Frank Lloyd Wright's Kalita Humphreys Theater
January 5, 2018 9:25 PM   Subscribe

The architect's last commission, now crumbling, and the confusion about how or whether Dallas should fix it. A long post about Wright's, as usual, commanding and visionary plans, which were tinkered with from the start. The author gives a great history of the theater and how it should have been and how it wound up. More, it needs extensive restoration and repair but nobody seems to know who should do what (with which and to whom). He suggests that if decisions aren't made soon, the whole thing may be lost.
posted by MovableBookLady (14 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Pretty glad the Dana Thomas House is well loved and maintained. I was there a few years back. Lovely, amazing stuff.
posted by Samizdata at 9:35 PM on January 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


This seems like a familiar FLW story. I knew a gal back in the day who was a nanny for a single mom who owned a FLW place in Pasadena, Ca, near the Rose Bowl. Maya cinder blocks. (Google it.) It was awesome and run down. The nanny hosted several parties. We were so fortunate to be invited and to enjoy that building. The single mom could not maintain it (it was leaky and experimental (maya cinder blocks?)). That owner eventually sold it, and the new owners fixed it all up.

Dallas shouldn’t fix this one, but someone who cares, should.
posted by notyou at 11:00 PM on January 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Millard House.
posted by notyou at 11:04 PM on January 5, 2018


The question of preservation is interesting in light of actual usefulness. There is a Wright-designed campus in Florida that features long, cantilevered roofs covering walkways which connect the buildings. Next to every single one, there is a path worn into the grass where the majority of students must walk as the roofing is too short for them to pass beneath. Similarly there is a large, much-touted fountain which, although visually interesting, is contained within a hostile space with no seating, shade or anything else to invite humans to linger. On our visit we did not see a single soul enjoying what we were told was a highlight of the campus. Elsewhere we noted crumbling concrete, loose bricks, rust and decay which exposed overall poor construction quality. Everywhere we looked there was yellow caution tape around things that were being repaired or awaiting work. Rather than a vital, active campus, the place instead felt like an underfunded museum of Wright’s designs, buildings whose intent was eclipsed by their appearance.

Are buildings worth keeping if they do not function as shelters for the humans they were ostensibly designed for? Is the way something looks reason enough to keep it around, even if it fails at its intended purpose? At what point does the cost of heating/maintaining a public space built for a different time outweigh its aesthetic value? These are tough questions at a time when many museums and historic attractions are struggling to make ends meet.
posted by kinnakeet at 4:45 AM on January 6, 2018 [11 favorites]


Talented as he was, FLW, for me, is an exemplar of that class of artists who demand that others suffer for their art.
posted by phooky at 6:21 AM on January 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


there is a path worn into the grass where the majority of students must walk as the roofing is too short for them to pass beneath.

I've always enjoyed photographs of his houses, but among his many flaws is that he typically designed buildings for short people. (I mean, short people deserve buildings built to their own scale, but as a taller person, that is not an architectural path that works for me.)

Maintenance and repair are always hard to fund, especially when there are design flaws as well. From the article, it is an arresting design and I do hope they can find a way to do the restoration, though the $40 million price tag may be a hard pill to swallow.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:48 AM on January 6, 2018


Thanks Samizdata. A million years ago, I had a job one summer, cooking at a popular local Springfield bar. I used to walk to work by the Dana Thomas House every morning. Back then it was surrounded by more shrubbery than now and housed some kind of legal offices. I didn't know its name or its history but it was splendidly, obviously, a Frank Lloyd Wright house(!) and it was magically more beautiful than the pedestrian structures it was plunked in the middle of. I made the little detour to walk by it every day and it made my whole day brighter. Glad to see it's alive and well and being cared for.
posted by anguspodgorny at 7:20 AM on January 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


Living in Chicago I've seen a lot of FLW homes and buildings. This summer I did the SC Johnson tour that was part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. I enjoy the aesthetics of his style - the proportions, the angles and those kinds of details but much like Mies van der Rohe buildings, which have similar geometric aesthetic appeal to me, I wouldn't live in one unless I was paid well for doing it.

The SC Johnson people abandoned the use of the research lab building (It's the tall building) at their HQ because while looking pretty cool it is an obvious death trap with a single narrow staircase with a small door as the only exit. In a building filled with bunsen burners!

The main building is super cool with acid trip tree like supports throughout but it was a leak nightmare and a heating problem until they decided to screw the plans and put in a second layer of clear roofing. FLW designed chairs for the office that had just three legs and would tip over really easily. FLW's idea of a solution was to suggest staff be taught how to use the chairs! He had to be forced into redesigning a 4 legged chair.

Many people feel this way, even people who are fans enough to buy one his homes, because there are always FLW homes on the market and they often linger on the market for a long time and sell for far less than comparable homes in the same area without a big name architect attached. Because in other houses you can update and upgrade, you can have your own furniture, you don't have beautiful but non functional flat or low slope roofs that became ice damns every winter. You also don't have people judging you for spoiling the aesthetic.

A FLW project is all encompassing in ways most other places are not. FLW, while ostensibly valuing the human, tends to crowd out the possibilities for his building's occupants to actually be human and assert control over their own spaces.

Unsurprisingly, for an aesthetic dictator, he went on in his later life to run a school that was suspiciously like a cult with students doing manual farm labour ostensibly for the benefit of their development but conveniently supporting FLW's lifestyle.
posted by srboisvert at 7:25 AM on January 6, 2018 [6 favorites]


One of the most recent reviews on tripadvisor for the Dana-Thomas House says:
> Well, I guess I'm glad I finally have seen a Frank Lloyd Wright house...
...but I hated it! What an ugly monstrosity. While I certainly do appreciate the windows and light fixtures, and the texturing of the walls, etc. inside, I simply despise the dark, closed rooms; hallways inside of hallways and other things I consider to be a total waste of space and light.... Love the Japanese influenced frieze and roofline on the ouside, but that's about it. What a waste....

posted by Laotic at 8:11 AM on January 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


For a while I used to drive by the Marin County Civic Center (one of FLW's last buildings) every day. It's such a marvelous building to look at, so harmonious to the hills that surround it. I often wondered what the opinion of someone who worked there would be. [and I see that the roof is about to be replaced]
posted by acrasis at 8:48 AM on January 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yeah it does seem like it's ok to let some FLWs go. There are a lot of them! And they are very cool to look at and mostly impractical. (His kitchen designs seem to show a total lack of interest in where women were spending their time in his heyday).
posted by latkes at 11:07 AM on January 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


> anguspodgorny:
"Thanks Samizdata. A million years ago, I had a job one summer, cooking at a popular local Springfield bar. I used to walk to work by the Dana Thomas House every morning. Back then it was surrounded by more shrubbery than now and housed some kind of legal offices. I didn't know its name or its history but it was splendidly, obviously, a Frank Lloyd Wright house(!) and it was magically more beautiful than the pedestrian structures it was plunked in the middle of. I made the little detour to walk by it every day and it made my whole day brighter. Glad to see it's alive and well and being cared for."

No worries. Oh, crap. I just doxxed myself, didn't I? Yeah, my ex-wife and I used to daydream about winning the lottery and renting the place for a very small and select Christmas party.
posted by Samizdata at 12:43 PM on January 6, 2018


> Laotic:
"One of the most recent reviews on tripadvisor for the Dana-Thomas House says:
> Well, I guess I'm glad I finally have seen a Frank Lloyd Wright house...
...but I hated it! What an ugly monstrosity. While I certainly do appreciate the windows and light fixtures, and the texturing of the walls, etc. inside, I simply despise the dark, closed rooms; hallways inside of hallways and other things I consider to be a total waste of space and light.... Love the Japanese influenced frieze and roofline on the ouside, but that's about it. What a waste...."


I don't know what the hell they were talking about. I certainly didn't feel it was dark...

Of course, I am sure their architectural firm is booming.
posted by Samizdata at 12:45 PM on January 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


FLW was Howard Roark in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 7:42 PM on January 8, 2018


« Older Her father's first wife was Tennessee Williams's...   |   Bowiemas as a season of meditation and insight Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments