Architecture

Two Architects Build Houses for Themselves

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin East, entry courtyard

Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson number among the most well known American architects of the 20th century. Both are remembered for their many commissions by others, for buildings constructed both in the United States and overseas. Notably, each of these men designed a house for himself and each reflects something of the respective architect’s vision for an ideal domestic building. The results differ dramatically and beg for some explanation, especially in the case of Philip Johnson’s Glass House.

To help appreciate the theoretical basis for these vastly differing houses, I find it helpful to draw upon a distinction made by the earthscape artist, Andres Amador (featured in a prior post). Speaking about his temporary compositions ‘sketched’ upon large stretches of beach areas at low tide, Amador refers to some of his works as “geometric” and others as “organic.” The geometric works display a quality readily suggested by the name for them, and reflect Amador’s training in math as an engineer. The organic works arise, he says, from the site, and he suggests that these pieces communicate their form to him. For me, Amador’s distinction can also be referred to as the distinction between pattern that is ‘received,’ as compared with pattern that is ‘imposed.’

Amador’s distinction between the organic patterns that arise from the site, and the geometric patterns that result from conceptual pre-planning, can assist us in perceiving some themes that are implied by the architectural designs produced by Wright and Johnson for their homes. In the case of Wright, he built Taliesin on family property in Spring Green, Wisconsin, in an area where he grew up and with which he had a deep attachment. Like much of his other work, Wright wanted Taliesin to appear as if it was an extension of the materials and features of the site in which it is placed, being an ‘organic’ development of a human habitation within a natural setting. Wright’s intent is evident in the way that the horizontal bands of stucco on the facade, as well as of the limestone in the foundation and walls of the building, parallel and mirror the layers of stone found on the site.

Exterior elevation of the house, as if emerging from the site (photos above and below)

While Philip Johnson’s architectural practice was located in New York City, he planned to build a house for himself and weekend guests in nearby New Canaan, Connecticut. Johnson’s Glass House clearly reflects his indebtedness to the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the European modernist movement in architecture generally known as the International Style. Employing Andres Amador’s distinction, the Glass House clearly embodies a geometric conceptual basis, with the result that the building does not so much emerge from the site but instead sits upon it as an imposed human-made form. The carefully clipped and very flat lawn, and the linear walkways serve to emphasize the distinction between the structure and its natural surroundings. This leaves the Glass House appearing to be like a sculptural object that has been placed on a plaza, or like a vase on a smooth table-top, rather than as something arising from within its setting.

The Glass House, exterior view (above), and interior view (below)

Brief attention to the history of these two buildings provides further insight. Wright lived at Taliesin much of his life, while also retreating to Taliesin West in the Arizona desert during the winter months. Over the years, he gathered a sizable community of apprentices who lived and worked with him at both locations. To this day, the architectural fellowship that is part of his legacy maintains both homes and studios. By contrast, though Philip Johnson first lived part-time in the Glass House himself, he soon discovered how it was largely unsuitable for that purpose, other than for entertaining guests in the living and dining areas of the structure. Given the sudden notoriety of the house, the constant presence of unwelcome visitors and architecture-minded prowlers made it problematic for every exterior surface of the house to be comprised of glass. Johnson soon made it a habit to stay in the adjacent bunker-like Brick House, designed for the site as a guest house, when spending time in New Canaan.

Obviously, it is easy to stress the marked differences between these houses designed and built by Wright and Johnson for themselves. Andres Amador’s dual approach to his earthscapes may help provide a reminder of the way that both-and thinking can aid how we consider certain objects of interest. Wright’s organic home and studio, emerging within and receiving inspiration from its site, and Johnson’s temporarily lived-in Glass House, imposed as a geometric sculpture upon its site, share a common distinction. Regardless of functional considerations, each house has its own way of displaying beauty, and both remain among a small list of internationally recognized architectural achievements of historic significance.

Note: A short introductory video about Andres Amador and his work, giving examples from both of the geometric and organic categories, introduced above, has been produced by KQED of San Francisco. It can be found on YouTube ( https://youtu.be/T_tIG5mo1DM?si=0MkjxkTEK48eC-aV ).

Taliesin East has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the Glass House is a National Historic Landmark.

A Church by Errol Barron in Gulfport

St Peter’s by the Sea, Gulfport, MS, designed by Errol Barron

Errol Barron’s work as an artist may be familiar to readers of this website based on some of his evocative New Orleans water color paintings previously featured here. His paintings of that city as well as of Tulane University, where he has taught for many years, provide strong indications that he is more than a skilled painter and draftsman, but also a trained architect. He has taught generations of architectural students at Tulane, and he has practiced his profession to great effect not only in this region but also overseas, with some houses of his located in Greece. Given Barron’s evident sensitivity to historical architecture and design features characteristic of this region, I was surprised to learn about a notable but unexpected feature of his resume. He worked for seven years with Paul Rudolph, architect of the well-known and oft-criticized Boston Government Services Center and a partial inspiration for the movie, The Brutalist.

I was recently delighted to discover the Episcopal church in Gulfport, Mississippi, St. Peter’s by the Sea, and that Errol Barron was its architect. It is a gem of a church, and a very successful design that incorporates traditional ecclesiastical elements associated with European Gothic churches along with features reflecting contemporary liturgical renewal. I have heard people refer to this style of church building as Carpenter Gothic, and as Southern Gothic, and the labels seem to fit well. The worship space exudes an appreciation for traditional forms while harmoniously blending them with a contemporary focus upon light, color, and the greater participation of worshippers in flowing open spaces.

The main altar with the ornamental rood screen

Visitors to the Washington National Cathedral, and similar churches of Gothic-revival style, may recognize the particular heritage that stands behind the floor plan of St Peter by the Sea. At the National Cathedral, and in its medieval forebears (such as London’s Westminster Abbey), an arched stone ‘rood screen’ separates the chancel and choir (beyond the screen) from the nave where the congregation is seated. When, in the 1960’s, the liturgical renewal movement began to influence changes in the worship arrangements of these buildings, a new main altar was often then placed in the nave, on the congregation’s side of the rood screen. Smaller gatherings for weekday services could still occur in the choir side of that screen, while Sunday gatherings for the principal Eucharist would be celebrated in the nave, with the clergy, altar, and liturgical action proximate and visible to the congregation.

A view of the ceiling and woodwork above the choir

Though St Peter’s by the Sea is a comparatively recent building, its design reflects something of the historical sequence described above. Instead of an imposing stone rood screen, shielding the chancel and choir spaces beyond, Barron has designed an ornamental arched screen of light-colored wood that suggests rather than imposes separate areas within the overall space. This allows the evocative blue canopy of the ceiling over the chancel to draw one’s eyes forward, toward the visible clear windows at the liturgical ‘east end’ of that space behind the chapel altar, facing the seashore.

Further, the notably narrow, even sharp-looking, wooden ‘spires’ protruding above where the choir chairs are placed enhance the upward sense of lift in the nave, complemented by the radiant cream and white color scheme above where the congregation sits. Light pours in through clear windows above, while delicately fashioned and dangling wrought iron fixtures provide supplemental illumination for evening services and in poor weather.

A view toward the nave from the choir, through the rood screen

On the Sunday of my recent visit, I was told that the congregation numbered about 145, and I estimate that the nave would comfortably seat about 200 people, though it could probably accommodate more. With the Gothic-inspired longitudinal floorplan, evident when one approaches the exterior of the building, a visitor might expect a rather narrow and linear worship space. Such an initial impression of the likely effect of the interior spatial arrangement is overcome by a number of subtle but effective design choices made by the architect and those who worked with him.

Accompanying the verticality of the large open area above the center of the nave are the seating areas adjoining the side aisles, taking the places of side chapels found in many medieval Gothic churches. The relatively low height of the box pews enhances the sense of horizontal width created by these adjacent seating areas, which provide relatively unobstructed views of the altar and lecterns. I also found the acoustics within the worship space to be well-suited for music as well as for public reading and speaking.

I am drawn to the ethos of historical churches; I am enthused by many examples of modern architecture; and I appreciate the fruits of the liturgical renewal movement. In my experience, a successful blend of these three things is not always found in contemporary buildings designed for worship and intended for the enhancement of congregational life. In his design for St. Peter’s by the Sea, in Gulfport, Mississippi, and in his supervision of its restoration after Hurricane Katrina, Errol Barron has achieved just such of a desirable synthesis.

A representative side window incorporating stained glass window fragments recovered after Hurricane Katrina

Earl Young’s Boulder Park Charlevoix Houses

Earl Young’s Boulder Manor, built for himself, as seen on a recent day

Summer visitors to Charlevoix encounter at least two things about the area: first, that this part of Michigan is a haven for boat lovers and especially cruisers on the Great Lakes; and, second, that the city of Charlevoix is the home of Earl Young’s so-called ‘mushroom houses.’ The first observation regarding boats and the appealingly clear lake water is easily recognized. The second association with the area takes a bit of discernment, usually gained from seeing brochures or the small electric carts evident in town bearing the label, “Mushroom Houses Tours.”

A pleasant walk around Charlevoix while viewing the many houses that Earl Young designed and built in the community reveals that his approach to home design was not uniform, and that his work avoided that to which the wider community has also not succumbed – becoming a caricature of itself. For he could have approached his design work in such a way as simply to repeat and imitate prior successes, pressing forward as so many architects have done to inaugurate a particular and distinctive style in home design. Instead, Young consistently displayed his overriding commitment to his chosen materials – stone and stone-related products. Therefore, when at the age of 35 in 1924, and in buying a tract of land adjacent to the Lake Michigan shoreline, he built ten houses with enough variation among them that later homes constructed by others are frequently confused with those of his own design. Young gave the tract along with its homes the fitting label of Boulder Park.

The Owl House, named for the arched front windows

This variability in the architectural character of the Boulder Park homes helps us to begin to recognize how the common ascription to Earl Young, of being the mushroom house architect, is in some ways a misnomer for him. A few of his houses nicely justify the label, given their firm rootedness to their sites, their often low or extending rooflines with irregular surfaces, and his heavy use of large stones and boulders in a number of them. Yet, Young was equally comfortable specifying limestone cut in horizontal block slabs and even commercially available brick or block products with which to construct walls with traditional uniformly-spaced layers of mortar. We may not be enamored with the some of the results of his work, but I think most of us can identify with Young’s lifelong intention to remain true to his materials and to the sites in which he set them.

A 1929 limestone cottage in Boulder Park, known for the rolled edges of the eaves

Two neighboring homes in Boulder Park illustrate Young’s consistency of intent, and flexibility with regard to ‘style.’ Boulder Manor, built in 1928 (displayed at the top of this post), sits in close proximity to the Pagoda House, built in 1934, seen below.

My favorite among the Boulder Park houses is the home that Young built for himself, called Boulder Manor (top photo). It is constructed with massive pieces of stone and boulders from the area, and features a matching smaller playhouse for his daughters that has a working fireplace.

Rear view of Boulder Manor along with the playhouse for the Young’s daughters

In some ways Earl Young was a bundle of contradictions, an idiosyncratic visionary who was known to tell some clients what they needed in terms of a home, and yet also one who could reside with an out of town family for a considerable period of time so as to get to know how they lived before designing a home for them. He had a consistent love of rough, ‘undressed’ stone to be used as found, and at the same time a willingness to use stone in a very conventional way. Young was famous for wanting to do virtually everything ‘his way,’ often to the consternation of others, including town leaders. And yet, one house of his in Boulder Park was the result of a client convincing him to build a home based on a design plan found in a women’s magazine, the 1933 Enchanted Cottage with its very English-looking windows (seen below).

The best introduction to Earl Young’s Charlevoix houses is a widely available book by the photographer, Mike Barton, titled, Mushroom Houses of Charlevoix. Filled with color photographs, and documenting every one of Young’s structures built in his home town, the book provides superb photographs, and better ones than I am able to provide.

Earl Young’s Imprint on Charlevoix

Exterior view of Earl Young’s Weathervane Inn

As a young man from the rural north of Michigan, Earl Young aspired to produce ‘natural houses’ in the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright, his inspiration and model for what became his own vocation. Young never studied with Wright, but the latter’s design spirit influenced him throughout his life. Though Young’s impact as an architect was essentially local (he designed only one house outside of Charlevoix), the present-day promotion of Charlevoix as a cultural destination is much in his debt for the way this community has come to be known as the home of the “mushroom houses.”

Earl Young studied architecture for one year at the University of Michigan. From the beginning he was impatient with a curriculum shaped by the kind of slavishness to European precedents that FL Wright also criticized. Young then returned to his hometown of Charlevoix to build houses, practice real estate in the family business, and sell insurance. He left the university program with his independent vision and architectural vocation intact, from which he never seemed to waver.

The Weathervane Inn adjacent to the Pine River channel and lift bridge

One recent appraisal of Young’s portfolio of buildings has suggested a neologism with which to describe his work, lithotecture, based on the Greek word for stone. For Earl Young did not simply value the utility of stone; he loved stone, and especially large boulders. He is remembered for having had a remarkable memory for the exact location, size, and texture of examples he had seen, collected, or stored away for future use. His profound appreciation for these materials, and the creative possibilities toward which they might be employed, is much in evidence throughout the older portion of Charlevoix in the many houses and other buildings he built and or designed, as well as in those influenced by them.

One of Earl Young’s Boulders Park homes (more of which are to be featured in a future post)

Earl Young’s impact upon the visual character of Charlevoix might be compared to a rather different example in architecture and in community design, the near-universal adoption of ‘the adobe style’ in Santa Fe, which has become a predominant approach to restoration, renewal, and original architectural creations. In the parallel example of Young’s case, his impact was through his way of being true to context by his use of stone, especially in highly creative ways. So pervasive has become his influence upon the development of Charlevoix that many other and more recent builders have been drawn to imitate Young’s extensive and sometimes whimsical use of locally available natural geologic materials. Given my own experience of living in south Louisiana, where hardly any naturally-occurring stone is to be found, I am struck by the abiding evidence of Young’s legacy as a community-based builder.

Two long-ago initiatives by Earl Young in particular serve to distinguish Charlevoix in the eyes of visitors, the Weathervane Inn, and the waterfront park adjacent to the city marina. Young replaced an aged mill along the edge of the Pine River channel with an attractive inn of his own design and construction, and he convinced town leaders to replace obsolete warehouses along the waterfront with what has become a four acre rolling green expanse of lawn. Both locations have become popular and much used gathering places for visitors as well as for Charlevoix residents.

The terrace overlook above the marina office – modern stonework in the Earl Young style

The marina waterfront as it has been developed in recent years demonstrates Earl Young’s lasting influence upon Charlevoix’s economic and cultural development. Realizing some of the potential latent within Young’s prescient inspiration for the land clearing that enabled the new park, several notable new structures have been built, among them a new marina office and locker rooms, and a dancing or synchronized fountain by its door.

Part of the natural-look landscaping surrounding the marina office

Landscaped around the marina office is a northern Michigan nature garden incorporating a human-made stream flowing between several shaded pools that contain rainbow trout. Also gracing the open green space of the park is a bandshell for weekly summer musical events, where concert-goers overlook the harbor docks and boat slips. Each of these structures, though constructed well after Young’s lifetime, reflects his vision for the beauty of stone laid up in asymmetrical curving walls.

The Earl Young influenced bandshell overlooking the marina and Round Lake harbor

Earl Young’s profound attachment to working with local geological material evinces a lifelong devotion to what can be accomplished through building with massive boulders, each weighing multiples tons. The best place to begin to appreciate this is by a visit to the previously mentioned Weathervane Inn, the earliest of his few public buildings. The massive fireplace assembled from a seeming heap of boulders, has one large stone that weighed 9 tons, so heavy that it caused a dislocation in the foundation prepared for it.

Exterior view of Earl Young’s massive Weathervane fireplace

Interior view of the Weathervane fireplace

In a subsequent post I plan to present and offer a brief reflection upon Earl Young’s Charlevoix residential design and construction projects, most commonly known as his ‘mushroom houses.’ In all of his work, Earl Young showed himself to be something of an unforgettable local genius, whose endearing and wonder-producing legacy of unique work has transformed his community over the decades.

Denver’s New Train Platforms

The 2012 Denver Train Station train shed, adjacent to the historic Denver Union Station

I have had a lifelong love of trains and of the stations where we board them. My love for them is partly inherited. My grandfather worked his whole career on the Soo Line RR, having retired as a Conductor on the overnight “Winnepeger,” running from his home in the Twin Cities to the city of the train’s namesake. And my father worked on the same railroad while in college. Of course, having spent my younger years in Japan, riding trains was an everyday occurrence.

And so I am delighted this week to feature the ‘new’ (2012) open-air train shed built adjacent to Denver’s historic Union Station (now beautifully repurposed as the Crawford Hotel). What especially pleases me about the new station’s addition to the opportunities available to rail travelers in the U.S. is the apparent intention for this project to reflect a harmony with Denver’s tensile-structure airport terminal (featured in my prior post).

SOM Architects Transportation Hub site plan

The new station awning structure with the historic Union Station in the background

These train station platforms and their exuberant rooflines at the heart of the city, designed as part of a new transportation hub, were the creation of the long-successful and ‘big name’ architectural firm, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (now generally known as SOM). The awning-like structures over the platforms recall the translucent glass and steel train platform awnings familiar to rail travelers in the U.K. A difference here from the also-white structures at Denver Airport is the predominant use of steel beams as principal supports for the awnings, rather than a primary reliance upon tensile cables and poles. A greater resemblance to bridge structures results from this design choice, while also retaining the stretched fabric layers of weather protection, which like those of the airport are translucent. A lyrical building for public use once again has been provided for travelers to and within Denver.

Interior view showing the translucent fabric awning panels and support beams

One other significant connection between Denver Airport and the city’s new transportation hub has been established by the construction of a rail line directly linking the two. Adjacent to the tracks employed by Amtrak’s cross-country trains, Denver now has a rail line dedicated to the needs of those who wish to get to the airport, saving time as well as parking and or shuttle costs.

Station interior showing the Regional Transportation District (RTD) airport train platforms (foreground)

An RTD airport train arriving at its destination

Denver’s new transportation hub serves as an attractive inner city renewal project, and provides a similar sense of uplift and visual ‘joy’ as does the airport. Along with the nearby 1995 Coors Field baseball park, the hub further enhances the visitor-appeal of the city’s downtown area, and serves as a central point for the region’s light rail network (RTD / Regional Transportation District).

The Station Complex with the Union Station Crawford Hotel and Denver downtown skyline

Increasingly we are recognizing the continuing implications of America’s significant distances between cities, the relatively low population density of areas between them, and how our reliance upon our cars and our expansive interstate highway system has reduced the financial viability of railroads as a primary resource for our passenger transportation needs. Nevertheless, it is pleasing to see that where new or revitalized rail stations and terminals are contemplated, there has been a demonstrated growth in awareness of their significance as public spaces not only through which we meet our travel needs, but as places where we meet and share meaningful time with others.

SOM’s Denver Station and the design of its open-air train awnings reminds me of another building, one I have loved since childhood, Kenzo Tange’s 1964 Tokyo Olympics aquatics building, which my family passed by on many family Sunday train trips to church. Tange’s employment of catenary cables for the suspension of the sweeping curved rooflines serves in a similar way as Denver Station to lift our awareness above ourselves. Design achievements like these move us to contemplate beauty as a noble goal of architecture and in engineering, a goal just as important to us as utility and efficiency.

Kenzo Tange’s catenary cable supported roofline for his 1964 Olympics aquatic center

What the new Denver Train Station replaced

Note: My prior post featuring Tange’s Olympics aquatic center can be viewed by clicking here.

Denver Airport ‘s Beautiful Tensile Architecture

Some of the tensile structure canopies over the Denver International Airport terminal (DIA)

In order to appreciate the beauty of tensile architecture, we need to remind ourselves of how most traditional buildings, from the ancient pyramids and China’s Great Wall through to the tallest modern buildings, have been built. Familiar architectural structures rely upon compression, the stacking of weighty materials upon others in a stable way to achieve height. Whether those materials are heavy, like the massive stone blocks supporting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, or as in the first modern reinforced steel ‘skyscrapers’ such as the former Home Insurance Building in Chicago, traditional architecture has relied upon the compression of forces created by their materials to attain successively higher elevations over the course of time.

The tensile structure roofline of the Denver International Airport terminal building

Tensile architecture relies upon what its name suggests in order to attain stable and enduring structures – the dynamic of tension between the various materials and structural elements that are employed. The way that tensile structures achieve what appear to be daring results can be explained by reference to the poles and cables with which they are constructed.

Cable-supported columns, poles, and awnings, at Denver International Airport (DIA)

Though the name for this type of structure may be new to many of us, those who enjoy viewing sporting events set in large public spaces have seen and become visually familiar with tensile structures at least since the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. Designed by Frei Otto and Gunther Behnisch, the imaginative canopy protecting much of the crowd seating was seen by millions on television and in news reports.

1972 Olympic Stadium designed by Frei Otto and Gunther Behnisch

Tensile architectural design continues to be used widely throughout the world to erect buildings for public purposes. Denver’s 1995 International Airport Terminal building, designed by Curtis Fentress and Fentress Architects, provides a compelling example. The architects’ achievement represents a stunning contrast to Denver’s former and very conventional Stapleton AirPort buildings.

Those who travel through DIA have an opportunity to experience firsthand what such structures can inspire. They provide occasions on which we can pass through public spaces filled with light, that feel open and uplifting, and which have the capacity to capture our attention. Buildings of this kind expand our sense of the moment in community with others, and lift us above our personal concerns by reminding us – literally- of more expansive imaginative horizons. As the venerable great dome of the US Capitol building gives convincing evidence, these are qualities to which all public architecture should aspire.

Three thematic sources of inspiration for Curtis Fentress’s design for the DIA terminal include Denver’s well-known reputation for being the ‘mile high city,’ the profile of the Rocky Mountains visible from the terminal and the city, as well as the heights to which modern aviation take us. As the images included here demonstrate, the airport’s tent-like awnings create a dramatic roofline, as well as soaring translucent interior ceilings, delighting both visitors and passengers, as well students of architecture who have never traveled to encounter these structures.

A still from a video showing the architect sketching the Rocky Mountain skyline from the vantage point of the air terminal, in a possible allusion to the terminal’s canopy structure

Since my first visit, the Denver Airport has been one of my favorite examples of modern public architecture, both because of the vision and notable aims of its principal architect, as well as because of the experientially transformative results he and his team of designers and builders were able to achieve. Like the pleasing effect of arriving at London’s St Pancras or one of the other luminous Victorian train sheds, the DIA terminal is the kind of humane environment that can ameliorate the stress of modern-day air travel.

Note: I hope to feature Denver’s new (2014) canopied train platforms, perhaps inspired by the DIA terminal, in a future post.

The Beauty of FL Wright’s Influence

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The Solar Radicycle (1969 ~), second iteration, south facing, with a studio on the north side

As I have shared before, I once aspired to become an architect, a vocation toward which I may still be temperamentally disposed, though way too late to consider as a second career. Here, I want to take another risk. Having previously shared a drawing from my exploration of shell forms, from when in my youth I sought to develop as an artist, I would like to offer a glimpse of my very early architectural aspirations.

The drawings I feature above and below very obviously reflect the impact upon me by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. The plan above, which I titled the Solar Radicycle, is one that I first conceived in late middle school or in early high school, but then later elaborated. With its reliance upon circular patterns, it is clearly influenced both in name and design by Wright’s second Herbert and Katherine Jacobs house (1944), the 1950 Wilber C. Pearce house, and related designs (the David Wright house, among them).

While in eighth and ninth grade I memorized FLW construction design and building facts in the way that some of my peers memorized baseball card details. Among such were significant aspects of Wright’s remarkable achievement with the columns of the Johnson Wax company building (Racine, WI), and the unexpected and astonishing test-endurance of those structural features.

I have searched in vain for my colored study drawings from the 1970’s of the exterior elevation for the Solar Radicycle plan, showing the proposed domed roof over the central living area. Yet, the isometric drawing of the building (below) may help give an idea of its intended eventual shape.

An isometric view of the Solar Radicycle plan (not showing roofs)

The word ‘solar’ explains itself; the suffix ‘cycle’ implies something circular; and the prefix ‘radi’ comes from the common words radical and radish, and implies ‘of the root.’ Naively, I had the hope to build this house somewhere in rural Vermont or New Hampshire upon my graduation from high school in Massachusetts. Obviously, I was a romantic dreamer. And, of course, it did not happen. But I had thought through a number of key details, neglecting those of financing. Here I was a true follower of Frank Lloyd Wright!

The first iteration of the above design was more simple, with a focus upon the central living, kitchen and dining areas. The first or inner ring of the design depicted above will reflect this. The second, outer ring of structure in the plan, reflects the later iteration, involving a re-conceived master bedroom location, along with the addition of a den, and also a large studio.

I envisioned the walls as being embedded in surrounding earth berms, and using either local stone and or limestone for the vertical structure. I thought that the roofs, both the T-shaped slabs over the bedroom wings and studio, as well as a large dome over the living area – and small domes (or possibly sky-lights) over the kitchen and restrooms – might be cast in pre-stressed concrete. Here again, I may have been too slavishly an FLW follower in not fully considering the roof-leak potential for those roof slabs and the seams between them, especially in New England winters and springs. I might have had a beautiful house, if I could have pulled it off, while yet having to deal with raindrops seeping down and falling onto the side bedrooms.

I am proud of the overall design, but fully acknowledge how this was an adolescent flight of fantasy! Below are a couple of representative examples – among many – of very obviously FL Wright-influenced designs for houses and plans for other structures that I produced in the mid to latter 1970s, just out of high school, while contemplating a vocation in architecture.

To this day, the possibility of what my original plan might have been hovers at the edge of my mind. In God’s Providence, architecture was not to be my professional vocation, though I am so glad for all that my interest in it has brought to me.

Among a huge abundance of books about FLW, a very helpful guide is The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Guide (color photo illustrated), by William Allin Storrer, which includes locations maps for all the buildings included.

New Orleans as Viewed by Errol Barron

Through our nearby family we are able to stay some weekends in New Orleans, an opportunity which delights us given that we live up in ‘the country.’ Our son and his family reside in what is called the “Irish Channel,” an historic neighborhood close to the Mississippi River and on high ground that did not flood during Katrina. Like much of New Orleans, that neighborhood is filled with old houses, some in excellent condition and others looking blighted by years of hot and wet weather.

While visiting our family there, we became acquainted with a very unique New Orleans local bookstore, The Garden District Book Shop, located incongruously in what seems to have been a former roller skate facility. The building now houses this book seller, as well as a coffee house and other vendors. It was here that we discovered Errol Barron’s remarkable and yet relatively small book featured in the image above.

Having once aspired to be an architect, having a longterm interest in architectural history, and having dabbled in watercolor painting, Errol Barron’s work immediately captured my attention. For this is a beautiful book, filled with color illustrations, and very affordable. The images in the book are the fruit of a sabbatical that he took in 2009, while most often visiting the sites for his paintings by bike.

The author at a book signing event

Barron, as a career-long faculty member of the Architecture department of Tulane University, knows well the field that provides the material for his watercolor paintings, and also the substance of the profession and vocation he has pursued. Underlying all his work is the evident hand of a highly skilled draftsman, in both the historic sense of someone who draws well, and in the more formal sense of someone who is well-prepared to render architectural plans. His attention to scale and proportion, especially with regard to building facades, is particularly evident.

Through his dedication to his life’s work, Barron has nurtured generations of students. His beautiful as well as informative illustrations help us appreciate why this has been so. He has a sharp eye for what to notice, as well as a developed skill with which to communicate what he sees.

My regret here is that, in commending his beautiful work, I need to rely upon photos I have taken of his printed book. So why isn’t this book available in digital download book format, especially for the sake of its many compelling images?

Below is one image that is available on the internet, which for me captures part of the mystery of the appeal of New Orleans. Barron’s book’s subtitle says a lot – “drawings and observations of America’s most foreign city.” An aspect of the curious beauty of much of New Orleans is the juxtaposition of well-cared-for historic homes with attractive landscaping, and properties where the wear and tear of time is unavoidably evident. The latter clearly sets apart the former, and the former so often has a visually compelling character.

Having acknowledged the limitations of some of these images, I offer here a few that I have photographed from the paperback version of the book. Note how the book cover (depicted above, with an evident visual seam down the middle) reflects a similar use of a split photographic image of two pages within the book.

Barron’s sketches and watercolor paintings help us appreciate how there are at least four significant cultural influences that have contributed to the historical life of Louisiana and what might be called the ‘gumbo’ of its architecture: Spanish, French, English, as well as African, the latter of which is more likely evident in landscape (and culinary) selections. For it is thought that some of those transported here in slavery from Africa may have brought seeds of certain plants with them. Predictably, some of the above-mentioned cultural influences are more visually evident than others.

Below is an image of Barron’s rendering of the St Charles streetcar, an iconic image.

For me, Errol Barron’s book, New Orleans Observed, is a beautiful discovery that provides ample inspiration.

My thanks to my son, Anders, and his family, for the lead on this posting. Through visits with them I have come to love New Orleans despite its problems and or challenges. I want to note that I have no personal relationship with Errol Barron nor any commercial relationship with the publication of his remarkable work.

Toward Beauty

In Art, Faith and Life ~ STEPHEN HOLMGREN