Who would have imagined that F L Wright's only Prairie House in Ohio is in Springfield, just down the road from one of our stops in Yellow Springs? Westcott House was all the more enchanting because we were the only ones on our tour and we had an excellent docent. Which meant I got to pester her with questions and we could feel what the house might have been like without a crowd: very nice indeed.
On this particular day, I was really struck by the masterful way Wright worked with light & shadow, a concern that I strive to integrate into garden design. Above you can see the effect along the walkway uniting house & garage...which originally was for horse & buggy and had some cool Wrightian invention for turning around. The house is known for knitting together house & site.
Below is the purple martian house that was apparently not constructed until long after the residence was built in 1908. Also, one of the details that struck me was how Wright perched the vases along the walkway below so that when the sun was at a different angle earlier in the day, they throw shadows that provide depth to the otherwise flat perspective of the long outer wall.
The excellent Westcott House website includes many interesting details of how this historic building was rescued from complete ruin. In the midst of a town which has seen its better days, in fact, driving through Ohio which was a tour of that concept, we were encouraged that some people are still committed to preserving the heritage of one of our country's great visionaries.
2 comments:
It must have been exciting to visit the house. Years ago I visited Taliesen in Wisconsin and found the spaces exciting and visionary.
It was especially exciting to learn that this house exists, let alone in such a wonderfully renovated state. I have visited Taliesin and Fallingwater, Unity temple & the studio in Chicago and what I recall as a Unitarian Church in Madison. Westcott is another portion of Wright's work and process making a whole to me over time and my changes.
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