NEWS ARTICLE: BUFFALO NEWS DARWIN MARTIN COMPLEX TO INCLUDE WORKING GREENHOUSE (06/06) By TOM BUCKHAM News Staff Reporter 6/21/2006 Four years after the Darwin Martin House was completed in 1905, the wealthy owner added one last touch without consulting architect Frank Lloyd Wright: an inexpensive, freestanding greenhouse. Wright had designed a small building in which flowers were to be cultivated, but as the structure took shape, Martin complained that it looked more like a conservatory than a "growing house," according to "Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House Complex: Architecture as Portraiture," by University at Buffalo art historian and Martin House consultant Jack Quinan. So in 1909, the industrialist ordered a 60-foot-long, commercially designed greenhouse and had it put up along the property line between the gardener's cottage and the garage and stable, ignoring Wright's offer "to put a little architecture on it." For years afterward, the simple glass-enclosed structure produced flowers and plants that brightened Wright's grand "prairie house" and the surrounding buildings and grounds. When the restored complex is dedicated Oct. 4, another greenhouse - smaller than the original but serving the same purpose - will be a point of interest. A gift from Buffalo News Publisher Stanford Lipsey # # #