![]() I gingerly took out my phone and snapped a picture: So, I left my workhorse cameras on the bus and carried just my iPhone 11 Pro. When I got to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Burnham Block, our first stop, I thought I had seen all the pictures there were to take, on the trip in May: I was not committed to taking pictures as I accompanied my 11th Road Scholar Frank Lloyd Wright trip, my second in a month, to sites in Milwaukee today.* As I have written in past blogs, I try to see and photograph something new every time I visit a familiar Wright site, but I did not feel photographically inspired this trip. The Road Scholar “Architectural Masterworks of Frank Lloyd Wright” tour is a week-long and begins in Chicago: I looked up as I was bringing our guests down to the dining room and looked at the bottom of the stairs to the living room for the first time. A week ago, before I was escorting my fourth Road Scholar tour of the summer, I told my wife that I was having trouble seeing anything new the first three tours of this year and was almost considering not even bringing a camera with me (these were my 10th – 13th tour with the same itinerary since 2017). I challenge myself each time I visit a familiar Wright site to find something new to photograph. I posted this piece a year ago when Anne and David Archer, who grew up in the house between 1947 – 1957 were reunited at the house: Gene was honored with a Wright Spirit Award from the Building Conservancy in 2015, and the Kristin Visser Award for Historic Preservation in 2017. She is holding the cake at the head of the table.Ĭoincidental with the celebration, a new Wright website, which I was not familiar with, pinged this morning to a piece I posted in 2014 about Gene’s work at the house: This photo of Anne’s 14th birthday party at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed dining room ensemble (which was lost after her parents sold the house) was in the Racine newspaper in 1946. She was delighted that the “movies” were playing in full force in the entry way as we arrived at the celebration yesterday:Īnne was a celebrity yesterday: one of the guests had brought a copy of my book about the Hardy House ( Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hardy House, Pomegranate: 2006) and asked her to sign two pages with photos related to her: It was two days before he called me back, from Baltimore Washington Airport, on his way to visit Fallingwater, “Just kidding!”Īnne has often told me that it was like watching movies when the pattern of the leaded glass windows was projected onto her bedroom ceiling and walls by the headlights of passing cars at night. I held off calling the Yoghourtjians to cancel the sale so I could get hold of Gene. There was a glitch though, or so I thought, when the week before the closing Gene emailed me that he was having second thoughts…it would make a good teardown and he could build something with a three car garage underneath. We were having lemonade and cashews in their new apartment when Gene surprised us and made them an offer for the house. He also brought them a Japanese print reminsicent of a famous drawing by Marion Mahony of their house. I told Gene what kind of pastry to bring Margaret (chocolate-covered marzipan loaves). I understood, but I wanted Jim and Margaret Yoghourtjian, the longtime stewards of the house to first meet Gene. ![]() Thorpe of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy advised me to step back and let professional appraisers and others take over. This is something I could do for Racine.” The late John G. As we left, he said to me, “I don’t have children. I took Gene through the house, which was challenged, when he was considering buying it in 2012. Gene signs papers transferring stewardship of the house to him, September 17, 2012. Anne Sporer Ruetz, who grew up in the house from 1938 – 1947 and two non-family couples were also invited. Tom and Joan invited family to a low-key celebration of the anniversary on the dining room terrace yesterday. Its new stewards are Tom (one of Gene’s two brothers) and Joan Szymczak. Gene fell ill and died Decemafter undertaking an extensive rehabilitation of the house. ![]() Hardy House (1904-05) in Racine, Wisconsin. Yesterday, September 17, marked the 10th anniversary of Eugene (Gene) Szymczak becoming the seventh steward of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Thomas P. ![]() Robert McCarter writes that the floor plan of the house is articulated in the windows. Saturday’s afternoon sun projected the pattern of the entry hall windows onto the walls.
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