houses, houses, and more houses

This is the long overdue post I've been meaning to compose for ages now.

First, I'll report that when I returned from my trip east, I drove past that scary facade/house demolition/reconstruction site. The tattered facade was gone and replaced with new plywood or something (obviously I know little of the technical stuff about the building arts). So they weren't saving it. Why not knock it down with the rest of it? I guess we'll never know. Anyway...

My trip included a day visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater in rural western Pennsylvania. You can see some of my photos here. I'm no Julius Shulman, but I try.

In case you're blissfully unaware, Fallingwater is one of the most famous pieces of architecture in the world. It's probably the most famous non-royal house. And with good reason. Allie thought the color scheme was ugly. That didn't bother me. What surprised me actually was how Art Deco it was. There are some fabulous thirties elements, which you don't expect. Wright's work sort of has this timeless quality to it since he refused to admit he was influenced by anyone else's work. Then again, Philip Johnson called him our greatest 19th century architect. Stylistically Wright's work looks more "traditional" (whatever the hell that could mean... basically, he liked to use natural materials because he believed that his buildings should grow from the ground), but the more reading I do on Wright, the more I'm convinced he was indeed very modern in ideology.

That leads me to my final report. I visited the Ennis House in the Los Feliz hills upon my return! I take all my tourists to see this massive FLW house, but I finally got to go inside. At work I've been writing a historic context statement on the building, and it generally makes sense to visit the places you write and research about (especially if they're local). This of course was very cool, particularly since I'd already done so much research on the house that I knew what I was looking at. The most surprising thing about the house is how small it actually looks inside. Wright usually used very low ceiling heights, but this one has soaring 22' ceilings, compared to his usual 6'4" (he was 5'8"). But between the exterior massing and the many interior photographs I've seen, the house actually looks smaller than any of these would suggest. Still pretty thrilling.