In 1956, Wright designed his smallest house, “Eddie’s House,” designed to shelter a client’s Labrador retriever. He was working on a Usonian home for the Berger family in San Rafael, California. Their 12-year-old son Jim requested a matching doghouse for Eddie, their Labrador retriever. Jim offered Wright his paper route earnings for a sketch. Wright replied to Jim, telling him it would be “an opportunity” to sketch the doghouse when wasn’t as busy. Wright made good on his word, at no cost to Jim. He developed a sketch, complete with building instructions. While Jim never got to build the doghouse, but his father and brother did in 1963, during Jim’s Army service. Eddie, however, refused to use it. He did not like sleeping outside. Jim’s mother threw away the original in 1970, but Jim and his brother rebuilt it in 2010. They donated it to the Marin County, California library.
Wright’s design for Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, built as King Kamehameha Golf Club, Waikapu, Hawaii. Heidi deVries (2021)
When Frank Met Marilyn
After marrying Arthur Miller in 1956, Marilyn Monroe contacted Wright to create a home on Miller’s Roxbury, Connecticut property. They were looking to renovate the house Miller had bought in 1949 when he completed Death of a Salesman. The were thinking of tearing down the original building, a Revolutionary War-era farmhouse built in 1769, replacing it with something sleek and modern. Rather than drawing a brand-new design, Wright resurrected unbuilt plans he created for a wealthy Texas couple. But Miller disliked the design. Nor did he want to take on oversight of a complete overhaul of the property. The couple divorced in 1961, and the plans remained unbuilt. Miller would live in the original farmhouse until his death in 2005. But the plans wouldn’t stay down for long; in 1988, some investors from Japan used the plans to create the King Kamehameha Golf Club clubhouse.
Crowds in from of Boy’d Department Store, Missouri, USA (c. 1910). Public domain.
Wright Hated Cities
Wright was no fan of the state of cities. He found them overcrowded, poorly designed, and lacking cultural and social quality. He once said, “To look at the plan of a great city, is to look at something like the cross-section of a fibrous tumor.” Wright would not avoid cities, however. One of his last big projects was the Guggenheim Museum along Central Park, which required him to make an extended stay in New York City. But Wright had a vision of making cities better. He developed his idea, Broadacre City, to create a better city, based on the automobile (one of Wright’s lifelong loves), to decentralize the urban core and focus on the individual. As with his architecture, the parts of the community all played into a whole, to serve as “urban form and democratic ideas” to allow for individual growth.
Monona Terrace, Wright’s design with arched windows. Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Emory (2014).
New Wright Buildings are Still Constructed
When Wright died, he left hundreds of design ideas in his file cabinet. Designers have adapted some of Wright’s designs for modern use and construction. In Madison, Wisconsin, Monona Terrace. The Marilyn Monroe plans that now serve as a golf clubhouse in Maui, Hawaii. And in 2007, Marc Coleman of County Wicklow in Ireland wanted to build a Wright design. He contacted the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, who looked at the land and selected a Wright design that would suit the terrain. Coleman chose a 1959 design. The Foundation requires people building a Wright design to consult with one of the architects that worked and studied with Wright, so they worked with E. Thomas Casey, who studied under Wright and was the structural engineer on Wright’s design for the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Where Do We Find This Stuff? Here Are Our Sources:
10 things you never knew about Frank Lloyd Wright. Dana Schulz, 6sqft, 8 June 2017.
