Wright Chat

[pharding]

[Wrightgeek]

Paul-

Congratulations in advance on the wedding of your daughter. Enjoy the wedding, and best of luck with your roofing issues.

[jim]

Having happened upon the rehabilitation architect’s website and the four photos of the restored main façade on flickr, I have been able to reflect on the objectives that restoration architect and his client are trying to achieve, and why. Let me add that I have no connection to the house, the rehabilitation architect, or the owners other than I happen to be in Rochester periodically and having walking by and visiting this house for 50 years.

Boynton is surely one of FLLW’s great houses, but its siting was severely compromised from the start and that has led a series of owners, including apparently the original owners, to try a series of corrective actions.

On the beroarchitecture website, http://www.beroarchitecture.com/boyton-house-rehabilitation-2/, slide 10 shows Wright’s original intention in this signature rendering, which was that the main façade of the house be seen across a lawn. There was to be a porte cochere, and the house sits on a raised beveled 3’ +/- earthen terrace as with Thomas and Williams (see Wrightscapes by Charles and Berdeana Aguar for information on Wright’s site designs and these earthen terraces in particular.) Note also that there is a high wall extending out from the service wing on the right. While I do not have a Monograph at hand to check the details, this wall was to connect and unify the composition with a large designed but unbuilt carriage house/servants quarters (much larger than the garage now under construction). The blue strip at ground level to the left of the house is a mystery – perhaps an unbuilt pool?

And indeed in the rendering, the whole house is flipped 180 degrees from how it was eventually built. East Boulevard, and Hawthorne Street some 300’ to the east, run north-south. The Boynton House has its main axis east-west, with the narrow façade facing East Boulevard. I have never seen a Boynton site plan by Wright, but it is likely his intention was that the house be sited more in the center of the 157’ wide lot rather at the extreme northern edge as was constructed.

Slide 9 shows how the site was compromised over time. What was originally a lot with 157’ frontage on East Boulevard up until around 1918 (when I believe the Boyntons sold the house). At that time, as shown in slides 18 and 19, the original lot was split into three lots, with Boynton being reduced to a 79.5 foot frontage and the southern half split into two lots with a 78’ frontage, one facing East Boulevard and another facing Hawthore Street. These lots, as well as the lot to the north of Boynton, have large and expensive houses of no particular merit on them today and are unlikely ever to be reunited with the Boynton site, forever crowding the fine Boynton house.

Slide 15 shows how the porch was screened for a time. Slide 3 shows the original cantilever, how the porch was ultimately glazed, and the current restoration of the porch. While the porch enclosure matched the fine art glass of the remainder of the house, it surely erased the most dramatic feature of the house. In the current work, the porch has now been restored to its original dramatic cantilever (as seen on the 4 random Flickr slides) and appears to be done with excellent attention to detail.

The Boynton’s decision to move the house to the extreme north of the lot not only resulted in the crowding of the house by the house on the north, it put the large Boynton yard to the south where there was no direct convenient access from the interior of the house to the south yard. As shown in slide 11, the floor plan, the front door exits to the north. The service entrance from the kitchen and basement also exits to the north. There is a south-facing door next to the servants’ quarters/kitchen, which exits south but then takes one on a porch first east and then north to reach ground level. So all three exits from the house exit not into the large south yard but north onto the narrow driveway and away from the yard with its gardens and tennis courts.

The owners must have realized their mistake while the house was still under construction and converted what was to have been three equal windows in the east side of the dining room to an off-module door with a narrow light on either side. This does not show on slide 11, the floor plan, (with its hand annotations of furniture purported to be in Wright’s hand) nor on any published plan I am award of such as this one or the one in Hitchcock. This door can also be seen in slides 16 and 17, upper right, from the inside. The fact that it breaks the module has always been disconcerting and an indication it was not designed by Wright. However, undoubtedly Beuleh Boynton was not keen on taking her friends to play tennis through the kitchen and thus this door of convenience.

This door does show on the landscape plan by a Mr. Pitkin (slide 13) with a pony wall (seen in the photo in slide 14) and, in the plan, what could be an urn or a planter box at its termination. This weak resolution is unlikely to be by Wright, and with five risers and no platform, unceremoniously dumps one on the lawn.

The Pitkin plan (slide 13) was implemented in part, with a reflecting pool and planting plan that has nothing to do with the house or Wright’s planting practice at the time. Hitchcock shows a snippet of a more typical Wrightian planting plan, with a hemicycle surrounding the dining room bay. Pitkin shows a rectangular garage east of the house, and a pergola screening the typically unsightly tennis courts (photographed in slide 22). Neither this garage nor the pergola was constructed.

The diagram in 36 shows the unbuilt Pitkin garage, the smaller square garage that was originally built not to Wright’s design, but probably “designed” by the contractor utilizing the same built-in gutter and window details as the house, but of no design interest. This diagram also shows the newly constructed garage (“proposed”), much smaller that the Wright designed carriage house/servants quarters, but located in what I believe to be a similar relationship to the main house.

I understand the existing garage was literally falling down from termite and other damage (slide 24, typical); some of the original art glass had been stolen and replaced by replicas (and the originals later recovered and now in museums), crowded the house (slides 30, 33), and was nearly impossible to maneuver a car into today. The new garage corrects these problems and is modestly scaled replacement for Wright’s larger design.

In the current rehabilitation (slides 43, 44) , it is clear that the owners’ and architects objective is to finally provide accessible useful outdoor space despite the very constrained nature of the site. Moving the garage eastward provides a semi-private yard in the only location possible. The pergola mimics Wright’s solid wall connecting the house with the carriage house, changed to a more open pergola in the now much more constrained space.
From the partial floorplan we see (slide 43), we can see that one of the servant’s rooms and bathroom have been opened up as a “breakfast room”, clearly a bow to contemporary lifestyle. (The other servant’s room is only partially shown but may be a pantry.) In opening up the servatnt’s room/bathroom, what shows on the original plan (slide 11) as a blank south wall of the bathroom now has two windows, probably rescued from the former enclosure of the front porch. However, this south wall was never built to Wright’s design. The realtor’s video of the house from the last sale is still online (google “16 East Boulevard Rochester” and it comes up) indicates that this wall was not built to Wright’s plan in 1908, but rather it was built with one small window in this wall, serving the bathroom.

The door from the kitchen south opening to the south still exits onto a porch which still exits to the north, but a new run of stairs descends into the new developed yard area. (slides 52, 53, 55 ) Other than the two new windows in the south wall of the servant’s quarters-now-breakfast room (slides 43, 44, 53, 56), and the new stair detail, there are no other exterior changes from the house as it existed in 1908.

It is difficult to tell what this will all actually look like in the flesh from the typically clumsy computer renderings (where is Marion Mahony when we need her) but the restoration of the front and side facades of the house as shown in the flickr photographs is well done.

But it is clear that the intention was to try once again to make the best of a poor situation where Frank Lloyd Wright’s site intention was ignored at the original construction, and then further compromised by the splitting of the site. This wonderful house has never had the site design Wright undoubtedly originally intended and I am hopeful this rendition will create an exterior environment worthy of this marvelous house.
_________________
Jim

[Paul Ringstrom]

photos:
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1102839

[outside in]

I too, would like to defer judgement until we get a better understanding of the work that is being done - but I have my reservations. Copper cladding on the wooden sills of the exterior porch - not a detail I've seen before, and what happens when the copper starts oxidizing? The stucco appears to be painted, which I've only seen Wright do a few times and even then it was a calcide paint - not too mention the COMPLETE removal of all interior plaster leaving only the lathe - which I find peculiar - but perhaps all of these issues will be addressed in time. Generally speaking, however, this is one house that suffers from the "sterilization" that seems to accompany many restoration projects lately. Age is not a bad thing, and expressing the age of a building is preferred to making a building look like it was built last week. Finally (and I'll stop here) the precast trellis system seems odd - I would almost prefer something modern knowing that it was not original, rather than inventing something that, in its day, looks Wrightian but not completely so. The latter creates confusion, I think, and mucks up the works.

[Roderick Grant]

outside in, I agree that restoration is often sterilization. Imagine if those lovely, quaint villages in England were redone to look exactly the way they originally did 400 years ago.

That the north facade is drawn as if seen from across a yard doesn't mean it was meant to be sited any way other than it was. FLW knew the constraints of the lot, and located the house to maximize the size of the south lawn. That drawing is a Mahony presentation drawing, that's all. The true damage was done after the construction was complete, when the south portion of the lot was sold off for a neighboring house that ruins the view from the dining room.

The house as built is as close to what FLW wanted as any house he designed. He stayed on site, living in a tent during construction of this house, micromanaging the entire process, so any detail that strays from drawings was his doing.

[DRN]

Roderick wrote:

[SDR]

Maybe Roderick is pulling our leg ? I have believed what I have read, which is that Mr Wright was impatient with the construction process and, other than to assure the proper result, would not visit a building site. Why would this residence, not different in kind from the many houses which preceded it, inspire the architect to endure life -- in far-off Rochester -- in a tent, even for a week ?

SDR

[pharding]

FLW was highly involved with the most important projects or those in which he took a personal interest during construction, especially in the Prairie Period. He made substantial changes on the Davenport House while it was under construction.
_________________
Paul Harding FAIA Owner and Restoration Architect for FLW's 1901 E. Arthur Davenport House, the First Prairie School House in Chicago | www.harding.com | LinkedIn

[Roderick Grant]

From "Two Architects and Their Clients" page 116, with quotes from Geo. T. Swan, son of general contractor, Geo. L. Swan:

"He [FLW] made no great trial for the contractors, but he gave the workmen fits." A year was required to build the Boynton House, and during this period Wright would often pop into town without anyone expecting him. Workmen would leave the job at night without seeing the architect on the property, and find him there when they reported for work in the morning. "He might come into town on a train that arrived at midnight. He wouldn't put up at a hotel. He would hire a hack and go directly to the Boynton House and stay there the remainder of the night. He would never leave the house during the remainder of his stay in Rochester, which might continue two or three days. He was on the job night and day, though, of course, no workmen were there at night. He once made one of his unexpected visits during a spell of miserable weather. It was cold and rainy. As yet there was no roof on the house. Wright had workmen throw up a sort of lean-to, a few two-by-fours with a tarpaulin flung over it, and he remained in this during the night. He seemed to feel that when he was there he had to live uninterruptedly, with his work."

I'm sure FLW was similarly obsessed with many of his most important buildings: Larkin, D D Martin, Dana, Coonley, Robie .... A later house he seemed possessed by, according to the client, was Sol Friedman.

[jim]

As has been noted, the quote is from the son of the contractor, who says “I was too young to have known Mr. Wright but I heard a great deal about him from my father. He became, in time, a kind of legend in our house.” So we have the son of the 1908 contractor relaying the story passed down to him to an author in or around 1968 or 1969, sixty years later.

Likewise, we hear of FLlW’s special relation to this house from Beulah Boynton, the client, in a 1955 newspaper interview, 47 years after the fact, when she was 69 years old, and had not lived in the house or Rochester since 1919, 36 years prior.

One or both of these sources are simply quoted or relied on by every subsequent author.

While none of us can know the facts, since we were not there, another source of information is Wright’s publication of this house in his lifetime. There is no mention or photo of Boynton in Wasmuth (1911). Wendigen (1923) has one photo of the garden (south) front labeled “House at Rochester, New York” and no text mention.

Hitchcock (1942), over which Wright purportedly exercised editorial control, has a first floor plan and an exterior photo that appears to be contemporary with the book. The caption says: “The Boynton house has a type of plan which is extended chiefly along one axis, at right angles to the street. Later owners have glazed the porches.” Period.

While I do not have a complete Wright library, I have never seen interior photos published by Wright or in Wright’ s lifetime, nor seen any quotation by Wright mentioning a special relationship with this house.

While Wright clearly supervised the house and the result was superb, this was true of many many of Wright’s houses of this period. Others had similarly or more complete suites of furniture. Others had custom designed carpets, which Boynton did not. Wright published interior photos of many of them. He did not do so for Boynton.

While I am happy to believe the contractor’s son and Ms. Boynton, because the result was so good, I am not ready to make the same leap of faith on the site planning, where the result even in 1908 was not superb.

And while I wasn’t there and can’t prove it, I would be highly suspect of thinking that Ms. Mahony picked the viewpoints absent Wright’s guidance and intention. I don’t know any architect who allows that, much less Frank Lloyd Wright.

Absent any reliable written record, we are all reliant on conjecture. That being the case, based on the evidence at hand, my conclusion stands: great architecture, great execution, very compromised site planning that must have been out of the architect’s control.
_________________
Jim

[SDR]

That last conclusion seems to be supported by the extensive material presented by the restoration architect . . . does it not ?


SDR

[jim]

I certainly thought so but not everyone else did, apparently.
_________________
Jim

[Roderick Grant]

jim, Since you obviously have Eaton's book, you will note that it also states that FLW selected the site and located the building on the site. It's a logical location for the building; the entrance is the only major element on the north facade, and placing the house close to the north lot line maximized the dining room view of the large south lawn. He did the exact same thing for Meyer May. Would you say that siting was compromised?

Interviews of persons with close connections, no matter how long after the fact, are not to be dismissed altogether, even though they are sometimes colored by failing or constructed memory. Often it's all there is.

I don't know why Boynton doesn't appear in FLW's publications. There's nothing to do but speculate, which comprises much of what we and historians do about such matters. Possibly he came to lower his estimation of the house after the fact. He also put a great deal of effort into the Wm. Martin House (another house hugging one border of its huge lot), and yet published a completely different rendering of it in Wasmuth, and only a glimpse of the garden structure in the 1911 book. Baldwin is another interesting house that got short shrift, even though it's a version of the first Millard House, and a better one at that. Millard got good coverage, but Baldwin, not so much.

You seem to be in a snit over something, but I can't quite figure out what.

[jim]

Oh sorry, not in a snit. And here I thought a couple of the other chatters were in a snit! My bad. Having a conversation on a blog seems to be the worst possible way to have a conversation and things can come out not as intended. Sorry I will try to do better.

In researching Frank Lloyd Wright there is so much folklore and misinformation it can be very hard to discern what is and what isn't. Trying to discern the truth can both help with an understanding of Mr. Wright's architecture and way of working and also provide guidance to rehabilitation efforts. In this particular case, one of the questions some chatters are asking is "is it appropriate to create an outdoor living space east of the house?"

In terms of the Eaton book, it is a fascinating window on the architects and their clients, which I have enjoyed a lot. However, regarding Boynton, he states "Wright participated in the choice of the somewhat hilly site and…" which is a real red flag as to the quality of the research. That part of Rochester is flat as a pancake. The Boynton site is flat. East Boulevard is flat. Hawthorne Street is flat. The house is less than 1000 ft. from the old Barge Canal, which naturally was located on the flattest route possible.

This may seem a small point but is such a wringer that I am guessing came from one of his two quoted sources that I have to question what else is misinformation.

If the original siting of Boynton was perfection, then it could be argued that there is little justification for modifications to the building (e.g., the stairway from the entrance from the kitchen/servants quarters.) We can just rue that the house was severely compromised by the truncating of the lot (which it was), and live with it. On the other hand, if the site design was less than perfect, searching for an incremental improvement is less blasphemous.

Hope this doesn't sound too snitty.
_________________
Jim