Wright in Our Neighborhood

I live in southwestern Connecticut. An admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright, I have been able to visit his buildings in many places: Oak Park, Phoenix, Pennsylvania (Falling Water), even London, where the Victoria and Albert has a room from the Kaufmann office in Pittsburgh.

I have prepared an illustrated lecture — Wright in Our Neighborhood – to describe and illustrate those Wright-designed buildings you can visit in a day trip from Norwalk, Ct.  Besides the public ones, like the Guggenheim Museum, I include the houses in this area. I found a wonderful book, Usonia New York: Building a Community with Frank Lloyd Wright by Roland Reisley.

The book describes in loving detail how a group of admirers developed a cooperative “Usonia” community near Pleasantville, NY. Recently we went to the present location, just above Kensico Reservoir. It is still a beautiful wooded landscape.

We strolled through the area and met Roland Reisley, the local historian, also out for a walk. He says that five of the original families still live here and that an additional five houses are lived in by the next generation. Three of the houses were designed by Wright himself and many others by his disciples.

The Storer directory to the architecture of Frank LLoyd Wright lists and illustrates two houses by Wright in Connecticut, only a few minutes from my home in Norwalk. Last summer we went seeking the Wright-designed house in New Canaan. Storrer shows a small black and white photograph of a concrete block house with rocks and a pond. We found the address, and this is what we could see of the house.

Later we also found the Frank Lloyd Wright house in North Stamford. Same problem, but you can see just a tiny piece of the roof line if you look very carefully. Nice rhododendron bushes too.

In my presentation, before our personal explorations I give a brief review of Wright’s life and work (light on the life, emphasis on the work).

I continue by presenting present three important Wright designs which are open to the public.First, the Francis Little House living room in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of art:

Then, the Guggenheim Museum:

And finally, Beth Shalom Synagogue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvnia:

Then I document the Wright houses in the New York City area, New Jersey and Connecticut.

To see more details, click on my Wright in Our Neighborhood slide show.