensures that all new additions match the original architecture, and are made with local materials, flat roofs, big glass windows and other signature Wrightian features.

Some things have changed more than others, too. Kitchens, for instance, originally designed to be small and efficient, have been expanded in many of the homes. Others grew with their occupants, adding spaces for families with children.

Many Usonian homes, however, are hard to modify for various reasons. Owners, of course, want to preserve aspects of their house's history. But in many cases (within and beyond Usonia, New York) there are also boards and preservationists who can make it difficult to engage in big remodeling projects. At the same time, there is an argument for adapting these buildings as they age: preserving a house means keeping it occupied and updated, which in turn means upgrading things to make it livable across generations.

Betty and John Moore live in Jacobs II, the second Usonian home Wright built for Herbert Jacobs (also located in Wisconsin). Like many Usonian homes, this one has a carport, big windows, an open plan, and concrete floors with a built-in heating system. But the beautiful house sat on the market for over four years before the Moores bought it. Many people found it interesting but were wary either of its perceived high maintenance or its very open floor plan and the lifestyle it would involve.

No one is quite sure how many Usonian homes even exist today across the country. Estimates range from a few dozen to well over a hundred. It depends, in part, on how one defines a "Usonian" home. Does it refer to designs done specifically by Wright and his apprentices? Is it a period of architectural history? Or is it simply an architectural style? On some definitions, Usonian homes are still being constructed today. There is, for instance, a Usonian structure recently built by Florida Southern College that was designed by Wright in 1939 but built 74 years later.

Beyond the community in New York (if even there), Usonia never came to exist in the way Frank Lloyd Wright originally envisioned, with Americans living in an affordable yet custom home. Still, Usonian designs and ideals came to influence other architectural trends, including long and low-to-the-ground suburban ranch-style homes popular from the 1940s onward.

Like Wright's Usonian homes, ranch houses often have open floor plans with few walls and low-angled roofs. Other small aspects of ranch homes, like sliding glass doors that create connections between interior and exterior spaces, also recall aspects of Usonian approaches. At the same time, many ranch homes use off-the-shelf parts and feature painted surfaces rather than natural materials, very clearly different from Wright's organic aesthetic.

Wright might not have been pleased that the concepts of Usonia got absorbed into cookie-cutter suburban homes. But these descendants of Usonia did what Wright's designs could not: they made houses affordable for the middle-class American family. One might say that Wright's dream was realized, just not quite as he dreamed it.

Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959 at age 92, three years after finishing the Reisley House in New York. But his influence persists - you can see it in everyday things like suburban ranch homes, carports and track lighting. It is also visible in creative uses of natural brick, stone, wood and concrete, in big open floor plans and in buildings that respond to their environments. In little elements and details all around us, Usonia lives on, in ways Wright never would have imagined.

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Production

Producer Avery Trufelman spoke with Roland Reisley, occupant of a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Usonia, New York and author of Usonia, New York: Building a Community with Frank Lloyd Wright; Evan Kingsley, resident of Usonia since 2003; Betty and John Moore, who live in Jacobs II by Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin; and John Eifler, an architect in Chicago who has restored a number of Wright houses (including Usonia I).

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Frank Lloyd Wright was never one to shy away from making grand statements about architecture, like: "The future of architecture is the future of the human race. The two are one. If humanity has a future, it is architecture."

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Few creative professions can point to a single figure as famous in their field as Frank Lloyd Wright. This architect's legacy includes some of the most iconic and gorgeous buildings in the United States, such as the spiraling Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Fallingwater house in Pennsylvania, and the futuristic Marin County Civic Center in California.

By the end of his career, Wright had achieved a level of celebrity usually reserved for actors and rock stars. His was a household name, and he was recognizable by his distinctive hat, cape, and cane. He weighed in publicly on society, politics and religion, and he unabashedly claimed to be the greatest architect in the world. "You see," he said in an interview, "early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and see no occasion to change now."

Frank Lloyd Wright went through a number of scandals in his lifetime. He was the subjects of lawsuits and property seizures, and constantly in debt or getting divorced. He was often criticized for his lack of professional conduct and general rudeness. He was largely characterized as arrogant and self-obsessed.

But this bombastic character ultimately changed the field of architecture, and not just through his big, famous buildings. Before designing many of his most well-known works, Wright created a small and inexpensive yet beautiful house. This modest home would go on to shape the way working- and middle-class Americans live to this day. And it all started with a journalist from Milwaukee.

A Trip to Taliesin

In 1934, a Milwaukee Journal reporter named Herbert Jacobs was sent over to Spring Green in Wisconsin. Though he knew little about architecture, Jacobs was assigned to write a story about Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio.

The night before Jacobs was to go meet the architect, his wife went into labor, and Jacobs stayed up with her until dawn in the hospital. The next morning, bleary-eyed, sleepless, and completely unprepared for his interview, Jacobs drove 120 miles through the cold gray Wisconsin countryside for his assignment.

Wright, who was 67 at the time, couldn't have cared less about his appointment with the journalist and had forgotten about it entirely - not that unusual for a man used to blowing off reporters.

When Jacobs arrived, he got to spend only a few minutes with the master, before Wright said "some of the boys will see you now." The boy were Wright's so-called apprentices: architects-in-training who had come from around the world to learn from Wright. The two young men began to tell Jacobs about Wright's philosophies and show him the campus of Taliesin (which is still there and running as an architecture school today).

"Taliesin" is a Welsh word meaning "shining brow." Welsh, because the land was settled by Wright's family from Wales (Wright spent many summers on this land as a boy), and "shining brow" because the main structure of the Taliesin campus wraps around the side of a hill, like a crown around the brow of a head. This structure reflects Wright's philosophy that architecture should be integrated with nature. He thought architecture should help people live harmoniously with their environment, rather than shield them from it. A house, Wright believed, could work with the nature around it if it was made with local materials, had big windows, and was oriented for just the right amount of sunlight. All of these components are part of an overarching concept Frank Lloyd Wright called "organic architecture." He wanted to spread this gospel to the next generation, which is why he returned to the valley he knew as a boy and established the Taliesin Fellowship.

This unconventional fellowship program was to be the subject of Herbert Jacobs' article. At the time of his visit, the program had been running for two years and was a source of fascination for outsiders. Apprentices had to pay $1,100 a year to attend the Taliesin fellowship (nearly $20,000 in today's dollars), which was not even an accredited institution. They also had to bale hay, plow fields, make meals and otherwise help around the school (all unpaid). But they got to learn architecture from Frank Lloyd Wright, living and working with him.

Wright was against wallpaper, paint and plaster- things that disguised materials. He felt that wood, stone and concrete should be celebrated and shown off as they are. Even the layers in composite materials like plywood could become elements of architectural ornamentation.

This was a significant departure from some more eclectic and decorative traditions popular at the time - things like gold ornaments, clawfoot bathtubs, lacy curtains and other highly-designed Victorian details. Organic architecture also eschewed the dull emptiness of glass and steel boxes of the Bauhaus and Modernists.

Wright ultimately broke from (and borrowed from) different traditions to create his own style, something specific to the United States and informed by its natural beauty. So while he composed forms using abstract geometries similar to those of Modernism, he also enlivened his designs using rich natural materials and textures.

Of course, as the apprentices were explaining all of this, the journalist, Herbert Jacobs, wasn't paying much attention. He was preoccupied with thoughts of his wife and their child. On his way back home to Milwaukee, he called the hospital and learned that his daughter had been born in his absence. It was during those few minutes he had been talking with Frank Lloyd Wright.

At Home in Usonia 1

Herbert and Katherine Jacobs lived in Milwaukee for two more years before a slightly higher-paying journalism job drew them to Madison. When they arrived, they found most houses to be unaffordable on the salary of a newspaperman. At the suggestion of his wife's cousin, The Jacobses set a meeting with Wright to see if perhaps the great architect would be interested in building them a modest home.

In the past, when Frank Lloyd Wright had designed private homes, it had generally been for a wealthier clientele (like the nearly 10,000-square-foot Robie House shown below).

Unsure of how to hook such an architect for their modest home, the Jacobs' put it to him as a challenge: could he build them a nice house for $5,000 (around $85,000 in today's dollars)? According to Jacobs, Wright responded that he had waited for decades for someone to ask him just that question.

Wright had long wanted to make a more democratic form of housing. He had experimented with inexpensive building methods and visionary urban (and suburban) design ideas. Now he had a chance to put some of these experiments and ideas into practice in a single project.

The Jacobs family would own the first house in a movement Wright called Usonia. This was a word he used to refer to an idealized vision of the United States at its democratic zenith. Usonia, Wright imagined, would be a nation of modest but comfortable, well-made and beautiful homes for the working- and middle-classes.

Usonia embodied an idea that proper architecture could shape culture - design could make the world a better place. A beautiful house, Wright thought, would inspire its residents to eat better, dress better, listen to better music, and be better people.

For Wright, housing the American people was a matter of individualization, mass- customization, rather than cookie-cutter mass- production . He saw America as a country of individuals, and his vision for the nation was one of decentralization, where people spread would out away from cities on private lots (a Utopian vision of suburbia), living independently, humbly, within nature.

"The city, of course, is a thing of the past," claimed Wright. "There was a time during the middle ages when it was the only source of culture. There was no way of acquiring this thing we call culture except by direct contact, see." But now that people had cars, radios and telephones, there was no need to congregate in dense urban clusters.

The first of its kind, the Jacobs House would become known as Jacobs 1, or Usonia 1. It is located in the suburbs of Madison and stands out very obviously from the surrounding homes. From the street and at a glance, it looks like a wooden wall - the house turns its back on the road. On the other side, expansive glass opens it the home up to nature. It was designed for its occupants, not to show off to neighbors.

Usonia 1 also features a carport, a now-familiar term reportedly coined by Wright. Instead of a garage, a wooden awning offers shelter for cars. This was a cost-saving measure as well as a lifestyle-shaping device, forcing occupants to discard rather than store extra stuff. And like so many of Wright's architectural works, it is more than it first appears - a closer look reveals careful detailing in the arrangement of wood slats.

Inside, the space is small but floor plan is open. There are no walls between the kitchen, living and dining rooms. Again, this was both a design strategy and cost-saving measure, of which there are many examples within the home. The lights on the ceiling, for instance, are just bare sockets with wires running through a steel channel - this is widely considered the first example of track lighting. Flat roofs, built-in furniture, and heated floors were also unusual if not unique features.

Not all of Wright's strategies to save money on the construction of Usonia 1 were entirely above-board. He had his apprentices steal some bricks from another building of his that was under construction nearby, for instance, to save money on materials. These bricks from the Johnson Wax Building were curved, adding waves to flat walls. Wright also kept costs down by reducing his own fee to just $450, which was generous but also not a sustainable cost-saving solution going forward.

Still, though it had issues (like rain drainage) and was missing some things (like window screens), Wright managed to meet his target of building a low-cost home for the family.

The resulting house was small, but it worked for the family for a time. They moved out six years later having had two more children, but were clearly pleased with their residence since they once again commissioned Wright to build their next house.

A Vision of Usonia the Beautiful

In Wright's perfect world, he would custom-design houses for everyone. And not just the architecture - he would design the dishes, furniture, maybe even the clothes (he once designed a dress for the wife of a client). This was all about changing culture, one home at a time, and by extension: redesigning America. Good design, he believe, would make the country more beautiful but also enlightened.

By the end of the 1930s, Wright had designed Usonian homes around the country, in states including: Alabama, California, Illinois, Michigan and Virginia. But this was just the beginning of his vision. He wanted to create a central factory that made prefabricated Usonian parts, modifiable for each client, depending on their needs for space and site conditions - a factory for mass-customization.

Frank Lloyd Wright's factory for Usonian homes never came to be. And it became increasingly clear to Wright that the $5,000 dollar price tag for Usonian homes wasn't feasible in the post-Depression era as materials and labor became increasingly expensive.

Meanwhile, Wright's career picked up shortly after Usonia 1. He started getting bigger commissions again.

While Wright continued to work on Usonian homes within his lifetime, he would never find time to fully realize his vision. In the end, it was a group of his apprentices that would carry on his ideals by building an entire community of Usonian houses.

Next time on 99% Invisible: a unique journey to Usonia, New York and exploration of how Wright's Usonian vision lives on today in homes across the United States.

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Few creative professions can point to a single figure as famous in their field as Frank Lloyd Wright.