Wright Chat

[JimM]

Sadly, apprentice Ted Bower has passed away at age 87. Ted was best known for supervising Friedman (Sol) and Weltzheimer.

I was very lucky to know him fairly well, helping him with a few projects and accepting only to be "paid" with stories of his contentious time with Wright. I enjoyed his insights on the difficult time an independent spirit had being in the Fellowship and having to reluctantly leave. His contempt for Olga was still palpable after all those years!

I'll miss him, and look forward to a small gathering in the village pub tomorrow.

[Paul Ringstrom]

JimM,
Is there a published obituary available?

[Palli Davis Holubar]

Much of Ted Bowers time at Taliesin was during WWII. Those were frustrating years when the life of art and community at Taliesin was constrained within a war economy. Rather than active work in the drafting room, the common bond was the understanding that “war was the real enemy” (Randolph Bourne’s words). Howe and Davidson had been stolen away to sit in prison, unable to mentor and buffer other apprentices in the wake of Wright's genius and the fury of Mrs. Wright's insecurities. Ted Bower’s spirit survived the experience.
Finally, in 1948, Ted Bower took the opportunity to leave Taliesin without leaving the work of Taliesin- supervising the Weltzheimer House. I can imagine the unleashed zeal he brought to Oberlin as he managed the clients and the construction- all the while learning with his hands, resolving one problem after another.

The Weltzheimer perforated board design is wholly Ted Bower's design and it adds distinction to the staid L-plan Usonian that stands as a final work of the board and batten period. It was Bower's hardwork (and hard-won luck) that from the Weltzheimer House he moved on to Usonia to realize the idiosyncratic Toy House, the quiet grace of Serlin and his own designs of the Glass House and the challenging Scheinbaum House. He crammed important houses into his last Taliesin years before launching his own practice and living his own considered life in art.

[SDR]

Photos by Roland Reisley, from his book on Usonia. Palli, what is the Toy house ?




(another instance of Wright showing out-of-plumb glass)

[Roderick Grant]

SDR, the "Toy House" refers to the fact that the Friedmans owned a toy manufactory. A neighbor during construction of the house asked Mrs. Friedman why she and her husband were working so hard. "To pay for that damned house!" was her reply. Friedman was one of the projects, like Boynton, which obsessed FLW, who hovered over every detail, with no concern for the cost, which balooned. They loved the finished product, however, and considered it worth all the trouble and expense. Mr. Friedman suffered from Dwight's disease. After his death, Mrs. Friedman was so distraught that she killed herself with a kitchen knife on the breakfast terrace of her beloved home.

[Palli Davis Holubar]

Thanks, Roderick. As an play designer in a past life, I use that name too easily, sorry Stephen.

House names, even the ones that seem more like nicknames, are an interesting aspect of domestic architecture, sometimes pretentious, other times endearing. They don't always catch on. Thinking now about Weltzheimer because of Ted Bower... the Weltzheimer's had thought to use the name Shagbark for their house because of the trees in the back of the lot. The building landscape plan marks only the beeches but there were actually more shagbark hickories.

I hope someone is collecting these names.

[SDR]

Roland Reisley tells us that Wright seized on his client's activity as a retailer of books, records, and (in some stores) toys. Deciding for himself that Sol
Friedman was a toymaker, Wright dubbed the house "Toyhill." The name was seldom used, however.

SDR

[SDR]

Photo taken at the Friedman house site, in Reisley's book.

From left: Ted Bower, Robert Chuckrow, Wright, (unidentified), Aaron Resnick, David Henken, Sol Friedman

[Palli Davis Holubar]

Toyhill- that was it. I use it so easily because I use it wrong!

[SDR]

Jim M sends this obituary from his local Lopez Island (WA) paper.

[SDR]

Another page from Reisley's "Usonia, New York: Building a Community with Frank Lloyd Wright":

[SDR]

Reisley's account of Bower's interaction with Wright:

____________________________________________

When critical of a design Wright would shoot off an exasperated, even caustic, letter, as a 1949 exchange with Ted Bower shows. Bower, a
former Wright apprentice [sic], was dispatched by Taliesin to oversee construction of Wright's Friedman House. He also designed a few of his
own. Commenting on Bower's preliminary sketches for the Scheinbaum House, Wright wrote:

Dear Ted,

Your disconnected opus -- a nightmarish abuse of privilege --

is at hand .... Try again and don't take originality at any cost

as an objective ... don't make game of your sojourn at

Taliesin. Try to do something free from such affectation.

Sincerely,

Frank Lloyd Wright


As if that were not damning enough, Wright later told Bower that the low concrete dome on the roof looked like "a bald pate with excema." Bower,
known to be a little confrontational himself, replied, "I could do without the sarcasm that was smeared so thick over your criticism." However,
accepting Wright's comments, he added, "I think the faults of the design were out of awkwardness, not affectation. I wanted to use the dome form
not only because it seemed appropriate to the site but also because it seemed possible to economize by spanning the house with an arched shell
instead of a flat heavily reinforced slab. I am interested not in novel effects but in integrity."

He redrew the house according to Wright's suggestions, explaining, "The roof shell is not to be bone-white but a light earth-red, just dark enough
and colorful enough to take well the mellowing effect of the weather." The house was a tiny hexagon. Seen from the road, the red shingled dome
surrounded by white gravel, all encircled with a red fascia, became an iconic image. Ted recalled a female member of the co-op saying, "that
roof practically gives me an * every time I go by it!"

[DRN]

I was sorry to hear of Mr. Bower's passing. A former co-worker is a relative of Bower's and shared some humorous anecdotes with me some years ago.

Slightly off topic, I found this article which helps to give some background to the Sol Friedman name we encounter in Wrightdom:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/fashion/25Online.html

His Johnny Astro toy was incredibly cool, and I thoguht my Vertibird, and Matchbox Steer'N'Go were cool...

[SDR]

I think we have a different Sol Friedman. Note this:

“He cordoned off a section of the garage at our house in Rockland County for his workshop. . . "

Usonia is in Westchester County. And, according to Roland Reisley, the Friedman children were named Robert, Richard, and David. There was apparently no Miles.


But those toys sound cool. . .!

SDR

[SDR]

Reisley continues, with discussion of the Friedman house. He tells us that
the Friedmans had a budget of $30,000 -- three times the average of the
other prospective Usonia owners.

____________________________________________________________

The working drawings for the house arrived in the spring of 1949. Wright apprentice Ted Bower supervised its construction, which quickly escalated
into costly budget overruns. The extremely innovative nature of Wright's design required many on-the-spot interpretations that Bower found
difficult, even after four years at Taliesin. On top of that, the topographical survey from which Wright worked was inaccurate, so the building had to
be moved farther from the road to comply with local zoning. Bower began an extensive series of communications with Wright in which he proposed a
number of solutions, many of which Wright accepted. At times Bower complained that Wright's senior apprentices gave inadequate replies.
Bower could be testy and demanded clarification, which led Wright to chide him with what Bower later called "Olympian sarcasm."

Dear Ted:

... Now, you are a very remarkable young man no doubt, who stumbled

into Taliesin to enable me to improve upon myself greatly and I am

thankful as a matter of course.


And yet the validity of my own experience still seems precious to me

where buildings are concerned. You should not blame me for this.


"A spoon may lie in the soup for a thousand years and never know the

flavor of the soup" -- but that is always the other fellow -- never us as

you yourself may learn sometime....


So I should say you -- Ted -- need a fair dose of either a

spiritual emetic or cathartic to evacuate an over-heavy charge of Ted and

clear up our way ahead considerably at this junction of our lives.


What do you think.


Affection,
Frank Lloyd Wright



Complications with construction continued. When the conical ceiling framing of sixteen-foot-long two-by-fours [ ! ] was nearly complete, Bower
realized the framing -- which resembled the spokes on an umbrella -- was beginning to sag. He suggested tripling the two-by-fours and Wright
agreed. To save weight and money Wright changed the ceiling covering to sheet rock sprayed with a textured stucco-like material to match the
concrete on the rest of the house. He also changed the living room windows, which had been a horizontal band, adding concave circular arcs
under some of them to emphasize the circular character of the house. Those changes, the complicated detailing, and other alterations -- some
aesthetic, some structural, but all costly -- took the house from a starting point of around $30,000 to a stunning $80,000!