MARIN COUNTY CIVIC CENTER: ANOTHER LOOK

Marin County Civic Center (Photo: Marinlibrary.org)

Last week, on our way to Napa Valley and the redwoods, Sandra and I stopped at the Marin County Civic Center one of the ten Wright buildings that I wrote about this past summer in the comparative section of "Key Works of Modern American Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright," a serial nomination of ten buildings that will eventually be inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I had been to Marin once before but this visit,coming right after the essay, was special . 

Marin County Civic Center facade with automobile arch (Photo: news.cnet.com)

Marin County Civic Center was difficult to write about in that it was completed under the supervision of Aaron Green, in 1964, five years after Wright's death and it seemed both odd in certain respects and virtually without comparison as a building type.  At 1460 feet in length the building is composed of two parts of unequal height (three and four stories per the two segments) owing to its adjustment to the hilly terrain. Furthermore it is "bent" at a kind of pivot point marked by a domed library, a pool, and a spire. 

Spire, garden and library rotonda (Photo: J. Quinan)

The building was widely criticized upon completion for the tiers of non-structural segmental arches that screen balconies on the sides of the building and for decorative flourishes (see facade detail above) that were wildly at odds with the rigorous Cartesian geometries of late modernism (as in Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building, for instance). Wright wanted a golden roof that would have handsomely blended the building into the brownish landscape but this was denied by his clients and, following his death, Mrs. Wright made the decision to have the roof painted sky blue.

Entrance area (source unavailable)

The genius of the building lies in its experiential qualities:  Because the site was originally rural and remote Wright conceived the building entirely around automobile access. There are three large segmental arched openings at ground level through which one drives to parking lots beyond and under which it is possible to drop off passengers. These arched openings are truly cavernous but in a way that is humanized, even gendered. Overhead, between the arches,  the building opens up into an elongated three story skylit atrium reminiscent of the Larkin Building's light court but curvilinear and fluid -- not a commercial enterprise but a place for the citizens of Marin County (or anyone) to come for a driver's or marriage license, a court case, or a records search. 

Interior of administration building (photo: J. Quinan)

Unlike the Larkin Building, or the Guggenheim Museum for that matter, here Wright made each of the balcony levels narrower as the floors rise so that people moving about can interact vertically as well as laterally. The scale is entirely human and the colors are a warm buff and Cherokee red with decorative accents in a golden hue.

Garden (photo: J. Quinan)

In a world of pompous classical courthouses and city halls the Marin County Civic Center is easy to be in, more country club than civic monument, and futuristic enough to warrant a role in the  1997 film "Gattaca."

THE WALLS OF THE GEORGE BARTON HOUSE

George Barton House, 1903-4  Dorothy Martin (left) is on the porch, her cousin Laura Barton stands at the doorway)(Photo by Clarence Fuermann)

J.J. Walser House, Austin (Chicago), 1901-2

In the summer of 1994 the Martin House Restoration Corporation purchased the George Barton House from Harvard University. How did this happen? Eric and Eleanor Larrabee originally purchased the Barton House in the late 1960s when Eric was appointed Provost of Arts and Letters at the University of Buffalo under the incoming president Martin Meyerson (for whom the University obtained the nearby Martin House). 

Eleanor Larrabee, who studied architecture at Harvard under Walter Gropius, was employed by the firm of Warner, Burns, Toan and Lunde in Manhattan (architects of the Rockefeller Library at Brown University and the Olin Library at Cornell)  but the Larrabees maintained the Barton House as a  second residence throughout the 1970s and 80s. After Eric passed away in 1990 Eleanor made an annuity arrangement with Harvard that involved ownership of the Barton House. When she died in 1997, following an automobile accident in Manhattan, the Martin House Restoration Corporation was able to purchase the house thanks to three inspired citizens, Robert Wilmers, Robert Rich, and Stanford Lipsey. 

Since the Barton House was uninhabited my wife and I were asked to live there and we did so for a year -- a  rare opportunity for me as a Wright scholar. I gave numerous tours and spent a lot of time just experiencing the house. The Barton House is based upon the J.J. Walser House in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, designed in 1901 by Wright and under construction in 1902 by Elmer E. Andrews, the brother-in-law of William R. Heath another Buffalo client of Wright. One of the interesting aspects of the Barton House is that it represented an opportunity for Wright to re-work a design and enhance it. Nevertheless, the Barton House is a house of walls unlike the pier-constructed principal Martin House designed in 1904 and 1905. 

After considerable scrutiny over time I realized that Wright treated the walls of the Barton House as framed panels much like framed pictures.  The wall surfaces were fields of textured plaster tinted with autumnal colors and glazed with clear varnish. The enframing members consist of three pieces of flat sawn oak, the first, a 5/16" wide and 11/16" deep fillet, is the most prominent. Abutted to it is a 1" wide strip recessed 5/8" in from the fillet, and adjacent to that is a half inch strip that rises 7/16" from the wall surface. This framing panel is itself framed by 2 5/8" door frames and 4" horizontal scale moldings. The elements are simple but the overall effect  is one of taut containment of every surface and every room, something that would change significantly in the Martin House as Wright dispensed with walls in favor of a skeletal construction system if brick piers.

Wall panel on second floor George Barton House

Second floor bedroom George Barton house, detail of wall framing with door frame to the left and scale molding above

Often, especially in the ceiling, the central panel would be of a darker hue than the surface around it so that the panel would float as though detached. In its current state (see pictures below) the Barton House bears a color scheme loosely devised by Eleanor Larrabee after Wright's colors but lightened, owing to the darkness of the house, and painted in flat latex colors with none of the luminosity of Wright's method. These surfaces are due to be restored. I should add that Eleanor Larrabee was a wonderful steward of the house who carefully preserved every piece of shim and every little screw that appeared to be original to the house. As a result the Barton House is among the most pristine of any of Wright's prairie houses anywhere.

Barton House dining room as seen from the living room (Photo by Biff Henrich)

CHASING THE SQUARED SPIRAL

Light Tower, Taliesin West (J. Quinan)

Squared spiral on Light Tower (J. Quinan)

To direct visitors toward the entrance to Taliesin West Frank Lloyd Wright had his apprentices erect the great desert masonry stele, or slab, from which a squared red wrought iron spiral points the way. 

Hohokam petroglyph at entrance to Taliesin West (J. Quinan)

Legend has it that Wright was inspired by one of the ancient Hohokam petroglyphs that were found in and around the site and were placed as points of reference in the plan, but others see certain 18th century actor prints by Katsukawa Shunsho  (which Wright collected) as a likely source.

Actor Ichimura Uzaemon print by Shunsho (University of New Mexico Collection)

Actor  Ichikawa Danjuro, print by Shunsho

As Mrs. Wright once noted, Wright had extraordinary powers of absorption. Very few of his followers had these powers but among them the Venetian architect, Carlo Scarpa, stands out. Very much his own man, Scarpa greatly admired Wright and remains one of the few who were able to absorb aspects of Wright's work without merely imitating him. At the entrance to the Olivetti store under the arcade of the Piazza San Marco in Venice Scarpa emblazoned the wall with his own version of the squared spiral. Scarpa and Wright met when Wright was in Venice to pursue the Masieri Chapel commission.

Carlo Scarpa, entranceway to Olivetti Store, Venice

Olivetti Store (now a museum) Venice (J. Quinan)

Scarpa and Wright in Venice

Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978)

THE MAKING OF A DOMESTIC SYMPHONY

Fig. 1 Pier in Dining room of Darwin Martin House

One of the traditions in American housing that Frank Lloyd Wright sought to change was the abrupt difference between the exterior -- brick, clapboard, stucco -- and the interior -- wallpaper, wood paneling, or painted plaster. The Darwin Martin house is a particularly good example of the way that Wright made the interior and the exterior continuous. The first image (fig. 1) was taken in the dining room looking outward to the north. The Roman brick pier travels five feet within the interior and then four more feet beyond. In fact the Roman brick exterior of the house is continued throughout the house on the ground floor. 

fig. 2  Front facade of the George Barton House

Wright further enhanced the inside-outside continuity by repeated certain motifs within and without. For instance, on the front  facade of the George Barton House (fig. 2) a Roman brick extrusion serves as a flower box above which there are three windows, a large clear pane flanked by two narrow art glass windows.  Inside the house in the dining room this motif is repeated (fig. 3) in the form of the oak buffet  above which is a large mirror flanked by two art glass doors.

Fig. 3 Buffet in the George Barton House

One of  the unique features of the Martin House  front facade (fig. 4) is a pair of two-story Roman brick columns on either side of two lesser columns all four of which seem to emerge from somewhere below grade behind a low brick cheek wall. In the entrance hall within the house (fig. 5) Wright reiterates the motif with two hefty oak piers that emerge from the basement level behind a low balustrade and rise up to the level of the beam that runs throughout the main floor at the height of 6 feet 5 inches. (This has only become apparent as our architects, Hamilton Houston Lownie, P.C. have reconstructed the entire stair assembly.)

Fig. 4  Front facade Darwin Martin House

Fig. 5 Stairway screen in entrance hall of Darwin Martin House

These reiterated themes bear out Wright's promise to the Martins that he would give them "a domestic symphony."

(photos are by Jack Quinan though he hates to admit it.)

WHO IS THAT LADY? or CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

Isabelle or Dorothy Martin? (photo: UB Archives)

The photograph above has long been identified as Isabelle Martin wearing a dress designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. In fact it may be her daughter, Dorothy but that is beside the point. A document on Department of Art, University of California Berkeley letterhead with the title "Conversation with Darwin Martin, Jr., on April 12, 1979" but unsigned, includes the following:

[The] Conservatory was Mrs. Martin's idea: she loved flowers, and used them in abundance to give warmth to what she (or certainly he) considered to be a cold house. The photograph of her in a dress like a [John Singer] Sargent portrait: the dress is not by Wright at all (that's bullshit!); it is by Ivan Ivanovitch (??) a friend and student of Sargeant."

The document is intriguing given that Wright is known to have designed dresses for his wife, Catherine, and it enhances the idea that Wright would design everything if allowed by his clients. According to Daniel I. Larkin his grandfather had to stop Wright from designing the telephones and wastebaskets of the Larkin Administration Building. 

I found Darwin R. Martin unreliable in our meetings when he visited Buffalo. He told me that Wright designed the Larkin R,S & T Building when it was definitely designed and built by the Lockwood, Greene and Company of Brooklyn which specialized in reinforced concrete framed "daylight factories." [see Reyner Banham, A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Industrial Building and European Modern Architecture, 1900-1925 (1986)] He also said that the William R. Heath House was initially designed by William Heath and the contractor, Oscar S. Lang, but Heath brought in Wright to help them out. That is fiction. Martin Jr. and his sister had an intense dislike of Wright because he was the recipient of so much generosity from Darwin Martin -- possibly as much as $60,000 over the years. When Darwin Martin died during the Depression Wright ignored the destitute Mrs. Martin.

Who recorded this interview in April 1979 just a month before Darwin R. Martin passed away?

PAULO FUJIOKA VISITS FROM SAN PAULO, BRAZIL

Professor Paulo Fujioka (photo: J. Quinan)

In order to teach the history of architecture at the university level it is necessary to have a specialty and a PhD but also to be able to teach knowledgeably about the entire history of architecture as well as surveys of periods. This means that one often has to teach buildings known only through images in books, usually an elevation and a first floor plan. Consequently it is particularly exciting after five or ten or more years of teaching to finally visit one of the great monuments of architectural history. Professor Paulo Fujioka has been teaching, among other things, American architecture at the University of San Paulo, Brazil, for seven years and  finally got to tour the U.S. this month to see the work of Frank Lloyd Wright (a favorite among others) in Chicago, Wisconsin, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo. The weather here has been perfect all week. Paolo's reaction to the Darwin Martin House defies description but I enjoyed showing him the house because I have had that first-time experience often at places like the Villa Savoie, the Parthenon, the Glasgow Art School, etc. Suddenly it is there, it is real and palpable. Instead of staring at a page you can experience the building fully, with all your senses. So Paulo's visit was a vicarious thrill for me, and his Brazilian students will be so much better off for his experience. We toured  all the Wright sites and he toured downtown as well but we also had the unique pleasure of joining Sandra Firmin and Tra Bouscaren, co-curators of an exhibition entitled "My Future Ex" (17 local and international artists at eleven sites around Buffalo from Sept 17 through November 23), along with artist Kamau Patton aboard a barge on the Buffalo River where Kamau is preparing a performance "Float My Resident" that will involve numerous UB dancers and a series of sonic compositions by Kamau from signals gathered from antenna processed through a computer and routed through a sound amplification system located on the pontoon and barge. It all happens tonight from River Fest Park to Mutual Riverfront Park and Silo City starting at seven today. Meanwhile Paulo is off to New York city to do some research among Columbia University's newly acquire Frank Lloyd Wright archives.

JACK QUINAN AND PAULO FUJIOKA ON BOARD THE BUFFALO RIVER BARGE (photo: Sandra Firmin)

BREAKFAST WITH WES

William Wesley Peters (1912-1991)

In the early 1980s I began making periodic visits to Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, to research a book on the Larkin Administration building. Because the Frank Lloyd Wright archives (22,000 drawings and nearly 200,000 documents) were only recently opened to such research I was provided a room and was given meals along with everyone else in the Taliesin Fellowship, a substantial group of architects, students, support staff and various others. The apprentices and students cooked the meals on a rotating basis much as they had since the start of the Fellowship in1932 and everyone ate together except for Mrs. Wright who was then quite elderly and partially blind. I was surprised when, after a few days, Wes Peters, sat next to me at breakfast and proceeded to regale me with stories about his experiences out there in Arizona. This was a man who had married Mrs. Wright's daughter, Svetlana, subsequently killed in an automobile crash, and later married Svetlana Alliluyeva daughter of Joseph Stalin so I listened to him through a scrim of recollections of the Cold War in the 1950s when as school kids we had to practice getting under our desks (in Keene, New Hampshire, a likely Soviet target) in case "they" dropped an atomic bomb on us. Wes was a big strapping fellow who liked to talk about going out in the desert to shoot javalinas but he told one story that I especially appreciated because it was the re-telling of one that Wright told him that dated back to 1903. Wright designed a second Hillside Home School in 1902 for his aunts Nell and Jane to replace the wooden building that he designed for them in 1887 but this one is made out of that warm, yellow-brown dolomitic sandstone local to southern Wisconsin  Wright was then living in Oak Park, Illinois, and left the construction of the new school up to an old but trusted mason whose name was Kramer, as I recall. Wright would periodically visit to supervise. As a finishing touch, Kramer carved a cornerstone inscribed "FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT ARCHITECT 1903."  Wright vehemently objected saying "I don't do that," by which he meant that his work announced itself as his and needed no labels. Kramer simply answered, "But I do," and the cornerstone has been there ever since.

Cornerstone of Hillside Home School