Wright Inside: Three Decades of Wright’s Interiors

On Wednesday, November 4, 2015 at 7:00 pm, the Graycliff Conservancy, Inc. will present three experts on interiors of homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, from the 1920s through the 1950s. The Graycliff Roundtable will be held in the auditorium of the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

The speakers, and their discussion, will focus on approaches to entryways, floors, ceilings, walls, built-ins, and approaches Wright took to accommodate specific client needs, during the mid to later years of Wright’s career.

Speakers will include: Daniel Chrzanowski, who with his wife Dianne are owners of the John and Syd Dobkins House (1953) in Canton Ohio; Jerry Heinzeroth, President of the Board of the Laurent House Foundation (1949); and Dirk Schneider and Scott Selin, restoration architects of Graycliff (1926-31). Each of the speakers has extensive first-hand experience in the restoration of the interiors of these respective Wright designs.

The Dobkins House features a distinctive geometric design module based upon the equilateral triangle. It is one of Wright’s Usonian designs, a word coined by Wright himself to describe approximately 60 homes for middle-class clients, which were typically small, single-story dwellings without a garage or much storage. Features of Usonian homes included construction with native materials, flat roofs and large cantilevered overhangs for passive solar heating and natural cooling, natural lighting with clerestory windows, and radiant-floor heating. They generally featured carports, yet another word created by Wright, describing an overhang for sheltering a parked vehicle. This home is privately owned and not open to the public; thus this talk, which will include a powerpoint presentation, will offer a rare look inside the residence.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Laurent House in Rockford, Illinois is the only building ever designed by the famed architect for a person with a disability. This single-story Usonian home is both functional and beautiful, decades ahead of ADA accessibility requirements. It, too, features a carport, and much of the labor and materials were sourced locally from Rockford. A WWII veteran, Kenneth Laurent suffered a spinal cord injury during the war, and following surgery, was left paralyzed from the waist down. Reading about Wright’s architecture in House Beautiful, Kenneth and Phyllis Laurent contacted Wright, who in 1949 produced the required design, which permitted use of a wheelchair throughout the home.

Graycliff (1926-1931), the earliest home to be discussed this evening, was a precursor in some respects to the two later works. Although much larger (with three buildings) construction here was undertaken with native materials such as Tichnor limestone and sand. It features large cantilevered balconies which provide natural cooling for this summer residence, natural lighting with clerestory windows, and radiant-floor heating. It, too was designed to accommodate the special needs of a client, Isabelle R. Martin, whose poor vision led Wright to design a home flooded with diffused natural light.

Following the presentations, which will each feature a powerpoint presentation, a question and answer period with the audience will allow a deeper understanding of the details of the three homes.

Admission is $10 for the general public, and free for members of Graycliff and the Burchfield-Penney Art Center.

This roundtable is made possible with the support of the New York State Council on the Arts, Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; the County of Erie, County Executive Mark Polancarz and the Erie County Legislature, particularly Legislator John Mills; and the Baird Foundation. We are grateful to Embassy Suites Buffalo for their support as well.

ABOUT GRAYCLIFF:
In 1997, the Graycliff Conservancy was founded specifically to prevent the demolition of the Graycliff Estate, which was designed by noted American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. This community effort is now lauded nationally as a grass-roots success story.

During the last 15 years, the Conservancy has purchased the property, removed non-historic buildings and performed badly needed structural repairs to all three of the Wright-designed buildings. It has completed the restoration of all building exteriors, including the balconies, the roofs, the chimneys, the terraces, and each and every one of the windows and doors. The Conservancy completed the first major stage of restoration of its nationally recognized 8.5 acre historic landscape. Interior restoration is now underway, with the Family Sun Porch, and floors in the entryway, living room and dining room completed.

Graycliff is open daily for tours from Memorial Day thru the end of October; in early spring and late autumn six days a week; and at various times during the winter months.
Ample free parking and charming Pavilion shop. Located 20 minutes south of downtown Buffalo, NY at 6472 Old Lakeshore Rd, Derby, NY 14047 For more information, please see the website at http://graycliffestate.org