Frank Lloyd Wright, Car Guy
September 27, 2018 7:47 PM Subscribe
Wright loved cars, understood their coming importance, and had a favorite color, Cherokee Red. Wright was one of the few architects and planners to realise very early on in the 20th century that the car, even in its crude, spidery, pre-1910 form, would transform life in the decades to come. Wright developed some of the first buildings that acknowledged the influence of the car. He realized that the humble petrol station could be a center of travel and community life, and designed a prototype in the late 1920s.
His Broadacre City proposal of the 1930s predicted an urban type that spread across the landscape. Although critics have blamed Wright for suburban sprawl, a study of his urban planning ideas show an attempt to harness the energies of the automotive age and integrate them, along with architectural design, agriculture, and industry, and into the broader landscape.
His Broadacre City proposal of the 1930s predicted an urban type that spread across the landscape. Although critics have blamed Wright for suburban sprawl, a study of his urban planning ideas show an attempt to harness the energies of the automotive age and integrate them, along with architectural design, agriculture, and industry, and into the broader landscape.
Cars are the worst part of anything.
posted by entropicamericana at 8:22 PM on September 27, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by entropicamericana at 8:22 PM on September 27, 2018 [6 favorites]
You gotta love that Lincoln- the driver gets to bake in the Arizona sun, or soak up a Wisconsin rainstorm. I know that there was a fabric top, but I bet it stored in the trunk. Those rear quarter panel windows are remarkably incongruous. Love the color. I'm sure it's easy to keep the cars washed with a cadre of "fellows"/free interns/disciples.
posted by Marky at 8:33 PM on September 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Marky at 8:33 PM on September 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'm not a car nut by any means; I don't even drive anymore. But I'd be lying if I said my heart didn't flutter a little at the sight of that red Continental! My Grandma had a long series of red convertibles, and she let me take my road test in her little Olds Cutlass. I felt like the coolest kid in town.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:10 PM on September 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:10 PM on September 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
I love cars. That red Lincoln gives me the lust. It may be the color, variously called Cherokee Red and Taliesin Red. Even though Loewy's version is sleeker and more sophisticated, Wright's is arrogant and in-your-face. I want it. It would certainly be a beast to drive, but I don't care.
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:29 PM on September 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:29 PM on September 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
But I mean really.... check out that "Big Wheeler."
Jesus, Frank.
posted by tclark at 10:13 PM on September 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
Jesus, Frank.
posted by tclark at 10:13 PM on September 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
FTR, FLR RIP 1959.
posted by fairmettle at 10:56 PM on September 27, 2018
posted by fairmettle at 10:56 PM on September 27, 2018
That family road car ain't safe for family viewing, know what I mean?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:49 AM on September 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:49 AM on September 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
I was hoping the article would touch a bit more on how cars impacted the architecture of homes - we've toured Kentuck Knob more than once and the docents always mention how FLW hated garages, basements, and attics, and how hard the home owners fought him on those. In the end, he gave them a car port. (Which in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, is better than nothing I guess...)
posted by librarianamy at 4:33 AM on September 28, 2018
posted by librarianamy at 4:33 AM on September 28, 2018
He frequently quoted himself when he explained his philosophy of living, “Take care of the luxuries in life and the necessities will take care of themselves.”
I love FLW's architecture and design, but big yikes on that. If that sentence isn't the oldwhitedudest thing that has ever been said in the history of old white dudes I don't know what is.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:40 AM on September 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
I love FLW's architecture and design, but big yikes on that. If that sentence isn't the oldwhitedudest thing that has ever been said in the history of old white dudes I don't know what is.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:40 AM on September 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
That family road car ain't safe for family viewing, know what I mean?
Reminds me of The Ambiguously Gay Duo's car.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:45 AM on September 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Reminds me of The Ambiguously Gay Duo's car.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:45 AM on September 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
The original '40 Lincoln convertible: nice. Wright's custom version: eww. (And I won't even touch on that "frank and beans" family car concept.) This was a real howler: "Wright never looked back in life, thus no need for a rear window".
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:32 AM on September 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:32 AM on September 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
Here's the gas station he designed in Cloquet, Minnesota. Note the handy lookout tower.
posted by mygoditsbob at 6:39 AM on September 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by mygoditsbob at 6:39 AM on September 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Cue the Simpsons Halloween bit about the frogurt
Wright designed you a house.
That's good!
The house has no closets.
That's bad!
But it has a garage!
That's good!
The garage is fitted to hold exactly one Reliant Robin.
That's bad!
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:48 AM on September 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
Wright designed you a house.
That's good!
The house has no closets.
That's bad!
But it has a garage!
That's good!
The garage is fitted to hold exactly one Reliant Robin.
That's bad!
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:48 AM on September 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
The article says the red Lincolns ended up with Joel Silver, who also bought and restored the Storer House and hid Frank Lloyd Wright references in his movies
posted by peeedro at 7:13 AM on September 28, 2018
posted by peeedro at 7:13 AM on September 28, 2018
Nice wienermobile!
posted by hilberseimer at 9:07 AM on September 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by hilberseimer at 9:07 AM on September 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
More seriously, I've always thought the "Cherokee red" thing was really problematic. He painted the concrete floors of Usonian houses that color if my memory serves, and I've always felt there was something really disturbing about that. It's an eerie thing to do.
posted by hilberseimer at 9:13 AM on September 28, 2018
posted by hilberseimer at 9:13 AM on September 28, 2018
He painted the concrete floors of Usonian houses that color if my memory serves, and I've always felt there was something really disturbing about that. It's an eerie thing to do.
But it would be even more disturbing if they just let the blood spatters show!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:37 AM on September 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
But it would be even more disturbing if they just let the blood spatters show!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:37 AM on September 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
The mark FLW had on modern houses did lead him to favour the carport (though I had no idea it was in reaction to resistance against garages, etc). The most striking thing about this was that he was explicitly waging war on the front porch. He knew that once we started driving everywhere, we'd no longer have time to stop as we passed our friends' houses and chat without formally being invited inside. He may even have realised it would be too noisy and smoggy to spend much time out in front of our homes any longer.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 9:42 AM on September 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 9:42 AM on September 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
FLW's championing of the carport as a modern porte-cochère, and as an open space instead of the vile, dank, drywall-lined holes of attached garages, is my second favorite thing about his work.
Granted, it's all still in service of his nightmarish proposal of the white-flight paradise that Broadacre City would have been (and the ruinous sprawl of faux-colonial nightmare that actually happened), but if you're going to keep on with magical thinking housing "out in the country" and cars are going to be either parked at home (charging stations being a key thing in the burgeoning future, since electric cars are a suburban phenomenon by design and technical limitations), carports are a nice way to keep your car dry, give you a place to fix stuff, and stifle your perverted propensity towards hoarding worthless crap in the carhole because Americans seem so desperately tied up with their worthless, idiotic, not-even-a-fun-thrift-store-find-in-thirty-years crap.
His car's absolutely hideous, though. Just miserable billowing formless flubbering Yankee garbage wrapped in the tacky signifiers of the fauxgentry. Had FLW possessed an immortal soul and a forward looking mindset, he'd have had bought himself a Traction Avant.
Sort of amusing though, that, for once, someone else was taking credit for Loewy's work.
posted by sonascope at 10:22 AM on September 28, 2018
Granted, it's all still in service of his nightmarish proposal of the white-flight paradise that Broadacre City would have been (and the ruinous sprawl of faux-colonial nightmare that actually happened), but if you're going to keep on with magical thinking housing "out in the country" and cars are going to be either parked at home (charging stations being a key thing in the burgeoning future, since electric cars are a suburban phenomenon by design and technical limitations), carports are a nice way to keep your car dry, give you a place to fix stuff, and stifle your perverted propensity towards hoarding worthless crap in the carhole because Americans seem so desperately tied up with their worthless, idiotic, not-even-a-fun-thrift-store-find-in-thirty-years crap.
His car's absolutely hideous, though. Just miserable billowing formless flubbering Yankee garbage wrapped in the tacky signifiers of the fauxgentry. Had FLW possessed an immortal soul and a forward looking mindset, he'd have had bought himself a Traction Avant.
Sort of amusing though, that, for once, someone else was taking credit for Loewy's work.
posted by sonascope at 10:22 AM on September 28, 2018
carports are a nice way to keep your car dry, give you a place to fix stuff, and stifle your perverted propensity towards hoarding worthless crap in the carhole because Americans seem so desperately tied up with their worthless, idiotic, not-even-a-fun-thrift-store-find-in-thirty-years crap.
I'm not sure if you've noticed the self-storage phenomenon that has overtaken major cities in recent years, and in spite of attached garages. Coincidentally most look like places Frank Lloyd Wright would have built, minus the choice land of course.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:48 AM on September 28, 2018
I'm not sure if you've noticed the self-storage phenomenon that has overtaken major cities in recent years, and in spite of attached garages. Coincidentally most look like places Frank Lloyd Wright would have built, minus the choice land of course.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:48 AM on September 28, 2018
The mark FLW had on modern houses did lead him to favour the carport (though I had no idea it was in reaction to resistance against garages, etc). The most striking thing about this was that he was explicitly waging war on the front porch. He knew that once we started driving everywhere, we'd no longer have time to stop as we passed our friends' houses and chat without formally being invited inside. He may even have realised it would be too noisy and smoggy to spend much time out in front of our homes any longer.
I lived in a house that had a front porch in the downtown core of a mid sized Canadian city for a year and it was fantastic. We'd sit out there on a nice summer day and watch the world going by and friends would walk past and stop and have a drink. It felt so ridiculously civilized. One of the better social times of my life. It wasn't pre FLW. It was the mid nineties.
The reason I haven't experienced that since is that suburbs are hostile to walking because there is nothing to walk to and larger cities are too expensive for single family homes for all but the very richest.
posted by srboisvert at 11:49 AM on September 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
I lived in a house that had a front porch in the downtown core of a mid sized Canadian city for a year and it was fantastic. We'd sit out there on a nice summer day and watch the world going by and friends would walk past and stop and have a drink. It felt so ridiculously civilized. One of the better social times of my life. It wasn't pre FLW. It was the mid nineties.
The reason I haven't experienced that since is that suburbs are hostile to walking because there is nothing to walk to and larger cities are too expensive for single family homes for all but the very richest.
posted by srboisvert at 11:49 AM on September 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
The article says the red Lincolns ended up with Joel Silver, who also bought and restored the Storer House...
The Joel Silver reference jumped out at me as well. In addition to the Storer house, Silver has spent tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of dollars restoring and completing Auldbrass Plantation in the South Carolina Lowcountry. It is a house and numerous outbuildings on 300 riverfront acres covered in cypress trees and Spanish moss; it was being used as a hunting lodge when Silver purchased it so I can only imagine the condition it was in. A bunch of pictures can be found here; note that all the concrete is done in Cherokee Red. If you want to see it for yourself, it is opened for tours one weekend in November each year; tickets for this year’s tour can be found here.
posted by TedW at 1:52 PM on September 28, 2018
The Joel Silver reference jumped out at me as well. In addition to the Storer house, Silver has spent tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of dollars restoring and completing Auldbrass Plantation in the South Carolina Lowcountry. It is a house and numerous outbuildings on 300 riverfront acres covered in cypress trees and Spanish moss; it was being used as a hunting lodge when Silver purchased it so I can only imagine the condition it was in. A bunch of pictures can be found here; note that all the concrete is done in Cherokee Red. If you want to see it for yourself, it is opened for tours one weekend in November each year; tickets for this year’s tour can be found here.
posted by TedW at 1:52 PM on September 28, 2018
« Older Now here’s how you do it | Yaawwn... zzzz.... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by q*ben at 8:06 PM on September 27, 2018 [8 favorites]