MARCH 2006 »  book review

A Book Too Far?

Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses
by Alan Hess et. al.; photographs by Alan Weintraub
Rizzoli, New York, NY; 2005
544 pp.; hardcover; 500 color photographs; $75
ISBN 0-8478-2736-4

Reviewed by Thomas Gordon Smith

"Good friend, around these hearth-stones speak no evil word of any creature…"

This epigram is painted above the round-arched fireplace in the inglenook of the house Frank Lloyd Wright built for his family in Oak Park around 1890. Along with the adjacent studio built on Chicago Avenue, the "Home and Studio" is the proverbial home plate for any serious pilgrim who surveys Wright’s 70-year career. Wright’s eventual production was so far-flung that the diligent author of the best guide (The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog, University of Chicago Press, 3rd edition, 2002), William Allin Storrer, cleverly set up his index by zip code, although a chronological sequence governs his listings from one to 433 buildings.

The Home and Studio has been as meticulously restored and interpreted as any historical house museum in the country. The buildings have also been invisibly restructured to accommodate 80,000 yearly visitors. Located where the shady North Avenue terminates at the artery leading eastward from suburb to city, the complex is entré not only to Wright’s residential career, but it crowns the apex of a charming neighborhood. This contains some of his better early works: the Nathan G. Moore House of 1895 (and 1923), the Frank W. Thomas House of 1901 and the Arthur Heurtley House of 1902. A walk through this neighborhood on a crisp spring or fall day can be magical – the origin of a concentric seek-and-discovery mission throughout the Midwest and beyond.

A former stable tucked behind the house and studio accommodates ticket sales and a bookstore. If the architecture shelves of your Borders is tipped toward the W’s, the Home and Studio bookshop’s current list of 150 Wright titles is the mother lode. Titles range from serious scholarship to obsequious vanities, like Apprentice to Genius. Like cookbooks, evidently, any Wright topic sells. With such proliferation, I wonder as I hold Rizzoli’s seven-pound tome, do we need another? After having Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses on the shelves for only a month, the Home and Studio bookstore reports that it is jumping into shopping bags. It seems to be a popular hit.

The material is organized chronologically into five sections. Each is introduced with perceptive essays by Alan Hess followed by photographs. Essays by individual scholars follow these photo sections, except for the final piece by Eric Lloyd Wright called "Usonian Automatics." The system breaks down here because the final images exhibit shapes, not conceptual types.

The essays vary greatly in quality. Several are by Wright descendants and members of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Kenneth Frampton’s essay on Wright’s planning of "semi-urban neighborhoods" is unclear and rambling. Quite the opposite is Thomas S. Hines’ piece. Hines tells more about "Usonia" in footnote 18 than Eric Lloyd Wright tells in a one-page essay. Hines’ main subject recounts the lifelong interactions between Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler and their begrudging and jealous mentor. This is the only writing that delves deeply into the contributions Wright’s adjuncts made to his work. We learn of a poignant response by Schindler when Wright accepted all credit for the earthquake resistance of the Imperial Hotel despite having resisted the successful construction method.

Hines’ text is peppered with footnotes that are conveniently located in the margin and attest to scrupulous searches through correspondence. The marginalia also include snapshots of relevant independent buildings by Schindler and Neutra. Hines’ study of Wright’s interaction with European architects and Modernist ideas is balanced by the portrayal of the architect’s love for Japanese arts and concepts in Kathryn Smith’s essay. Despite the high quality of these contributions and Hess’ continuity, such analysis does not seem important to the publisher. This sense stems partially from the essays being embedded between reams of lackluster photographs. The Houses really looks and feels like a coffee-table book.

The importance of Wright’s residential work is not well served by the poor quality of the photographs. It is well known that Wright’s interiors are difficult to capture photographically, but that challenge is not even addressed. Smith accounts that one of Wright’s most famous accomplishments is "the dynamic quality of the interior space." Almost all of Alan Weintraub’s pictures are murky and the famous volumes we all know about are flattened out. He relies heavily on existing incandescent lights and this produces jaundiced atmospheres. With the exception of several mid-career houses in Los Angeles, CA, Weintraub was not able to balance the Wrightian dynamic between safe haven hearth and luminous interior/exterior relationships.

Despite shady tree-lined streets and inclement weather, the exterior photographs should convey spirit and dynamic. Wright’s houses of all periods are characterized by blocky or curvaceous geometric volumes often shaded by deep overhangs. One exception is the Arthur Heurtley House of 1902, which is photographed well. The double-page representation suggests its heritage in the decade-earlier William Herman Winslow House, which is also clearly depicted. Reading pictures like these is a major way architects learn. When photographs are neither arresting nor observant, such learning moments are lost. Pictures of the Robie House, for instance, are lackluster. Four photographs of this masterpiece published by Wasmuth in a 1911 monograph inspired a generation of architects. In The Houses' pictures there is no contrast between ship-like thrust and dynamic umbrage.

I have already complained that the intended continuity of Hess’ texts that launch each of Wright’s phases is not clear logistically. The designers make a graphic attempt by demarking sections one to five with double spreads of a single building. These are difficult to spot. It occurred to me that a fundamental problem of design probably resulted from someone’s insistence that the book be square. Wright loved the shape; he imbedded a red FLW signature tile in each of his later buildings. Most of Wright’s buildings, however, are horizontal, and I think the format should have been 11x13 in. This comes from another count; 135 photographs jump across the gutter 2 in. Crossing the gutter is one bane of modern book design, and this particular subject gets badly compromised by the practice. The Robie house, for example, gets a crimp in the most dramatic part of its shooting overhang.

On the editorial level, one wonders why the living room for the Mr. and Mrs. Francis W. Little House of 1908-1914 is not included. True, it does not remain in situ within the rolling landscape of Wayzata, MN. The fact and result of its preservation is, however, significant. In the early 1970s, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City accomplished an heroic rescue effort. A decade later, curators cleverly located the room to receive south light in the expanded American Wing. Carefully fitted out as a period room, it is filled with authentic furniture from two Little houses: a previous house by Wright in Peoria, IL, and new pieces he designed for the Minnesota residence. The arrangement follows Wright’s dictation, although the Littles actually used it differently. This room is the major draw for visitors to the American Wing and is undoubtedly the most often visited Wright interior in the country.

Hess’ periodic essays are a blessing because they bring some continuity to The Houses. He mercifully untangles the myths Wright effectively wove and which the public continues to accept. In the introduction, Hess defines and dispels five mythical concepts Wright developed and nurtured. In "Becoming Frank Lloyd Wright," he provides fresh insight into the architect’s development toward independence. Thanks to his training by John Beach and his lively mental energy, Hess presents Wright’s early flirtation with models from historic tradition in a positive light by discussing contemporaries like Bernard Maybeck and Ernest Coxhead. It is unfortunate that the author’s openness to this creative potential did not lead to including at least one early "traditional" building into the photographic canon. I believe the Nathan Moore House of 1895 (with Barnsdall-like modifications after a fire in 1922) would have been a perfect choice.

Throughout, Hess provides a good account of Wright’s clients and their importance to his oeuvre. Although Wright spoke and wrote of clients in patronizing tones, any candid architect will recognize how essential patrons like Winslow, Mrs. Frank Thomas and Frederick Robie were in effecting new developments. To what degree did Mrs. Thomas inspire the Erecheum Ionic qualities of her house? What spurred its relaxed asymmetry and the juxtaposition of delicate ornament and stark planes? Later clients as well as apprentices continued this impetus. My only disappointment is that Hess does not reveal the vital helpers who aided Wright’s achievements during the Prairie period: Marion Mahoney, Walter Burley Griffin and William Drummond, for instance.

The third installment focuses on Los Angeles and Aline Barnsdalls’ Hollyhock house. Due to deterioration, this superb house can only be presented in two photographs. The main issue of the essay is the impact of a new place and time on Wright’s style. In other contexts, Wright’s innovative, but ultimately disastrous, development of textile block is discussed. Returning to the photographic back-up, the once-magnificent Ennis House is shown as if through the gauze used to mask complexion problems for starlets. Despite the decrepitude of this hopeful and once beautiful material, the Ennis and Storer interiors are exhibited in some of Weintraub’s most revealing pictures.

Hess’ fourth essay emphasizes the recognition and opportunities Wright received during the late 1930s. Again, the author provides credit to clients and professional critics. He also notes the essential help of Wright’s apprentices as the Taliesen Fellowship became formal. The last appraisal deals with the post-World War II years as only Hess can. Author of Googie and The Ranch House, he can interpret some of Wright’s best very well and worst without getting queasy. Of these, I like the Mossberg House of 1946 because, as Hess points out, it restates the best ideas of the Prairie years while being quintessentially post-war. With less élan, in my opinion, the "show place" houses of the 1950s "fixed Wright in the popular imagination as the leading ultra modern architect…sketching out the look of tomorrow." Again, this is a charm that Hess is uniquely qualified to convey.

In addition to his commentary in The Houses, Hess has done the service of introducing a realistic view of the balance between Wright’s brilliance and his "scrambling persistence." He has also honored the string of patrons in an ennobling manner. As C.R. Ashbee says in his introduction to the 1911 Wasmuth volume of photographs of Wright’s work, "To see these buildings, or think through these drawings, brings home to one how much he owes his clients. They have felt the greatness themselves, and have themselves sought to become articulate."  

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