The Weekly Wright-Up has the story of a piece of the Imperial Hotel.
Dec 152011
Col. James Pritzker will begin the restoration of the exterior of the Emil Bach house.
“The interior (of the Bach House) is almost brought back to fully historical standards,” said Sean McGowan, chief operating officer at Pritzker’s family office, Tawani Enterprises. “We want to just finish everything out.”
“Including the paint color,” added Mary Parthe, Pritzker’s chief investment officer. “We had to go through several different paint samples to get close to the original color on the interior. Now we’re working on the exterior.”
In a departure for the normally secretive nature of the family, Pritzker’s staff will be documenting the Bach House restoration in a blog, which also will launch in the spring.
Both Lynn Osmond, CEO of the Chicago Architecture Foundation, and James Peters, former president of Landmark Illinois, praised the Bach House plans, citing evidence that Pritzker is willing to spare no expense in his quest for historical accuracy. Pritzker recently won the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s highest honor, Patron of the Year, for the restoration of the 16-story Monroe Building. Peters called the building, which opened in 1912 and is located at 104 S. Michigan Ave., “a tour de force.”
“What he does with his restoration, it’s so historically accurate,” Osmond said. “His team really invests in research and the technical side of it. They figure out where the terra cotta was made. How do we replicate it? Where do we find the patterns? Even the hardware on the Monroe Building is perfect.”
Col. Pritzker has won awards and acclaim for his faithful, spare-no-expense restoration of the Monroe Building, home to a large instalation of Rookwood Tile.
Dec 132011
Thursday, December 15 is the day the Laurent House will be auctioned (unless it is sold earlier). This article from the Wisconsin State Journal has a nice summary of the basics, if you haven’t followed the story.
NOt mentioned is the efforts of the Laurent House Foundation to raise enough money to purchase the house and turn it into a museum. The does quote Sidney Robinson who believes the house should remain a house:
Sidney Robinson, Taliesin’s preservation coordinator, believes the house should remain a residence and not become a museum.
“I think it should be lived in,” Robinson said. “It should be somebody who values it and is willing to take care of it.”
Graycliff, Darwin Martin’s Wright-designed house on Lake Erie, is one of four Buffalo-area properties in the running for a $10,000 award from The National Trust for Historic Preservation. Go to the voting page on Facebook to cast your support.
Lynn Becker has a post on the new, low-energy lighting recently added to the exterior of The Rookery, the Burnham Root landmark with a Wright-designed lobby that once housed Frank Lloyd Wright’s offices and today to home the the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust.
Nov 182011
The Darwin Martin House in Buffalo has received a $250,000 gift as the foundation for a $750,000 challenge grant. The challenge grant will go towards a slate of interior restorations estimated to cost $5 million or into an endowment fund. The planned interior renovations include recreation of Wright’s layered wall treatments, and a full restoration of the Martin fireplace that featured a glass tile mosaic.
The donation was made by Louis Ciminelli, head of LPCiminelli Co, a Buffalo construction firm.
Martin House Piano
Buffalo, Restoration/Renovation, Web Sites
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Nov 062011
The Weekly Wright-Up has a post on Wright’s unexecuted design for the family piano for the Darwin Martin House.
The unaltered piano was donated back to the Martin House in 2006 and has been returned to its rightful place in the living room.
Park Inn Time Lapse
Audio & Video, Iowa, Restoration/Renovation
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Nov 062011
PrairieMod posted a link to this video — a time-lapse video of the restoration of the Park Inn hotel in Mason City, Iowa. A pleasant four-minute interlude for your Sunday morning.
Oct 302011
A $135,000 purchase by the Graycliff Conservancy has knitted together the original parcel owned by Darwin and Isabelle Martin on the shores of Lake Erie, Graycliff.
The Conservancy has bought the 1934 gardner’s cottage, a bungalow designed by an unknown architect almost certainly not Frank Lloyd Wright. The Conservancy hopes that information about the designer inside the house. Wright did draw up plans for a caretaker’s cottage, but it was never built.
Much of the 1934 house is still in its original condition — including a cypress and brick fireplace that uses the same materials as a fireplace in what is now named the Isabelle R. Martin House.
The house also still has its original maple floor, window frames made of cypress and exterior stucco that, though painted a different color, mimics the Wright-designed buildings on the estate.
The cottage will be used as a residence, possibly for a caretaker or visiting scholar, and there are plans to allow public access through tours or special events.
Oct 202011
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is meeting in Buffalo, and the Darwin Martin House is ready for its close-up.
Buffalo Rising has a post, with photos, on the latest steps the Martin House Restoration Corp has taken toward completing the restoration.
The Weekly Wright-Up, the blog maintained by the Martin House curators, mentioned that the ferns and flower arrangements in the house replicate those seen in a 1907 series of photos of house.
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