Wright Chat

[pmahoney]

Charles White worked in the studio as well and was the source of the comment that Isabel worked on art glass design. His letters to a friend do not reference any specific projects. I have researched this commission as part of a book on the Walter Davidson house, there is a fair amount of misinformation published about her.

[pharding]

The general consensus seems to be that she was the Bookkeeper or Office Manager and that she may have worked on art glass windows on one or two projects. The most accurate source of information about the Oak Park Studio is by Grant Carpenter Manson. He interviewed former staff members in 1939 to 1940. He wrote that Isabel Roberts was not an architect but a "bookkeeper and general factum" at The Studio. "She did occasionally try her at design and certainly worked on some of the detail drawings of her own house." She and her mother were the clients for a great Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie House, the Isabel Roberts house.

For more specific information about the Oak Park Studio refer to Frank Lloyd Wright: The First Golden Age by Grant Carpenter Manson, page 217.
_________________
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

[pmahoney]

In the 1920's, Frank Lloyd Wright wrote that he would recommend Roberts as an Architect to anyone, anywhere. Seems to indicate he considered her more than a clerical employee.
He also did not refute her claim to have done the majority of the design work on the DeRhodes residence in South Bend.

[SDR]

Wow -- the record (if it can be called that) is all over the place, on this person !


SDR

[pharding]

That is interesting. Where is that written?
_________________
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

[pmahoney]

Wrights recommendation letter is in the file on her at the AIA.

[Mike Burdick]

Thank you all for your comments and responses. I finally found two photographs of Isabel Roberts on the website "Flickr" (from Yahoo). You can either type in the "tag" Isabel Roberts, or go to Jadalles1533's Photostream. There are many photos of the buildings that she designed in Florida, along with the one picture of her alone, and one picture of her with the entire FLW family (except for FLW, who was taking the picture). I must admit that I am not sure which woman is Catherine and which is Isabel Roberts. Perhaps someone could look at the picture and tell me.
Thanks.

[peterm]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11072784@N06/sets/72157603639482668/

[pharding]

Those projects are not the least bit impressive and are quite banal. Whomever wrote that text was attempting to rewrite history. My favorite delusional statement was "The Isabel Roberts House was designed by Isabel Roberts, per her own statement, even though it has always been attributed to Wright, out of whose studio it emerged." Undoubtedly she was a fine Office manager/Bookkeeper that contributed a lot in that capacity. Undoubtedly she did some drafting on occasion. However there is a major difference between drafting and designing. Clearly she did not have the skill to design much of anything with design excellence. She and her mother richly deserve credit for being clients for a great, moderate sized Prairie House. That house was one of the finest of FLW's Prairie Period.
_________________
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]

Paul, I agree. If Roberts had been as productive a member of FLW's studio as the text implies, it's unlikely it would have taken a century to set the record straight. FLW had no problem with women in architecture, as MMG proved, so why would he have discredited Roberts? I don't buy it for a minute. Grant Carpenter Manson and H. Allen Brooks, both of whom I knew, were too good at their work to allow such an error to make it into print.

As for Masqueray, if he was her teacher (and that would have been after her stint in Oak Park), she certainly didn't learn anything about modern residential architecture from him. His work consists mostly of Beaux Arts churches in Minnesota and Iowa. One quote from his Wikipedia entry is almost risible: "A colorful, dynamic teacher, Masqueray pleaded with his students to make things simple." Take a tour of the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul or the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, his two most prominent works, to see how simple his designs were. He was quite good by Beaux Arts standards, but in no way a modern architect of significance.

[Reidy]

About her putative role in glass design and in De Rhodes: might we be confusing her with Marion Mahony? Mahony's name has come up more often in connection with glass design (though I don't have any hard citations at hand), and she did a famous rendering of De Rhodes.

[pmahoney]

Census records indicate that Isabel Roberts father was not E.E. Roberts as some publications have claimed but James Roberts who lived in South Bend for much of his life.

[DRN]

I wonder if there was a connection between Ms. Roberts and her father in Wright's obtaining the 1906 K.C. DeRhodes commission in South Bend?

[RonMcCrea]

When FLLW summoned Taylor Woolley to Taliesin on Sept. 15, 1911, he told him by telegram to "come along go to Mrs. Roberts for money wire train.”

Whatever else she was, she appears to have been in charge of the company checkbook.

[Roderick Grant]

"Mrs.?" I thought Isabel Roberts was a "Miss." Seems an unlikely mistake to have made, unless FLW was referring to Isabel's mother for some reason.