HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: The sausages and peppers made by Cheryl for my last dinner
BUMMER OF THE DAY: It’s my last day in Chicago and with the ‘gang’
WORD OF THE DAY: Frank Lloyd Wright
A pinch and a punch for the first day of the month. It is the 1st of June today. I officially leave the USA on the 20th of June and I arrive back into Australia on the 22nd June. I am coming home this month. HOLY SCHMOKES!!! It still hasn’t hit me yet and I am just going to enjoy my last days of my World Odyssey and then think about life after Odyssey, which I am thankful I still have 5 weeks in the UK and Africa still ahead of me and not a boring daily grind of an Australian life-I don’t think I could ever go back to that after what I have seen and done on my trip and now want to try and help or do something that will make a difference to a person, people or families.
Our only mission today was to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright house and his studio. We had booked tickets online on Wednesday and hoped that the weather was going to be nothing like it was yesterday. There were two parts to the tour. There was a self- guided tour of the neighborhood where he built his first house and then continued to build a bevy of homes in the same suburb over the years. The self-guided was a walking tour to these homes and the second part was a guided tour of his original house and studio. This was something that Cheryl had always wanted to do this tour and had just never got around to it, so I was happy that she was doing something new and David hadn’t done the tour for a few years so it was all a new experience for us all. Same with the last few day, it had been over 15 years since David had been to the Willis (Sears) Tower, years since they had been to the Pump Room and years since they had done the Architectural cruise. Like anyone living in their own cities, you tend to not do things until an out of towner arrives to make you appreciate just what you do have to see in your own city. I think everyone is guilty of that. It took me years after living in the NT to make a trip to see Ayers Rock and Kakadu was like our backyard. People travel from all around the world to see Kakadu and we are just like, yeah-its Kakadu.
We were recommended to get to Franks house at 12.20pm so we had enough time to do the self-guided tour and be back in time at 2pm for the guided tour of his house. We were given a map of the area with Franks houses marked on them and an MP3 player that had all the information on each house as we walked to each one. We were reminded that people live in these houses and to be respectful of that when we are looking at their homes and that we were only to look at the outside of the homes, there was no internal visits into any of them bar Franks House and studio when we returned.
So who is Frank Lloyd Wright? Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States. His work includes original and innovative examples of many different building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass. Wright authored 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio. Already well known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time."
On June 1, 1889, Wright married his first wife, Catherine Lee "Kitty" Tobin (1871–1959). The two had met around a year earlier during activities at All Souls Church. Sullivan did his part to facilitate the financial success of the young couple by granting Wright a five-year employment contract. Wright made one more request: "Mr. Sullivan, if you want me to work for you as long as five years, couldn't you lend me enough money to build a little house?” With Sullivan's $5,000 loan, Wright purchased a lot at the corner of Chicago and Forest Avenues in the suburb of Oak Park. Despite Sullivan's loan and overtime salary, Wright was constantly short on funds. Wright admitted that his poor finances were likely due to his expensive tastes in wardrobe and vehicles, and the extra luxuries he designed into his house. To compound the problem, Wright's children – including first born Lloyd (b.1890) and John (b.1892) – would share similar tastes for fine goods. To supplement his income and repay his debts, Wright accepted independent commissions for at least nine houses. These "bootlegged" houses, as he later called them, were conservatively designed in variations of the fashionable Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles. Nevertheless, unlike the prevailing architecture of the period, each house emphasized simple geometric massing and contained features such as bands of horizontal windows, occasional cantilevers, and open floor plans which would become hallmarks of his later work. Eight of these early houses remain today.
Wright designed his bootleg houses on his own time. Sullivan knew nothing of the independent works until 1893, when he recognized that one of the houses was unmistakably a Frank Lloyd Wright design. This particular house, built for Allison Harlan, was only blocks away from Sullivan's townhouse in the Chicago community of Kenwood. Aside from the location, the geometric purity of the composition and balcony tracery in the same style as the Charnley House likely gave away Wright's involvement. Since Wright's five year contract forbade any outside work, the incident led to his departure from Sullivan's firm. After leaving Louis Sullivan, Wright established his own practice on the top floor of the Sullivan designed Schiller Building (1892, demolished 1961) on Randolph Street in Chicago. Wright chose to locate his office in the building because the tower location reminded him of the office of Adler & Sullivan. Although Cecil Corwin followed Wright and set up his architecture practice in the same office, the two worked independently and did not consider themselves partners. Within a year, Corwin decided that he did not enjoy architecture and journeyed east to find a new profession. Marion Mahony, who in 1895 transferred to Wright's team of drafters and took over production of his presentation drawings and watercolor renderings. Mahony, the first licensed female architect in the United States also designed furniture, leaded glass windows, and light fixtures, among other features, for Wright's houses. Between 1894 and the early 1910s, several other leading Prairie School architects and many of Wright's future employees launched their careers in the offices of Steinway Hall.
Wright relocated his practice to his home in 1898 in order to bring his work and family lives closer. This move made further sense as the majority of the architect's projects at that time were in Oak Park or neighboring River Forest. The past five years had seen the birth of three more children – Catherine in 1894, David in 1895, and Frances in 1898 – prompting Wright to sacrifice his original home studio space for additional bedrooms. Thus, moving his workspace necessitated his design and construction of an expansive studio addition to the north of the main house. The space, which included a hanging balcony within the two story drafting room, was one of Wright's first experiments with innovative structure. The studio was a poster for Wright's developing aesthetics and would become the laboratory from which the next ten years of architectural creations would emerge. By 1901, Wright had completed about 50 projects, including many houses in Oak Park. Wright's residential designs were "Prairie Houses" because the design is considered to complement the land around Chicago. These houses featured extended low buildings with shallow, sloping roofs, clean sky lines, suppressed chimneys, overhangs and terraces all using unfinished materials. The houses are credited with being the first examples of the "open plan". Windows whenever possible are long, and low, allowing a connection between the interior and nature, outside, that was new to western architecture and reflected the influence of Japanese architecture on Wright. The manipulation of interior space in residential and public buildings are hallmarks of his style.
Local gossips noticed Wright's flirtations, and he developed a reputation in Oak Park as a man-about-town. His family had grown to six children, and the brood required most of Catherine's attention. In 1903, Wright designed a house for Edwin Cheney, a neighbor in Oak Park, and immediately took a liking to Cheney's wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mamah Cheney was a modern woman with interests outside the home. She was an early feminist and Wright viewed her as his intellectual equal. The two fell in love, even though Wright had been married for almost 20 years. Often the two could be seen taking rides in Wright's automobile through Oak Park, and they became the talk of the town. Wright's wife, Kitty, sure that this attachment would fade as the others had, refused to grant him a divorce. Neither would Edwin Cheney grant one to Mamah. In 1909, even before the Robie House was completed, Wright and Mamah Cheney went together to Europe, leaving their own spouses and children behind. The scandal that erupted virtually destroyed Wright's ability to practice architecture in the United States. What drew Wright to Europe was the chance to publish a portfolio of his work with Ernst Wasmuth, who had agreed in 1909 to publish his work there. This chance also allowed Wright to deepen his relationship with Mamah Cheney. Wright and Cheney left the United States in 1909 going to Berlin, where the offices of Wasmuth were located. Wright remained in Europe for almost one year and set up home first in Florence, Italy – where he lived with his eldest son Lloyd – and later in Fiesole, Italy where he lived with Mamah. During this time, Edwin Cheney granted Mamah a divorce, though Kitty still refused to grant one to her husband. After Wright's return to the United States in October 1910, Wright persuaded his mother to buy land for him in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The land, bought on April 10, 1911, was adjacent to land held by his mother's family, the Lloyd-Joneses.
Wright began to build himself a new home, which he called Taliesin, by May 1911. The recurring theme of Taliesin also came from his mother's side: Taliesin in Welsh mythology was a poet, magician, and priest. The family motto was Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd which means "The Truth Against the World"; it was created by Iolo Morgannwg who also had a son called Taliesin, and the motto is still used today as the cry of the druids and chief bard of the Eisteddfod in Wales. On August 15, 1914, while Wright was working in Chicago, Julian Carlton, a male servant from Barbados who had been hired several months earlier, set fire to the living quarters of Taliesin and murdered seven people with an axe as the fire burned. The dead included Mamah; her two children, John and Martha; a gardener; a draftsman named Emil Brodelle; a workman; and another workman's son. Two people survived the mayhem, one of whom helped to put out the fire that almost completely consumed the residential wing of the house. Carlton swallowed muriatic acid immediately following the attack in an attempt to kill himself. He was nearly lynched on the spot, but was taken to the Dodgeville jail. Carlton died from starvation seven weeks after the attack, despite medical attention. In 1922, Wright's first wife, Kitty, granted him a divorce, and Wright was required to wait one year until he married his then-partner, Maude "Miriam" Noel. In 1923, Wright's mother, Anna (Lloyd Jones) Wright, died. Wright wed Miriam Noel in November 1923, but her addiction to morphine led to the failure of the marriage in less than one year. In 1924, after the separation but while still married, Wright met Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich Hinzenburg at a Petrograd Ballet performance in Chicago. They moved in together at Taliesin in 1925, and soon Olgivanna was pregnant with their daughter, Iovanna, born on December 2, 1925. On April 20, 1925, another fire destroyed the bungalow at Taliesin. Crossed wires from a newly installed telephone system were deemed to be responsible for the blaze, which destroyed a collection of Japanese prints that Wright declared invaluable. Wright estimated the loss at $250,000 to $500,000. Wright rebuilt the living quarters again, naming the home "Taliesin III".
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City occupied Wright for 16 years (1943–1959) and is probably his most recognized masterpiece. The building rises as a warm beige spiral from its site on Fifth Avenue; its interior is similar to the inside of a seashell. Its unique central geometry was meant to allow visitors to easily experience Guggenheim's collection of nonobjective geometric paintings by taking an elevator to the top level and then viewing artworks by walking down the slowly descending, central spiral ramp, which features a floor embedded with circular shapes and triangular light fixtures to complement the geometric nature of the structure. Unfortunately, when the museum was completed, a number of important details of Wright's design were ignored, including his desire for the interior to be painted off-white. Furthermore, the Museum currently designs exhibits to be viewed by walking up the curved walkway rather than walking down from the top level. Wright designed over 400 built structures of which about 300 survive as of 2005.
Though most famous as an architect, Wright was an active dealer in Japanese art, primarily ukiyo-e woodblock prints. He frequently served as both architect and art dealer to the same clients; "he designed a home, then provided the art to fill it". For a time, Wright made more from selling art than from his work as an architect. Wright first traveled to Japan in 1905, where he bought hundreds of prints. The following year, he helped organize the world's first retrospective exhibition of works by Hiroshige, held at the Art Institute of Chicago. For many years, he was a major presence in the Japanese art world, selling a great number of works to prominent collectors such as John Spaulding of Boston, and to prominent museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He penned a book on Japanese art in 1912. In 1920, however, rival art dealers began to spread rumors that Wright was selling retouched prints; this combined with Wright's tendency to live beyond his means, and other factors, led to great financial troubles for the architect. Though he provided his clients with genuine prints as replacements for those he was accused of retouching, this marked the end of the high point of his career as an art dealer. He was forced to sell off much of his art collection in 1927 to pay off outstanding debts; the Bank of Wisconsin claimed his Taliesin home the following year, and sold thousands of his prints, for only one dollar a piece, to collector Edward Burr Van Vleck. Wright continued to collect, and deal in, prints until his death in 1959, frequently using prints as collateral for loans, frequently relying upon his art business to remain financially solvent. The extent of his dealings in Japanese art went largely unknown, or underestimated, among art historians for decades until, in 1980, Julia Meech, then associate curator of Japanese art at the Metropolitan Museum, began researching the history of the museum's collection of Japanese prints. She discovered "a three-inch-deep 'clump of 400 cards' from 1918, each listing a print bought from the same seller—'F. L. Wright'" and a number of letters exchanged between Wright and the museum's first curator of Far Eastern Art, Sigisbert C. Bosch Reitz, in 1918 to 1922. These discoveries, and subsequent research, led to a renewed understanding of Wright's career as an art dealer.
Turmoil followed Wright even many years after his death on April 9, 1959, while undergoing surgery in Phoenix, Arizona, to remove an intestinal obstruction. His third wife, Olgivanna, ran the Fellowship after Wright's death, until her own death in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1985. That year, it was learned that her dying wish had been that Wright, she, and her daughter by a first marriage all be cremated and relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona. By then, Wright's body had laid for over 25 years in the Lloyd-Jones cemetery, next to the Unity Chapel, near Taliesin, Wright's later-life home in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Olgivanna's plan called for a memorial garden, already in the works, to be finished and prepared for their remains. Although the garden had yet to be finished, his remains were prepared and sent to Scottsdale where they waited in storage for an unidentified amount of time before being interred in the memorial area. Today, the small cemetery south of Spring Green, Wisconsin and a long stone's throw from Taliesin, contains a gravestone marked with Wright's name, though its grave is empty.
It is funny as we walked the 18 homes of the area that none of his personal life was mentioned, it was purely all about his works, homes and architecture. David knew there was some sort of scandal but couldn’t remember the details, but it looks like Frank led quite a colorful life. The weather was a little chilly on the 1.5 hour walk, but it didn’t rain so we were happy to take the chilly over the rain any day. It was a good idea what the FLW (Frank Lloyd Wright) Foundation has done, with a map and the MP3 player to walk our way around the neighborhood. Considering how many people a day do this tour it is surprising how the map and the audio don’t really match up to start with until you work out that you need to listen to the next houses intro to get the address before you even get to that home and the map only has the house numbers on them and not any addresses so if you are not sure where you are the map is rendered useless. It took us around 6 houses to work out what the hell was happening and then got a system happening. All the homes had a wow factor. They are distinctly FLW; you can pick his homes from a mile away. As we were standing out the front of one of the homes listening to the information the owner of the home drove out of their drive way not even giving us a second glance. I guess that comes with the territory if you buy a FLW home and especially in the Oak Park suburb you are going to have 100’s of people a week staring at the front of your home.
Not only did FLW do homes but also churches and public buildings and we saw one on our walk. Public buildings in the Prairie style include Unity Temple, the home of the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Oak Park. As a lifelong Unitarian and member of Unity Temple, Wright offered his services to the congregation after their church burned down in 1905. The community agreed to hire him and he worked on the building from 1905 to 1909. Wright later said that Unity Temple was the edifice in which he ceased to be an architect of structure, and became an architect of space. Many architects consider it the world's first modern building, because of its unique construction of only one material: reinforced concrete. We were back to FLW house with 15 minutes to spare before the guided tour started, so it gave the guy’s time to shop in the gift store and I rested my feet. Just before the tour started I was presented with a magnet with one of Franks well known glass patterns from Cheryl and David. It meant so much and every time I look at the magnet now I will think of these guys and the absolutely awesome week that I had in their fabulous city of Chicago. It is hard to imagine I have been here for a week already and that I leave tomorrow. It makes me sad-I love my United Hostees.
Next was the home and studio tour with our guide who works for the FLW Trust. Frank Lloyd Wright used his first home to experiment with design concepts that contain the seeds of his architectural philosophy. In his adjacent studio, Wright and his associates developed a new American architecture - the Prairie style. Trained interpreters offer insights into Wright's family life and architectural career.
The inside of his home and studio and all the little tidbits about why he designed things the way he did was so interesting and we all just loved it. For the first 20 years of Wright's career, this remarkable complex served first and foremost as the sanctuary where he designed and executed more than 130 of 430 completed buildings. The home began as a simple shingled cottage that the 22-year-old Wright built for his bride in 1889, but it became a living laboratory for his revolutionary reinvention of interior spaces. Wright remodeled the house constantly until 1911, when he moved out permanently. During Wright's fertile early period, the house was Wright's showcase, but it also embraces many idiosyncratic features molded to his own needs rather than those of a client. With many add-ons -- including a barrel-vaulted children's playroom and a studio with an octagonal balcony suspended by chains -- the place has a certain whimsy that others might have found less livable. This was not an architect's masterpiece, but rather the master's home and visitors can savor every room for the view it offers into of the workings of a remarkable mind. The interior tour took just under an hour and when I walked out of the home I knew that this man was a genius but also a little kooky as all of these types of people seemed to be back in the day. Again on the studio tour, they only spoke of his family and wife from his first marriage, family pictures of the first family and nothing else was spoken about the other wives, children or scandals. It was a little strange but with such an eventful life the tour would take 3 hours if they were to address everything and I guess at the end of the day we were there for his homes and architecture, but everyone loves a good gossip……
I had a quick look in the gift shop and I found this beautiful stained glass picture, around the size of an A4 piece of paper on a beautiful wooden stand. I looked at it like 5 times, you know when you want to really buy something and you weigh up all the options and you’re not sure about the purchase. My concern was how the hell would I get it home, once it was home, how the hell would I get it to Ethiopia. There was no use buying it if I wasn’t even going to take it to Africa, but I loved it and decided it would be worth the pain to carry it hand luggage for my last 4 flights and then I could take it to Addis on my second trip back after Christmas. It was worth all the hassle and a fantastic souvenir of my time here. So when it was boxed it is now twice the size it was originally but I think I will be able to get it on the flights as hand luggage with no issues, and at least it is packed right so less chance of the thing smashing before I get it home and then to its proper home in Addis.
We got back home at 5pm, so it had been another busy last day for us. I LOVE my new phone as I have now worked out that I have free internet included in my monthly package. This is what I have missed from back home 24-7 internet access. I know some of you are thinking why? But I love being connected, even if it is by my phone and not that user friendly I can get on any time. I am having problems with sending text messages and getting a sent receipt but the people aren’t getting the message. I hate this, I would prefer an error message to come up and know that they didn’t get it which is a little frustrating but otherwise it has been the best 50 bucks I have spent. I was able to get another blog finished before dinner and that was the last one I would be able to do till I now got to Teegs. I am still chasing my tail and know that I will be busy in Minnie, so I will just have to take good notes and punch out an entry with any spare time.
The final dinner was amazing. It has been a long long time that I have stayed with someone that enjoys cooking, like to cook rather than having to cook. It shows in Cheryl food and I love eating it. As it was the ‘final’ dinner I got sausages and peppers (I LOVE) and Joe got a pasta dish that he loves and David got some veggies that he loves all that washed down with red wine in massive glasses, eating with friends what better way to say thanks for a truly amazing week. I don’t know how we did it but we also had room for Rocky Road ice-cream which was AMAZING as I’ve never had it before. David left at 11pm and had decided to come to the airport with Cheryl and I in the morning which is nice of both of them considering they really aren’t morning people. The bummer to this was it was 11.30pm and I hadn’t done my packing yet……. My room looked like a bomb had hit it and I had clothes and crap from one end to the other. Oh well it has to be done and 1 hour and 25 minutes later I had everything in and zipped. I am really starting to accumulate a lot of stuff, mostly clothes and I haven’t had thing much stuff ever. The way I have packed I am able to carry everything on my own and not look like a crazy person which also includes the glass panel that I bought today which I found a plastic bag big enough to put it in to make it easier for me to carry. I just hope my big pack isn’t over weight. Americans are so conscious of the luggage weight and hit you up even if you are 2kg over. They are the worst for this and I hate it as I have never really had to worry knowing that my bag can only hold around 24kg.
Goodnight from somewhere in Chicago as I head to Minneapolis tomorrow and my third last stop of my World Odyssey. Thank-you to Cheryl, Joe and David for having me in their homes, enjoying a staycation for them in their own city and for being great friends. You guys are a classic example of friends that I have met on vacation and that will now be friends for life. I love you guys and I am so glad that I finally made it to you both, it took a few years, but I made it. xx
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