Frank Lloyd Wright Collection Gift of Professor and Mrs. Paul R. Hanna Stanford University Libraries HT Frank Lloyd Wright Collection Gift of Professor and Mrs. Paul R. Hanna Stanford University Libraries nttftrai tiHpClp: a ' ('-* ; irAM if I **»:> i< ARCHIVES FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S HANNA HOUSE 1. THIS SERIES OF RINGBINDERS CONTAINS ORIGINAL COPIES OF CORRESPONDENCE WITH FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND OTHERS; TELEGRAMS, TELEPHONE NOTES, CONTRACTS, BUILDING SPECIFICATIONS, FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS, AND OTHER ITEMS, COVERING MORE THAN A HALF-CENTURY FROM 1930. MR. WRIGHT'S DESIGNING OF THE PROJECT; THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SEVERAL BUILDINGS; THE ROLE OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY; THE PUBLIC AND ARCHITECTS' INTEREST IN THE PROJECT; EVALUATION BY THE CLIENTS; AND OTHER RELATED ASPECTS. 2. ARCHIVAL MATERIAL CONTAINED IN VOLUMES 1 THROUGH 57 IS AVAILABLE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ON MICROFILM IN THE ARCHIVES OF THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. THE MICROFILM SERIES IS ALSO AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE FROM THE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY FOUNDATION OR THE MIT PRESS. SUBSEQUENT VOLUMES ARE NOT RECORDED ON MICROFILM. (continued) . 3. THE COLLECTION CONTAINS SEVEN ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY MR. WRIGHT. THESE WERE GIVEN BY THE HANNAS TO STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN 1985 AND ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE MICROFILMED MATERIAL. 4. IN ADDITION TO MORE THAN 60 RINGBINDERS, THE ARCHIVAL COLLECTION CONTAINS 184 SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS (MOSTLY BLUEPRINTS) BY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, CONSULTANTS, AND THE HANNAS. 5. THE COLLECTION INCLUDES FIVE ALBUMS OF PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE ORIGINAL HILL SITE, STAGES OF CONSTRUCTION, EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR SCENES OF FURNISHING AND FURNITURE. OVER 500 PHOTOS WERE TAKEN BY PROFESSIONAL ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHERS AND THE HANNAS. 6. SEVERAL VOLUMES (NOT NUMBERED) DEAL WITH SPECIAL SUBJECTS 7. THERE ARE MORE THAN A DOZEN RINGBINDER VOLUMES OF GENERAL MATERIALS ON FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT; MOST ARE CLIPPINGS FROM MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS. ' Architecture BY PAUL GSOLDBERGER IRANK LLOYD WRIGHT CAN BE CELE- brated as a great maker of flowing space, or as a bold experimenter in new building technologies, or as a crusader who sought to bring the values of archi- tecture within reach of the common man. Wright, the protean genius of 20th-century architecture, was all of those people. Even more, though, he was an ar- chitect who sought out the underlying nature of a place and who struggled to express that nature in a way that would be altogether his own. There is no better example of this than the series of houses Wright designed in the early 1920's in Los An- geles, a city he lived in sporadically during the unset- tled years between a tragic fire in 1914 at Taliesin, his home in Wisconsin, and the late 1920's. Wright was both attracted and repelled by Los Angeles ; he considered the city wildly eccentric, but he loved its landscape and reveled in the sense of freedom it of- fered from the rigidity of the East Coast and the Mid- dle West. The house Wright designed for John Storer in 1923, set into the lower reaches of the Hollywood hills, has always been among the great treasures in Los An- geles's remarkable heritage of residential architec- ture. But it is now more important still : its current owner, Joel Silver, a film producer, has just com- pleted an elaborate and painstaking restoration, making this not only the most carefully reworked Wright house in Los Angeles, but among the most perfectly restored Wright houses in the United States. The house is one of four that Wright designed in a system of hollow, precast concrete blocks that he in- vented for Los Angeles, but hoped could serve as a model for similar systems elsewhere. Wright envi- sioned the system as workable both for grand man- sions and for modest houses, and indeed it was: the blocks could be easily and cheaply reproduced and Above: The Storer House is Top: When Frank Uoyd Right: The recent could be combined into either large or small struc- rich in spatial manipulations. Wright's Storer House was restoration by owner tures. The trademark of each of these houses was not It is entered through a completed in 1923, it Joel Stiver makes the the plain blocks that made up most of the structure, spe- series of terraces, one of stood almost alone against concrete-block facade of however, but the perforated blocks that gave a cial decorative geometric pattern to each house. which contains a small the landscape of the the house look virtually The system yielded one sprawling house, the Ennis reflecting pool. Hollywood hills. as it dd in 1923. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JUUUS SHULMAN " — . risk," to use a more carefully fore it started to deteriorate hedged bit of public-health jar- and what sort of deficiencies become chronic. Especially in A great hotel makes a grand gift, gon. Inevitably, most food-stamp small children, where there is families live on a nutritional the greatest danger of perma- But how do you wrap it? cycle that starts off reasonably nent damage, the quality of the well, then deteriorates as the environment and nurturing has on, becoming great deal to do with the rate month wears a You don' l. marginal if not desperate in the of recovery from a period of Jus! slip ii into an envelope, elevators final week or 10 days, depend- nutritional deprivation. ing on how frugal they were Those who man the barri- and hand ii to someone special earlier. "The first part of the cades when Federal food and ( Wnh a Helmsle) Hotel* lifi 'cnifi month I always cook us a good nutrition programs come under reward with iii)'lu meal," said Patricia Roberts, attack in the annual budget can somebody a or who is raising three children in squeeze are reduced to having in ;i weekend to explore N 'i Houston on a Social Security to advance arguments that ire "I ,i surprise, \ou ioul widow's pension and food might seem self-evident: that stamps. "Something we don't well-nourished women produce pin the envelope in a new Rolls Kou get and something we like. Fish healthier babies; that infants usually." There are ample por- deprived of proper nutrition tions and fresh vegetables and may fail to realize their full all the milk the children can growth, physically or mental- drink, and Mrs. Roberts tries ly; that children who come to for one night not to worry about school hungry tend not to learn her unpaid bills. "I just say at as well — in short, that eating that point, 'I don't care what properly is good for humans. certificate: 800/221-4982 oi inNev. York happens,' " she said. " 'I'm What they can't easily prove is 212/888-1624 going to take care of myself.' an incontrovertible relation- The splurge is over almost as ship between a specific legisla- soon as it begins. By the end of tive action and the health of llt'lllislcv I'uhu IVliddletowiii' the month, the Roberts family children. "But then we never is sometimes reduced to eating have to prove a clear and potatoes as a staple and Mrs. present danger to throw money Windsor llarlov Roberts has to borrow from at defense," remarked Dr. S6 Central l';nk Souili relatives. She is the head of a Irwin H. Rosenberg, a profes- single-parent household and sor of medicine and an expert Hark-y of New York black, so she conforms to an- on nutrition at the University of 2\2 East 42nd Slreel other kind of stereotype. But Chicago. she was laid off two and a half There is some evidence that years ago from a job as a ma- deteriorating diets may be tak- Helmsley Hotels chinist at the Hughes Tool ing a greater toll on the health Company, where she had of poor Americans than they earned $13.62 an hour. Since were five or six years ago, but then she has taken any work the data are spotty and open to she could get, for as little as conflicting interpretations. $3.35 an hour. The idea that she Various local studies have is now classed with women who pointed to a rise in the number have never found their way into of low-birth-weight babies, of John Stuart the job market incenses her. "failure to thrive" infants and "There seems to be a mix-up as young children whose growth to who's who," she said. seems to be stunted, or who are John UUiddbomb The food problems of the so- suffering from infections that called "new poor" — industrial could be related to undernutri- workers like Mrs. Roberts who tion. The level of infant mortal- have fallen into dependence on ity, although shocking by com- Brass, chrome and plexiglass public assistance — shed light parison to that of other devel- create a table of uncommon on the nutritional problems of oped nations, is now actually elegance. A hint of our the old poor, undercutting the lower than it has ever been in seemingly infinite variety of easy, middle-class assumption the country's history, but the exceptional contemporary that the impoverished diets of rate of decline has been taper- designs. the poor are traceable to igno- ing off and poor nutrition is rance and a dependence on often blamed. junk food, rather than lack of Yet in all these instances money. there are complicating factors that cannot easily be laid at the THE CYCLICAL NA- door of the Reagan Adminis- ture of undernutrition tration or Congress. The large in America — the number of babies born to young monthly slide to a meager diet teen-agers is one; the use of of starches that will stave off drugs, alcohol and cigarettes is the sensation of hunger — can- another.