Wright for Real People: A Family Restores Frank Lloyd Wright's Famed First House
(Page 2 of 4)
July/August 2009
By Judy Arginteanu
"The thing about historical restoration is that you agonize over every little thing that must be replaced,” Steve says. “The original architectural ‘fabric’ is always retained unless there’s an incredibly compelling reason to replace it. Even the salvageable portions of rotted wood were repurposed.”
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Integrity and sustainability
During the restoration, Steve and Lynette constantly weighed three issues: design integrity, sustainability and the house “as built”—because even the original builders sometimes deviated from Wright’s plans.
In some cases, practicality ruled. They replaced all the mechanicals with modern, high-efficiency heating and electrical systems. They replaced the worn-out rock wool insulation in the roof with expandable spray foam, which forms an airtight seal against the rafters. They installed a high-efficiency Unico high-velocity air conditioning system, even though the house is designed with myriad channels of cross ventilation and stays very comfortable in summer. “The realities of modern city life meant that we could not leave the house unattended with only screens latched,” Steve says. “The air conditioning system compensates for the lack of natural ventilation and thermal balance when the house is closed up for extended periods.”
In a few cases, the family had the chance to right old wrongs. “If we ran into a problem, instead of a Band-Aid repair for the fifth time, we would find the root cause and correct it,” Steve says.
The threshold between the living space and the terrace, long a source of disagreement between Nancy Willey and Wright, is a case in point. The architect, for aesthetic purity, designed a flat threshold to blur the lines between indoor and outdoor. Willey wrote to Wright: “The lack of a threshold will create … a triumphal archway to mosquitoes, flies, ants and all the insect comedy.” In the end, she took matters into her own hands and made do with a functional but aesthetically jarring aluminum threshold to ward off the march of elements and bugs. “And honestly, I would have to defend her decision,” Steve says.
Steve and Lynette rebuilt a raised threshold with the meticulously matched bricks from StoneArt, giving them the best of both worlds: Wright’s “indoor-outdoor” continuum and a seal against the great outdoors. “The house is like an open park pavilion on a hot summer day,” Steve says. “The scholar Grant Hildebrand identified two aspects inherent in Wright’s architecture that are plain to see in the Willey House: prospect, the ability to see; and refuge, the security of not being seen.”
Lynette loves the indoor-outdoor connection Wright created and the restoration maintained. “It’s like the sense of shelter you’d have in a cave or tree fortress,” she says. “Since childhood, I’ve had the deep desire to live in the forest, under or in a large mature tree. There’s a sense of safety, comfort and nature here.”