NEWS ARTICLE: HAMILTON SPECTATOR (07/2003) Reprinted with permission from The Hamilton Spectator The Hamilton Spectator Thursday, July 31, 2003 Carla Ammerata, editor: 905-526-2439 / cammerata@thespec.com Wright Place, Wright Time Famed architect’s Buffalo “opus” still stands in a class by itself By Mary K. Nolan - The Hamilton Spectator What would the neighbours think? Clearly, Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t care. The man who is considered the greatest American architect of all time had a vision for his clients’ new home in Buffalo’s leafy Parkside district. The fact that it would resemble nothing else in the conservative neighbourhood of Victorian, Romanesque and half-timbered Tudor houses didn’t matter. The unconventional residence he designed for Isabelle and Darwin Martin was to be his masterpiece. He called it his opus, and kept a drawing of it pinned above his drafting table for 50 years. Wright scholars consider the Darwin Martin Complex a work of genius, the most important residential project of his early career and one that would remain unmatched until his legendary Fallingwater 30 years later. With true Wright immodesty, he called his creation “a well-nigh perfect composition.” But how the neighbours must have gasped as the angular, horizontal, prairie-style house took shape among their gables and turrets, their corbelled arches and gingerbread trim and wrap-around verandas. What they must have thought of the long, low-pitched roofs and hovering cantilevered eaves of this, this … monstrosity! going up on Jewett Parkway. Had the straitlaced, church-going teetotalling couple gone mad? They were such a respectable family. He was a farmer’s son who, with hard work and fortitude, had risen from office boy to second in command at the thriving Larkin Company, a major catalogue mail-order company. He had an astounding net worth of $1 million in 1900. “Belle” was a true lady of the times, reserved, quiet, and elegant, a devoted mother and passionate gardener who oversaw a household staff of eight. The Martins lived with their two young children in a charming Queen Anne home on Summit Avenue. It was their love nest, built in time for their 1889 wedding. But Martin detested everything about the place – all the fussiness and doilies, the interior gloom, the squat proportion of its tower. When their new house began to rise from the ground on a 2.5-acre lot around the corner, the Buffalo Courier noted that a “Jules Verne house” had arrived, a reference to the science fiction fantasy evoked by its futuristic design. Some called it the Chinese Puzzle House, or the House of Many Oddities. “It was a neighbourhood of beautiful architecture, but it was all conventional,” says John Courtin, executive director of the Martin House Restoration Corporation. “This was a total departure from all precedent in architecture. The rest of them had flocked wallpaper, these were still horse-and-buggy days, so people did talk.” Today, people in Buffalo are still talking about the 100-year-old Darwin Martin House, but it’s no longer in curious or critical terms. Now they speak with breathless excitement about an ambitious $23-million U.S. plan to rebuild and restore the complex that was nearly destroyed by time, neglect and lack of vision. Wright’s multi-structured masterpiece consisted of six elements that were perfectly integrated with each other and the surrounding landscape – the Martin House, a 100-foot pergola, the conservatory, the gardens, the carriage house and the Barton House, built for Martin’s sister. The genius is in the extraordinary balance and proportion of all the elements, the rhythm of the buildings, the scale, that integration of structure with landscape. Wright was famous for bringing spatial harmony to his environments and designing everything – including lighting fixtures, furniture, windows and gardens – to ensure unity. Yet despite its architectural significance, the splendid 29,000-square foot Martin Complex – ranked equally with Pennsylvania’s Fallingwater and New York’s Guggenheim Museum as Wright’s three most important works in eastern North America – came close to disappearing. In 1936, unable to maintain or sell the place in a post-Depression, pre-war market, the widowed Isabelle Martin simply moved out, leaving the house empty for 16 years – unoccupied, unheated, unsecured and open to visitors of both the four- and two-legged variety. Kids on roller-skates sailed through the pergola that was once covered by lush wisteria vines. Thieves helped themselves to the magnificent art glass windows and quarter-sawn oak woodwork. Concrete capstones crumbled, the russet-coloured Roman bricks began to disintegrate, the red book-tiled roof leaked. In the late 1940s, talk of razing the complex thankfully came to nothing, and by 1954, when a local architect bought the property, it was a mess. The new owner patched it up and converted the Martin House into two apartment units and a residence and office for himself. He sold off the parcel of land containing the pergola, conservatory and carriage house, which were demolished in short order and replaced by a trio of wholly unremarkable apartment buildings. The house was bought by the State University of New York at Buffalo in the late 1960s and served as its president’s house, alumni association headquarters and archives – which, not coincidentally, contain at least 300 letters from the prolific correspondence between the flamboyant and arrogant Frank Lloyd Wright and his patron/friend/father-figure, Darwin Martin, whose letters outnumbered Wright’s about seven to one. During the ‘70s and ‘80s, it was used for various university functions, but continued to deteriorate. Every time Buffalo-born John Courtin passed the decaying site, he’d rue its apparent fate. “I’d drive by and say ‘They really ought to do something about that place,’” recalls Courtin, who was a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington until returning to Buffalo in 1990 to raise his family and practise law, eventually “blundering into this wonderful job.” The corporation’s best hopes – to restore only the Martins’ house – have grown beyond its wildest dreams. The community rallied behind the restoration to the tune of $23 million – from $5 donations to $2 million endowments – and a loyal army of more than 350 volunteers. “The vision of doing the whole thing became real” after acquisition of the Barton House in 1994, and later the apartment blocks – two of which have been torn down to make way for reconstruction of the carriage house, pergola and conservatory, known as the “missing elements.” When completed, the Darwin Martin Complex will look just as it did in 1907, just the way Frank Lloyd Wright designed it – with one new element. A new visitors’ centre called the Garden Pavilion will be designed by young Manhattan architect Toshiko Mori and built when the last apartment building is demolished. To her falls the daunting but exciting challenge of creating a building that will stand beside the work of an American legend. “It will be respectful, not imitative or competitive. It can’t be heroic, but it can’t be mediocre or too sheepish,” says Courtin. “It will be a 21st-century building with its own integrity. Her building needs to speak to and reference what Frank Lloyd Wright has done on the site.” The low, transparent, all-glass structure, scheduled to open in early 2005, will feature more than twice as much space below ground as above and be used for interpretive exhibits, models, presentations, a museum shop and other educational purposes. Reconstruction of the pergola is expected to begin next spring. When the restoration is complete – and the completion date is “a very good question … sometime in the future,” Courtin laughs – the complex is expected to draw 120,000 visitors a year. “It’s truly a work of art,” he says, “and you get to hang out in it, too.” Courtin says that work currently underway at the Martin House is mostly structural and “not very sexy,” which makes it the perfect time to visit. “There could be no better time to see it than right now. Some of these views you’ll never be able to see again,” he says. “It is very eye-opening to see this gorgeous house and how major things can be done underneath without disturbing the house. We are amazed at how many people are drawn to the in-progress work of restoration.” “It’s been a long time coming. It’s such a fascinating story of a community summoning the will to get something like this done. It was such a pie in the sky idea for the longest time.” mnolan@thespec.com or 905-526-4689 Flamboyant, arrogant, brilliant … and a genius By Mary K. Nolan - The Hamilton Spectator The hotshot young architect came highly recommended. Darwin Martin’s brother referred to the up-and-coming Frank Lloyd Wright as “one of nature’s noblemen,” the man who would “build you the finest, most sensible house in Buffalo.” Martin had been introduced to Wright’s work in 1900 while visiting his brother in Chicago and was captivated by the architect’s bold concepts and his new prairie style that was so quintessentially American. Wright was dying to get the commission. His star was already rising, but the patronage of an influential client like Martin would be invaluable. Unwilling to simply fork over his hard-earned equity, Martin commissioned Wright to build a house on a huge corner lot in Buffalo for his sister, Delta Barton, and would base his final decision on the outcome of that project. He obviously liked what he saw, because he gave Wright a carte blanche budget and complete artistic freedom to continue with the entire complex. While Martin was at the site every day, Wright only occasionally hopped on the train from Chicago to spend a few days in town supervising progress. He spared no expense or extravagance, using only the finest materials and methods of construction. More than 50 labourers, mostly masons, were onsite daily for two full years. The final tally for the whole complex, completed in 1905, was $200,000, equivalent to about $12 million US today. He used washes of silver and gold as finishes, cuts of expensive wood that produced significant waste and gold leaf for mortar joints around the fireplaces to capture the fire’s glow. The gardens and conservatory were filled with the most exotic of plants. The spacious kitchen featured vast expanses of modern white surfaces in tempered glass. There were eight bedrooms and four bathrooms in the 15,000 square foot main house alone. Wright was both pragmatic and impractical. He planted gingko trees in front of the house without considering root growth. They’ve bored into the foundation, necessitating consultation between restoration teams and University of Guelph arbourists. In a whimsical touch, he perched four “martin house” birdhouses atop the four corners of the conservatory. But the birds avoided them, instinctively knowing that they’d fry inside the hot concrete structures. Wooden brackets held spherical vases on corners of the I-shaped dining room table, but after one too many bruised elbows, the Martins replaced the Wright-designed suite. His use of Roman brick is proving problematic as a restoration team tries to source out 100,000 replacements for the damaged originals. He also used them in the sunburst fireplace, where every brick radiating from the half-circle opening had to be ground and tapered by hand. There were no doorsills – Wright felt an unobstructed flow would convey the feeling of the endless open prairies where he grew up. He incorporated suntraps into the design to take light into the basement rooms and windows were placed so that sunlight would cast their patterns on the floor. Ah, the windows. Wright designed 362 pieces of art glass for the complex in 11 motifs, the most famous of which is the Tree of Life pattern. Another, the Conservatory Window, has been reproduced on a set of dinnerware by Buffalo China, the firm established a century ago by the Larkin Company – run by Darwin Martin – to manufacture gifts for loyal customers. Each window – Wright called them light screens – contains 750 individual pieces of glass assembled with grooved brass caming instead of the customary lead, and they were all casements. Wright scorned the double-hung window as “a guillotine, not fit for humans.” Visitors who stepped into the foyer were greeted with an uninterrupted sight line – 180 feet from front to back – through the window-walled pergola and into the sunlit conservatory where a nine-foot marble replica of Winged Victory graced the niche. Their eye would have been simultaneously drawn upward through the two-level foyer, into the reception room on the left, or to the two-sided fireplace that faced both the entryway and the living room. All four sides of its chimney were clad in a glass mosaic of wisteria vines, their green leaves veined with gold, the purple blossoms cascading downward. “One of the great mysteries of this house is not the house, but the relationship between these two men,” says John Courtin, executive director of the Martin House Restoration Corporation. “What led Darwin to do this? Everything about this guy was risk-avoidance. The self-made man, by the book, up by the bootstraps, Horatio Alger type. “The Martins knew it would have a profound effect on the community, on the neighbourhood, on themselves. It was a huge risk and it could have been a dismal failure,” Courtin continues. “It points to what an extraordinary salesman Wright was. When he turned on the full fire of his personality, he had a powerful magnetic attraction.” So, too, did his designs. “It must have been fantastic,” Courtin says, gesturing about the vast empty house. “It will be again.”