Who Wronged This Wright?

I didn't think it was possible.

Granted, I'm just an amateur student of architecture myself, but I'm still dismayed when somebody says they've never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Fallingwater, the Kaufmann country house at Mill Run, PA

Wright was one of America's greatest architects, and popularizer of the prairie style of housing design that has become ubiquitous across North America's suburbs.  About 500 of his commissions actually got built during both sides of the turn of the 20th Century, but he designed twice that many projects, some of which are just as famous as what got built.

His most renowned commission was Fallingwater at Mill Run, Pennsylvania.  To this day, his exquisite multi-level stone and concrete country house for the Kaufmann family, perched over a real waterfall amongst elegant trees and grand slabs of rocks, is considered one of the best - if not the best - piece of American design in our country's history.

Unfortunately, his talent was only outmatched by his ego, yet considering both of those, and aside from some stunning projects in suburban Los Angeles, the bulk of his work was built in relatively uncelebrated places.  Places like Oak Park, Illinois, one of Chicago's first suburbs.  Wisconsin.  And Arizona.

The House Scholars Forgot and the Family Sold

Ahh, yes, Arizona!  After spending years on the frigid prairie around Spring Green, Wisconsin, Wright relocated his design studio, which he called Taliesin, to the much warmer climes of Scottsdale, in Arizona's desert.  In suburban Phoenix.  Which became his base of operations from the 1930's until his death in 1959.

Despite - or more likely, because of - his famous career, Wright had a miserable family life.  He cheated on his wives countless times, seemed to father children left and right, and made little effort to hide any of it.  Yet one of those poor children, David, received a special gift from his father:  a custom-designed house near Camelback Mountain, surrounded by an orange grove.  David and his wife, Gladys, lived there for decades, with her surviving him and eventually passing away in 2008, at the age of 104.  Their heirs, three granddaughters, sold the house - a unique spiral of concrete and steel - for $2.8 million.

Turns out, the property is no longer surrounded by orange groves, but sprawling mansions and luxury condominiums, all relishing their rarefied air in the shadows of Phoenix's rustic Camelback centerpiece.  The Frank Lloyd Wright original may have been sold for three million based on the pedigree of its designer, but somehow, the house ended up being flipped - for much less money - to a couple of carpetbagging developers from Idaho.

Two guys who'd never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright.  And had no idea a place like Phoenix, Arizona was home to such an architectural treasure.

They bought the place with plans to tear it down, subdivide the lot, and construct two brand-new miniature estates in its place.  Apparently without any research into the history of the property.

Not that a cursory inquiry into the home's provenance would have yielded anything significant.  According to the New York Times, which has been faithfully following this developing story for the world's architecture community, not much is known about this house, even though it was built in 1952.  David and Gladys did not want the elder Wright's notoriety to infect their family's home life, so they never welcomed the type of academic study that has chronicled other Wright designs.  Basically, it had fallen off the radar of many Wright scholars.

But not completely off of everybody's radar!  When word got out that a vintage Wright project had slipped into the hands of indifferent developers, suddenly preservationists were coming out of the woodwork to save the place.

Past Perfect Preservation

The David and Gladys Wright Home in Phoenix, AZ

It's a clever gem of a house, with a circular ramp from the ground up to a second level, under which is tucked a carport.  It's been described as shaped like a desert rattlesnake coiled to strike, but in actuality, its form is far less menacing.  Gracious and warm, with a delightful garden in its center, David and Gladys' home features many of the personal touches Frank Lloyd himself was famous for designing, such as chairs, windows, and other fixtures and furnishings specifically original to this home, and still in remarkably good condition.

For better or worse, however, those Idaho developers only saw money to be made.  A funky old house with a floorplan too odd for conventional buyers, and lots of prime real estate begging to welcome yet more McMansions.  And that red glazed plaque by the front door?  Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic "logo," as it were?  So what?

Blame the developers for only having dollar signs in their eyes if you like, or blame the public school system in Meridian from which they graduated (they were friends from high school), but isn't it also curious that it took some out-of-state developers to light a fire under Arizona's preservationists?  According to the landmark preservation document slapped together in the city's recent efforts to stave off its demolition, the property is described as "the most significant work within the city of Phoenix by the most significant architect in American history."

If that's true, and it probably is, why did it take its imminent demise, four years after the death of its last original owner, before scholars, designers, preservationists, and critics rallied around its cause?

According to the Times, Arizona law is strong on property rights and weak on historic preservation.  Perhaps that reality plays some role in why Arizona's Wright aficionados are having to scramble with a demolition moratorium that will only last three years anyway.  But who dropped the ball when the elderly Mrs. David Wright finally passed?  In 2008?  When plenty of Arizona scholars should have been aware that a prized Wright design could be in peril?

Maybe the family should be blamed, since it doesn't seem as though they cared much about the home's heritage.  If the granddaughters simply needed the money, couldn't a trust have been formed to purchase the property from them and preserve it?  Many heirs sell the family homestead for a variety of reasons, but this wasn't just any old family homestead.  To a certain degree, as the historic preservation landmark request states, this house is a remarkable amenity for Phoenix, which as a relatively new city, boasts precious little historic architecture.

Money Hounds Save White Elephants

Granted, money doesn't flow amongst Phoenix society like it does in Chicago and New York, where historic preservation is a way of life, and plenty of deep-pocketed donors with ready access to cash gladly fund a variety of preservation efforts.  And architects, in general, aren't the most wealthy of professionals.  That $2.8 million is chump change to a New York hedge fund manager, but for an Arizona designer, it's likely several years' salary.

Perhaps this is typical of what happens in "fly-over country," where other deserving architectural gems fail to attract the attention of angel investors willing to fund a piece of American history for posterity's sake.  It's unlikely any other buildings of this home's stature have simply been bulldozed for lack of interest, but should these developers from Idaho be left holding the bag when they try to do it on a previously forgotten Wright house?  If this property wins historic preservation designation for even three years, that's three years that the developers won't be able to recoup any of their investment.  Even if they got a good price for it back when nobody else was watching, and even though they had no clue about its provenance.

To their credit, now that the Idaho developers have been educated on the home's value, they admit tearing it down doesn't make the most sense.

"Does the house deserve landmark status? Yes. This place needs to be preserved,” one of them conceded to the Times. “But when three Wright granddaughters sell it for $2.8 million, for me to carry the cross for Frank Lloyd Wright, that’s not fair.”

And that's true, isn't it?  Why should two developers from Idaho, even though they'd never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright until all this mess blew up in their faces, be stuck with the cost of something the Wright family and Phoenix preservationists either couldn't - or didn't want to - assume themselves?

Frankly, altruism can only go so far.  Sometimes lessons are most strongly learned from loss.  If Wright's family and his present-day admirers can't scrape together the money necessary to purchase this home and preserve it, and since the property was acquired fairly and squarely, why not let the ball bounce where it may?

Even if it's a wrecking ball?
_____

When Waiting Wearies

Waiting.

Waiting, waiting... waiting.

It's what a lot of us seem to be doing a lot these days, isn't it?  Waiting.

I'm waiting for a writing job that will pay my bills.  Perhaps you're waiting for a job, too.  Employment is something for which many folks are waiting.  I just finished reading an article online about a run-down rust-belt town waiting for the "next big thing" to come along and revive their local economy and drive down their high unemployment rate.  Some experts say corporate America is waiting for this November's presidential election to be over before making long-term plans regarding investing in new products or new employees.

Waiting can be excruciatingly frustrating.  Thousands of New Yorkers were waiting on idle subway trains earlier this week, waiting for glitches to be exorcised from the MTA's byzantine switching systems.  If you've ever been at the mercy of public transit when things aren't working, you know how maddening it can be.  Maybe you wait in long lines of bumper-to-bumper traffic during your morning and evening commutes, day after day, mocking the word "rush" in rush hour.

We wait, and wait, and wait some more.  About the only thing for which we never have to wait is, well... waiting.

The difference between people who simply sit and wait, and people who keep busy while they're waiting, may actually provide the spark that ignites the "next big thing" our society seems to be waiting for economically, politically, and even emotionally.

I've been writing this blog, trying to ignite the interest of somebody who believes, as an editor of mine once told me, that I "deserve to be read."  The rust belt town languishing from the offshoring of its manufacturing economy is investing in higher education and new business incubators, hoping to somehow differentiate themselves from the plethora of small towns across America doing the same exact thing in the hopes of jump-starting their economies.

Maybe what you're waiting for has nothing to do with jobs, or getting to your job.  Maybe you're waiting for a report back from your doctor.  Maybe you're waiting to learn if you're going to be a parent, or a grandparent.   Maybe you're just waiting for your child's soccer practice to be over so you can have dinner.

Waiting By the Side of the Road

Then too, sometimes what we're waiting for, and what we get, are two different things.  We wait, thinking we know what we're waiting for, but do we?

About two thousand years ago, a blind beggar was confined to the roadside outside the gates of Jericho, an ancient city in what is now the political state of Israel.  This blind beggar's name was Bartimaeus, and although we don't know how old he was, or whether he'd been blind from birth or from some disease, we can easily assume most of Jericho's population probably knew him, or knew who he was.  They'd likely seen him there for years, begging and waiting.

Regardless of how long he hadn't been able to see, you can imagine that being blind for any length of time in that culture would have been sheer misery.  It's bad enough today in North America, where our culture is quite progressive in curing, treating, or providing assistance for people with vision problems.  Two thousand years ago, blindness was a virtual prison.

About all a blind person could do back then was take up a spot alongside a road and beg all day long, every day, and hope that enough sympathetic passers-by will toss enough money their way to buy a simple supper.

Waiting, all day.  Sometimes calling out when you hear people approaching, then slumping back against a wall or rock, and waiting some more.

Waiting, calling, begging.  But most likely, mostly waiting.  Waiting in utter darkness, even as you can feel the sun beating down on you.

Suddenly, Bartimaeus heard more than just the shuffling of passers-by.  There was a commotion, and he learned that Jesus of Nazareth was going to be passing right by his spot by the road!  Maybe Jesus would heal him!

He had to get Christ's attention.

So he hollered out, calling on Jesus to have mercy on him.  He made such a ruckus and racket, calling out so desperately, that people in the crowd, who had relegated him to the sidelines of life, sitting out of the way of normal people, told him to be quiet.

Yet undoubtedly, this was just such an opportunity for which Bartimaeus would likely have never before dreamed.  Maybe he'd spent his time waiting by the side of the road not only for enough money to make it through the day, but waiting for death itself.  The commotion he himself causes in this passage creates the impression that he'd immediately realized this might be his one chance in his entire life to be healed from blindness - and he was frantically hoping to seize the moment.

Christ is the Creator of Perfect Timing

Christ, of course, knew Bartimaeus was nearby on the roadside.  And he stopped.

The Son of God stopped, just like He does when each of His children call out to Him.  And Christ called Bartimaeus to Himself.

Quickly, the crowd changed its tune, turned to Bartimaeus, and said, "well, what do you know!  You've gotten His attention, and He wants to talk to you."

As you can imagine, Bartimaeus didn't need any more urging.  He jumped to his feet, likely needing to be steadied by people in the crowd who only moments before were telling him to shut up.  He threw off his cloak, perhaps so fully assured that Christ would heal him, he'd be able to retrieve it after his miracle, and he could see where it had fallen.

And sure enough, Christ performed his miracle, based on his blunt, honest, earnest faith.

I don't know about you, but I'm waiting for many things, not just a job.  You're probably waiting for many things, too.  Most of them aren't as dire as waiting for the remotest of chances to be healed from something as grave as blindness.  But yet the emotional, spiritual, and mental blindnesses with which we suffer may still be things we have to wait through until God's appointed time, when our waiting will finally be over.

Waiting can only be true agony when you don't trust the Person for Whom you're waiting.

May the Lord grant us the grace to wait as long as He would have us wait, and to wait with patience, hope, and even joy.

As the psalmist has so poignantly phrased it, wait on the Lord.  Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart.  Wait, I say, on the Lord!
_____