Mod
Magazine Chocolate
Weasel
Shop
|
California Road Trip with Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) After a bit of research yielded the whereabouts of 27 Frank Lloyd Wright designed structures spanning the state of California from north to south, my curiosity to accomplish the task of seeing them all began. Loading up the car with the requisite food, maps and cassette tapes for the car stereo I embarked on what was to become one of the most important trips of my life. I spent five days driving north from San Diego through inland California to Sacramento and then along the coast, the return journey stretched from San Rafael to Malibu along the serene Highway 1 that kisses the surf and sand for hundreds of miles. All told, I visited 22 Wright-designed buildings and a theater designed by one of the Taliesin architects trained by Wright himself. Though museum-goers can gaze at numerous of works of art within an afternoon (only parking the car once), the grand scale of architecture does not allow such concentrated viewing of one designers craft spanning nearly nine decades. After traveling 1900 miles in my car and an additional 300 miles in Katie Conley’s new Toyota - I witnessed only 22 works by an artist many will be more familiar with when his extensive Ken Burns produced biography hits televisions courtesy of PBS. Loading up and readying my Volvo 740SE wagon was unusually quick since this vacation lacked a purpose of comfort and relaxation, instead favoring sightseeing as its goal. Other than a few shirts, a few pairs of shorts, toiletries and a sleeping bag most of what I brought was audio cassettes for the extensive hours I assumed I would be spending inside the black leather interior. Yo La Tengo’s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One was in the deck as I sped northward down the first leg of highway. The familiar sounds of an album I had been spending a great deal of time with lessened the anxiety I was feeling toward a trip (read: tour) that bands supporting a new album would shy away from. Passing Oceanside, a demo from Chico’s The Imps made its debut strut across the stock Volvo speakers. Their loud, boisterous brand of power pop heralded a confidence matched by the Marine Corps as I drove through Camp Pendelton. Soon thereafter Bob Tilton’s Crescent album exploded in my lap with its layered punk ferocity and damaged distortion-rich guitar lines - a tempo change that foreshadows the ups and downs I was to face during the trip. Crescent’s noise sublimely disappeared as Orange County’s road signs reflected off my chrome plated wheels. Soon thereafter Telegraph Melts’ recordings calmed my already-frenzied nerves dealing with Orange County traffic. The damaged guitar lines and space-evoking cello sweeps further erased my feelings of being one with the road. Ever increasing was my alienated feeling as my Volvo spaceship glided through Los Angeles, which at times evokes a feeling of being in distant nebula. Telegraph Melts is paired with Bob Massey’s pop songs on the b-side of the tape - moved me out of the valley through the northeastern corridor of the nation’s second largest city. With Bakersfield two hours away and an enigmatic grapevine pass ahead of me, the Beastie Boys were adopted as companions for the remainder of the journey. Check Your Head, Ill Communication, and Paul’s Boutique added the much-needed funk to my already aching butt and lower back - the steering wheel tapping and head bobbing were at their maximum. Up and over the grapevine I launched the Swedish export into the central California valley, the heart of the farmed produce and meats for much of America. Bakersfield was on the horizon. Dad was awaiting my arrival in the front window of their new residence. He exited the front door to greet me. Mom soon followed to exploit the round of hugs and “good-ta-see-yas.” Since dusk was approaching and I was using 200 speed film, Dad and I drove to the first photo-op of a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home. The George Ablin Residence (1958). We drove across Bakersfield to the neighborhood that hides THE country club, the streets lined with homes designed in the ‘50s and ‘60s. I could smell the history in the air as my pulse quickened down the long road to our destination. When the distinguished gate came into view we knew we had arrived at a house very different from those surrounding it. After taking several pictures of the impressive red gate and its ornate Wright-ian spire we ran around the house like kids sneaking a doorbell ditch maneuver. From the golf course green the house overlooks I continued snapping photos. Los Banos, a tiny farming community’s downtown, lay about five miles east of the freeway off-ramp. Along the stretch of road connecting the community with the interstate, lay endless fields of unknown crops. Neu! and Neu! 2 back to back on a 90 minute cassette (thanks Christina!) provided an odd mix with the scenery. As the motorik keyboard and bass buzz left the car stereo the images framed by the windows and windshield spoke a completely different language. Bluegrass would have been more fitting, but instead the urban din of Germany’s Neu! became the drive’s blessed alternative to AM radio. Upon reaching the address of the Randall Fawcett Residence (1955), I ventured down the driveway past the No Trespassing sign into a circular drive where I turned around. The battered concrete block ranch house’s 60 degree angle wings spread across my immediate horizon. Wright’s shallow, circular flower planter immediately stated I was in the presence of his work. As with most Wright designs the pathway to the front door was enclosed by the house’s shape as the hearth’s fireplace rose tall and grand to my left. The Fawcett house lay flat and long like the crop fields it rested on. Pausing with camera extended out the open driver’s side window, I snapped photos and sped off down the drive. With the Electronic Evocations: A Tribute to the Silver Apples cassette (thanks Carl!) in the deck I continued my drive northward to Modesto. In the northeastern fields of this strip-mall-lined town, amidst endless groves of trees, sits the Robert G. Walton Residence constructed in 1957. Its 90 degree angled T plan clutches a swimming pool while dogs run about the sprinklers on the front lawn. Again, the Wright design opposes the few surrounding homes yet sits comfortably in the earth as all of his (organic architecture) structures do. I walked along the split-rail fence and again the shutterbug buzzed. The Volvo shambled down the near-dirt asphalt road to the T intersection that marked my map directions, the corner house also the product of an interesting, yet unknown, mid-’50s architect. I was miles east of the Highway 5. The connecting two lane road, barely a capillary of the interstate network, was a thoroughfare for slow moving farm equipment and produce trucks. My car and I were naked in a crowd. As I entered the Sacramento valley past Stockton, Bright’s debut album (thanks Ben) entertained my wheel-gripping palms as I drummed along to the motorik pop beat. Bright’s album is still one of my favorite things to listen to, coupled with their demos (thanks Ryan!) on the same cassette, is a listening experience to behold. Enraptured, I sat in my leather seat amidst the 5 o’clock downtown traffic, thumb drumming their sound. John Conley (of Holiday Flyer) and I dined at a Mexican cafe close to his easily accessed freeway-exit apartment and prepared for the night of music ahead. Katie Conley (as in “and on drums is...!”), ventured from her parents’ suburban dwelling to join us for a dusk walk in a nearby park. The park bustled with family activities, children screaming, kite flying, and pick-up games of basketball. We walked and talked. Holiday Flyer was scheduled to open for Smog by local promoter and band manager extraordinaire Brian McKenna. The Flyer took to the stage, playing an endearing set mixing their old songs, new songs, and a Fleetwood Mac cover that showcased Katie’s beautiful voice. Smog saddened the crowd to near tearful outbursts as their solemn songs and words floated from the speakers. The locals came to see both bands, I sat at the bar drinking Hefeweizen. It had been a long day. Working from what little I could describe as Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy, Katie became curious to join me on a road trip from Sacramento to the San Francisco bay area in search of homes and buildings - - still mysteries to the two of us. Surprised at how easy the addresses were to locate, master driver Katie Conley and I found five Wright structures in one afternoon. After dining in Berkeley we drove up the steep sorority-lined streets southeast of the campus to find the Feldman residence. Tucked away inside the terra cotta colored iron-railed fence was a bamboo garden hiding much of the wooden exterior home commanding a magnificent view of the bay region. As the owner worked around his garage and garden, I stood across the street and gazed at the tiny eye slit clerestory windows lining the chimney-owned roof. After locating the dirt path between houses, I was able to view the backside of the home. The structure’s split level rests in the hillside as if it were born there amongst the eucalyptus and oak trees surrounding my path. My chauffeur and I drove northwesterly toward San Rafael, CA while listening to The Sunshine Club, Astrud Gilberto and the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever (Katie is big into disco these days!). Across several bridges, through toll booths and past a state prison, we ventured to see what many claim to be one of the most awe-inspiring public buildings of Wright’s on the west coast. The Marin County Administration Building and Hall of Justice rests in the crotch of two hillsides across the street from the Marin County Post Office (all 1957), also of Wright’s design. While the post office is the only building built for the US government, the Marin County offices belong to a small family of structures designed by Wright for governmental bodies. We walked inside, around and on top of these structures, finding little curious details both within and outside each building. While walking through the Marin County library and the halls of the Administration complex, we felt as if we had entered a huge organism, with its thin membrane ceiling allowing for daylight to light our paths around the complex. Each chair, table and window mimicked Wright’s chosen shapes for this piece - half moon circles and elongated ovalized rectangles as the colors of terra cotta, sky blue, and copper decorated everything. The sky and the earth became one, passing through the structure. Nearby we also spied the Taliesin-designed theater that compliments the neighboring Wright structures and nearby lake. The Robert Berger Residence (1950) overlooks the San Rafael valley housing its fellow Wright structures in the neighboring community of San Anselmo. The desert rubblestone wall that reaches across its lot acts as a firm anchor for the triangular house camouflaged in native greenery of the wet Marin climate. Again the clerestory window motif was visible, and once again Katie and I sat in the driveway of a site that took our minds off the ills of the world. We headed southward, across the Golden Gate bridge and into the heart of San Francisco. My skilled driver and navigator at the helm, we headed for the Haight for dinner and shopping. As dusk approached, and directions obtained, we headed for the V.C. Morris Gift Shop (1948). What now houses a gallery of contemporary art is a radical design setting its brick facade apart from neighboring window displays as common and redundant as strip malls and gasoline stations. The “arch-tunnel of glass” as one writer has endeared this structure’s front door, sucks the curious passerby off the sidewalk and into its lair. The interior houses a spiraling ramp that mimics that of New York’s Guggenheim Museum (also of Wright’s design) and that of the glass foyer/entryway. While windows are absent from the towering facade joining the building’s neighbors together, the flat brick structure is punctuated by pinpricks of light that focus on the sidewalk below. Frederic Madre’s jungle mix tape got us home. Leaving my
temporary Sacramento residence I began my journey southward, homeward.
Galaxie 500’s This is Our Music making me as alert as any morning
cup o’ joe could. While directions were absent from my Wright address
book, I made stops at local drug stores and souvenir shops to talk with
locals and buy maps - Orinda being the most rustic, wooded of the neighborhoods
I encountered on this trip. The Maynard P. Buehler Residence (1948) is
nestled in a tightly woven fabric of Orinda’s winding narrow roads
and wooded properties. Tucked inside a short driveway-length street, the
Buehler home was being restored from hexagonal floor-stones to the sky-piercing
wooden living room facade. After granting me permission to walk about
the torn apart home, the construction workers (read: artists) went about
their business as I went about mine. Smelling the new cedar of the long
hallway, I walked across the stone floor through bedrooms, a magnificently-lit
living room and a chef-inspired hexagonal kitchen layout. After reading
the commissioning plaque on the patio, my chilled-bones and dropped jaw
continued beyond the rooms to the Japanese garden. A rolling sprawl of
statue-spotted grass kissed a fence separating the home from the real
world as the coy swam in the pond at my feet. The owner sat in an armchair
in the pool house reading amongst library stacks of books. I imagined
him a professor, a philosopher perhaps. He paid me no mind as my camera
made love to his home and garden. Only minutes
south on the 82, or El Camino Real, is Atherton. Atherton is a sleepy
suburb of large lots and older homes hidden in a forested overgrowth shading
the streets from the day’s hot sun. The Arthur C. Matthews Residence
(1950) came into view. The address at 83 Wisteria Way taking up a good
deal of the cul de sac, the home joins the foliage and grass with humble
unity. Its sprawling duel-winged brick expanse lays across a flat grassy
yard and driveway as a sleeping body on beach sand conforms to the giving
soft earth. The diamond (double equilateral triangle) center of the home
gives birth to its 60 and 120-degree angle wings stretching out like clerestory
windowed ornate limbs. Staring at its simplicity, I wondered if homes
like this can be ripped from their plots and rebuilt elsewhere. Why should
we have to wait until a home like this goes on sale only to relocate our
lives to neighborhoods like Atherton in order to inhabit such a beautiful
brick organism like this. With nearly a two hour drive ahead of me, Ride’s Smile album played a couple of times, along with an encore of Seamonsters - - I smiled and drove continuing a day in which I would witness seven Wright structures in total. Meeting up with the 280, she cradled my aching butt toward the 101 who in turn handed me southward to the 156. Monterey’s beaches and vacation homes on the horizon briefly, I soon found myself in forests (much like those in Orinda earlier that morning) once again. Soon enough Highway 1 landed me in Carmel by the Sea. Amongst the tourists, I too drove 10 miles an hour through town, by the shops, viewing the couples walking hand in hand, the sea caressing the sandy beaches along Scenic Road. At the corner of Scenic and Martin Way rests the imaginative Mrs. Clinton Walker Residence (1948). Lying mostly below street level, this stone structure appears as a natural extension of the rocky outcropping at the road’s bend. Layers of stone, one upon the many below, build up a knife-edge that cuts the sea air as it approaches, the natural beach rock below harbors much of the structure from tidal haranguing. A Japanese garden tucked within the curving home, hid the construction workers from passersby, this home too was in the process of restoration. As one drives by gazing at the waves, Wright’s shallow flower planter and stretched stone wall & gate hide most of the home from view. To appreciate this home entirely, one needs to stand on the rocks and sand below gazing upward at the home’s windowed cockpit that allows for a 270-degree sea level ocean view. I drove the insanely-curved Highway 1 (PCH) southward at a high rate of speed. The Pacific Ocean’s cresting wave formations streamed past me on the right as forests and open expanses of green blurred by on my left. The blue sky streamed into my cockpit through the sunroof warming my atrophying muscles. Past Big Sur’s majestic forest beauty, past San Simeon’s magical legacy, and Cambria’s small town calm, I landed myself in San Luis Obispo. At 1106 Pacific Street stands the Karl Kundert Medical Clinic (1955). This brick L-plan now houses a cardiologist’s office, with furnishings and original decor still intact. The lobby/waiting room naturally lit by a clerestory of pierced wood panels admitting patterned light through its glass insets is captivating. Overlooking a babbling creek, the silence of the brick is broken by the north-facing glass doors that open upon a wooded parking lot. It makes you wish for a heart condition just to visit this doctor’s office. As the afternoon grew old, I rolled the dice to see if I could see just one more of Wright’s sights in a single day. The dice were in my favor. Just south of Santa Barbara My Bloody Valentine broke my driver’s daze and Montecito’s off-ramp lunged me into a neighborhood holding a fascinating secret. Montecito surrounds the George C. Stewart Residence (1909), the first of Wright’s California houses. As dusk made photography impossible I walked around the house capturing the pictures of memory instead. The Stewart house places Wright’s Prairie concepts into one of the most luxurious California neighborhoods. I walked quickly from the front gate, with it’s ornate mailbox and address signage, to the back gate along a redwood fence. At the rear of the house lay an immaculately managed yard watched over by a two-story-high living room and its broad overhanging roof. The redwood horizon expanded to my left hiding a dense garden, as expected with Wright at the design’s helm. Unlike any of the other structures I have witnessed, Wright’s only California Prairie design looks more like his Wisconsin and Oak Park designs than the stone structures dotting our state. In the mountains
high atop the Malibu seashore, stretching out across a stony landscape
is the Arch Oboler Gatehouse (1940), Arch Oboler Retreat (1941) and their
additions made in 1944 and 1946. Designed as an artistic retreat for those
loathing the Los Angeles metropolis, this sprawling “work in progress”
was erected from desert rubblestone. The horizontal wood sided main structure,
known as “Eaglefeather,” is partially hidden by an immense
rock wall spiked by a dozen altar-like adjutments. Like flagstones, these
stone pillars sit strangely still like birds on a wire. The rest of the
house runs east and south in lengthy angular paths away from the main
hearth, much like the moon structures in Space 1999. In the distance,
the Retreat sits perched on a cliff commanding a stunning view across
the mountain wilderness, a valley at this time of the morning, cloaked
in fog. Still used as a sort of retreat by its present owners, the Arch
Oboler house’s driveway held over a dozen of its visitors cars.
The climbing curves of West Mulholland Highway take such guests and us
architectural archaeologists far from the city, far from anything - a
perfect location for such a retreat. Originally housing five Wright structures, this plot of land now houses two structures and two museums owned by the Los Angeles Municipal Art Museum. Unfortunately demolished were the Little Dipper Kindergarten (1920), Studio Residence B (1921) and Los Angeles Exhibition Pavilion (1954). Demolished during the refurbishing of Hollyhock House, the Exhibition Pavilion housed the touring “Sixty Years of Living Architecture” exhibit after making its Florence, Zurich, Paris, Munich, Rotterdam, and Mexico City appearances. The graffiti-defaced cement slabs and blocks still remain as a contiguous part of the park’s grassy knoll. The Aline Barnsdall Hollyhock House (1917), reminiscent of a Mayan temple, stands alone commanding a southerly view of the Los Angeles basin. Named for its ornamental hollyhock forms, each of the house’s corners, angles, windows, doors and especially the inner courtyard display the design’s variety of manifestations. Much of the grounds and inner furnishings remain intact since the Olive Hill Foundation restored the poured concrete structure in 1947. Most notable is the south facing hallway that ends in ornate artglass doors with a breathtaking view over the lawn and downtown L.A. As I stood below the windows, camera poised upward, a chill ran through me. This is much more than a house, a home, or a structure it is a freestanding work of art, an installation that has witnessed 9 decades. Across the museum’s courtyard stands the arts and crafts Barnsdall Studio Residence A (1921). Although less impressive, this building reminds of us Wright’s diversity expressed across decades of design work. A museum employee instructed me to stand on the northern boundary of Barnsdall Art Park and look toward Griffith Park Observatory. On a clear day she said, you can see two additional Wright homes across the shallow valley. Several blocks away at 8161 Hollywood Boulevard sits Frank Lloyd Wright’s John Storer Residence (1923). Now having witnessed this structure twice, once on a sunny weekday afternoon the other on a cool dusk weekend, dusk is the best time to see this house lit up. With its ornate mailbox and driveway gate lit up by a variety of interesting lamps, and its poured concrete block retaining wall pierced with small lighting fixtures, the street level portions of this property are beautifully bathed in a 70 year old glow. As your eyes wander up the lushly tropical garden, the second of four textile-block Wright houses in California is breathtaking. The Storer house’s 2-story-high living room opens from its hillside to a full view of Hollywood and the San Bernardino Valley, a view also visible from the flag-adorned patios flanking either side of the complex. The backside of the property hides a courtyard sunk into the rising hillside also compactly hiding several luxurious, though more modern, homes. Again heading east on Hollywood Boulevard, I turned left on Vermont toward the Hollywood Bowl. Midway up the steep suburban hill, I flipped my Volvo around to climb a steeper and tighter-curved Glendower Avenue. At 1962 Glendower Avenue stands the Charles Ennis Residence (1923). Through my open sunroof opened a captivating view of the Ennis structure that overtook me as my car and I climbed the steep street. The last of the four Los Angeles textile-block houses, the Ennis is the most monumental. Glendower winds upward across the face of the structure then wrapping around to its backside where the street-level front door and driveway entrance are located. With its eye-level dedication plaque plainly visible, the Ennis house stands apart from its neighboring structures in its size and the oddball orientation of its cement-blocked exterior. Through the iron gates of its garage/driveway entrance, the pedestrian can imagine the views allowed by the Ennis’ south-facing windows peering from atop the Griffith Park area. Though the most difficult portion of the drive was returning home from L.A. it allowed for the most time to think about what I had witnessed in the span of a few days. The imagination and artistry of one man stretches across two centuries and a whole nation. Five Wright designs in California await my next road trip. |