We awoke, dressed, packed, checked out, and drove to Wegman’s for breakfast. While yesterday’s hotel breakfast was good and relaxing, it just wasn’t worth three times the amount it cost at the grocery store coffee counter. Having said that, though, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Hotel Henry and enjoyed our dinners. I would definitely recommend a stay.
Our only stop for the day was the Martin House, one of the finest examples of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright’s (FLW), one of America’s finest architects.
Wright designed the interconnected Martin House, pergola, conservatory and carriage house, the Barton House and the gardener’s cottage. The site is important because it is the only FLW site with homes designed for the working class, the middle class and the wealthy.
We started in the Eleanor and Wilson Greatbatch Pavilion (Visitor’s Centre) designed by Toshiko Mori (former Chair of Architecture, Harvard), and built in 2009. It is a glass pavillion designed to be unobtrusive on the property and offer great views (and reflections) of the house and grounds. It in inspired from design elements from Wright’s work.
As an aside from the topic of architecture, I include two pictures, taken one after the other, of the Visitor’s Centre. I used a polarizer on my camera lens. Polarizers are used primarily to reduce glare, but can be used to increase reflections in the case of the second image. The third image is the inside of the Visitor’s Centre.
Wright was known for his obsessive attention to detail. He not only designed the house, but also the window glass, lights and furniture. In the case of the Martin House, he also chose the art (Japanese wood block prints) and directed exactly where it was to be hung.
While the house was being built Wright decided to visit Japan. This was before plane travel and he was away for two and half months. Martin was not happy about this and wrote to Wright to protest, however, Wright went anyway. He brought back thousands of Japanese wood blocks and used the prints in his clients’ homes, including in the Martin House.
His most famous window design, known as the Tree of Life, was designed for the Martin House.
We were shown a slideshow about Darwin Martin.
Then, we began our tour in the Barton House, the first building built on a corner of the property. I am going to liberally plagiarize from my blog post about my visit to the Martin House in 2015.
Darwin Martin had a difficult childhood, with the death of his mother when he was six, and left home at age twelve and managed to obtain a job selling soap in New York City. He moved to Buffalo a year later and was hired by the Larkin Company as an office clerk and eventually rose to become Corporate Secretary. In 1902 he needed to find an architect to build a new administrative building for Larkin. His brother, living in Chicago at the time, recommended Frank Lloyd Wright, an architect he used on his own home, the William E. Martin house in Oak Park.
Martin had become quite wealthy by this time, so in addition to hiring Wright to build the Larkin building (which no longer stands), he also asked Wright to design and build a home for him. Wright found five lots on a corner in a Victorian neighbourhood which he encouraged Martin to purchase rather than the downtown property Martin had proposed. Martin commissioned Wright to build a home for his sister, Delta Barton, on one corner of the property to audition the architect. It is clearly a Frank Lloyd Wright home, but the details pale in comparison to the main, 15000 square foot home that Martin commissioned for himself. The Barton House was completed in 1903 on schedule and Martin was impressed enough to hire Wright despite the fact that it came in three times over budget ($12K vs $4K).
Next we moved on to the Martin House. The size and the details were overwhelming. It was amazing to see in person the genius which I had only seen in books or on the internet in the past. Martin designed every aspect, from floor plan, to windows, lights, and furniture. In order to have perfectly level eaves-troughs, Wright designed an eaves-trough in an eaves-trough with the inner one sloped to drain properly. The mortar between the bricks was indented an inch parallel to the long side of the brick, but flush on the short side to accentuate the long low feel of the house and its connection to the earth. The house used curtain wall construction, with the structural support coming from huge brick piers which were used to disguise duct work, separated large rooms into functional areas and contained built in shelving. This allowed for “ribbons” of windows which were unusual at the time. This is one of the best documented of Wright’s homes as the architect and client communicated by letter on all the details, often daily. Wright also had a professional photographer capture the home when it was finished. Wright’s famous “Tree of Life” window design is used extensively throughout the house. Each window has 300-400 pieces of glass and was handmade. The building measures 180 feet from the front door to the back of the conservatory. Unfortunately, photographs are not allowed inside the houses unless one books a longer, more expensive, photography tour.
Standing at the front door, one can see down the entire length of the house, pergola and conservatory to a statue of Nike of Samothrace, chosen for the visual impact.
The family moved into the house in 1907. In 1926, Martin hired Wright to build a summer home, Graycliff, south of Buffalo. Graycliff is only open Friday through Sunday this time of year so we were not able to visit it.
Next we moved on to the gardener’s cottage, built in 1909, which had even fewer details than the Barton House, and is a stucco finish on a wood frame, but is a home I could happily retire to. It has an addition on the back which had beautiful Wright-inspired doors.
Martin was financially devastated by the depression and died of a brain hemorrhage in 1935. His wife, Isabelle, was unable to sell the house and abandoned it in 1937. Then began the “Period of Abandonment” which lasted 17 years.
Architect Sebastian J. Tauriello purchased the Martin House in 1954 (it had reverted to the city for back taxes in 1946). The pergola, conservatory and carriage house were demolished and an apartment building was built. The money this earned was used to rescue the main house. In 1967, it was purchased by the State University of New York at Buffalo, for use as its president’s residence.
In 1992, the Martin House Restoration Corporation (MHRC) was established. $42M US has been spent restoring the house to its 1907 “Year of Significance”, rebuilding the pergola, conservatory and carriage house, acquiring the Barton house and gardener’s cottage and building the visitors’ centre. Only about half of the complex’s almost 400 windows survived the “Period of Abandonment”. As funds become available the windows are being re-made and cost $35K each and take a month to make.
Frederick Law Olmstead, probably the best American landscape architect, designed a series of parks and parkways for Buffalo which became America’ first planned municipal park system. One of the features of his parkways was that they curve away out of sight. This is the view from the Martin property.
The parks were spread out around the city and connected by the parkways. All of the city’s major cultural institutions are located in his parks or along his parkways. Unfortunately, one of the parkways was removed for a sunken highway and broke the connection between the parks. Additionally, an expressway was built through the largest park splitting it in half and introducing noise and pollution.
The Martin House renovation has cost $52M so far and is substantially complete. The original cost of the house was $175K (Martin had expected it to cost $40K).
Many of my friends were surprised that we would choose Buffalo for our wedding anniversary trip, however, if you are interested in architecture, as I am, it is a city full of treasures and well worth the visit.
