Frank Lloyd Wright

An all-day Smithsonian seminar will explore the life and legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright. The event will be held Saturday, January 31 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. at the S. Dillon Ripley Center. $90 for members; $130 for non-members. Bill Keene, a Smithsonian study tour lecturer in architecture and urban studies, will lead the discussion. Participants also will hear from Thomas Wright, grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright, who lives in the Robert Llewellyn Wright House (1957) in Bethesda, which was designed for his father, FLW’s sixth child. Click here for more information and tickets.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy has created a special opportunity to tour all three of the Wright-designed homes in the Washington area. On June 29, the group will start with the Robert Llewellyn Wright House (1953) in Bethesda. Thomas Wright, grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright and the current owner of the house, will personally conduct the tour and answer questions. Participants will then travel to McLean, to tour the Luis Marden House (1952). Light refreshments will be served on the terrace with views overlooking the majestic Potomac. The day will conclude at Woodlawn with a tour of the Pope-Leighey House (1939) in Alexandria. Cost is $185 for members; $200 for non-members. You can register here. Act fast if you want to go since space is limited.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighey House.
 

The 1934 Willey House in Minneapolis was restored by owner Steve Sikora. Photo by Steve Sikora.
Do you ever wonder what it would be like to live in a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright? On March 1, you will have an opportunity to hear from two people who are lucky to have that pleasure. The event, “Original Client and New Stewards,” will feature Roland Reisley, a rare original Wright client, who owns the 1951 Reisley House in Usonia near Pleasantville, N.Y. and Steve Sikora, who rescued and restored the 1934 Willey House in Minneapolis. Jane King Hession, who authored Frank Lloyd Wright in New York: The Plaza Years 1954-1959 and is former president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy, will moderate the panel, which will be held at 7 p.m. at the Lyceum in Alexandria. The event is the first in the three-part “Still Outside the Box,” a lecture series on the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright sponsored by Woodlawn/Pope-Leighey, historic sites of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Read here for more details and ticket information.
The living room of the Willey House. Photo by Steve Sikora.
The 1951 Reisley House (pictured above and below) in New York is still owned by the original owner. Photos by Roland Reisley.

The slat-enclosed raised parking area in the Bender Building.

The boom in post-World War II car production in the United States created a unique design challenge. Where are all those cars going to go when people were not driving them? The National Building Museum is currently hosting the first major exhibition of parking garage design. “House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage” details the history of the form, with a major emphasis on the growth in construction during the mid-century period. The exhibit includes the designs of modern masters such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen and Bertrand Goldberg, who studied with Mies van der Rohe at the Bauhaus, before designing Marina City in Chicago.

The photos here are of a mid-century parking solution here in D.C. The Bender Building, built in 1959 and designed by the team of Julian Berla and Joseph Abel, features an above-ground parking lot right under the office space. At the time, the building, which faces three streets–Connecticut, 18th and L–was the largest and most modern in the city.
Parking entrance on 18th Street.
Cool concrete cut outs along parking area on L Street.

On Sept. 17, the Frank Lloyd Wright Pope-Leighey House in Alexandria will host an evening lecture about the architect by Thomas Schmidt, director emeritus of another Wright home you may have heard of–Fallingwater. The event will be held at 7 p.m. and will feature an interactive discussion, wine bar and hors d’oeuvres for a $50 donation. Click here for all the details and how to RSVP. There is limited space so RSVP now if you are interested.

Speaking of Fallingwater, which was built by Wright for Edgar Kaufmann. Check out this upcoming exhibit in Pittsburgh of the iconic photographs of Palm Springs by the late Julius Shulman. The exhibit, which begins Sept. 19, will include renderings of the Kaufmann House by Richard Neutra.

The Post‘s architecture critic Philip Kennicott takes a look at the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s List of Most Endangered Historic Places, saying the list does not always pick “easy” choices and comments on the Third Church of Christ debate. (According to this AP story, “Rebecca Miller, executive director of the D.C. Preservation League, said there are unexplored alternatives that would maintain the historic building. The group will likely appeal the decision, she said.”)
On the Trust’s list and the larger issue of preservation, Kennicott writes:

“[T]he National Trust’s annual list — which reflects increasing concern about the preservation of mid-century modernism — has never been exclusively devoted to the easy issues in preservation. When they hold their yearly adopt-a-puppy day, they don’t slight the mutts, the mangy and the ill-tempered. The list is always way out ahead of public opinion, which is where the Trust should be. And it often serves more as a guide to the philosophical problems of preservation than a simple gazetteer of historic or beloved buildings.
“This year, there’s nothing local on the list. But that doesn’t mean the list doesn’t have clear local import. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill., is a far greater and more essential building than Araldo Cossutta’s 1971 Third Church of Christ, Scientist, on 16th Street near the White House. And the Unitarian Universalist congregants of the Wright’s 1909 temple are desperate to save their house of worship, while the Christian Scientists who worship in Cossutta’s concrete box have successfully Read More >

Yesterday’s Post real estate section highlighted Encounter Row, an enclave of contemporary homes from the early 1970s in Columbia, Md.

“Today, the single-level, 850- and 1,220-square-foot Pacesetter houses that line Encounter Row and the four courts that extend from it define the enclave and remain a distinctive alternative to the large Colonial-style houses more common in the region. ‘For very little money, we had an architect-designed house,’ said Phil Engelke, an original Pacesetter owner.
Architect Barry Berkus, president of Berkus Design Studios in Santa Barbara, Calif., planned the homes as prototypes for modular construction. Berkus, who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., said in a recent interview that he designed the houses to accommodate a growing population and shrinking lot sizes. … Berkus said he was influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian homes, which were meant to be affordable and mass-produced.”>

Here is a listing for one of the homes located on Encounter Row.