Carriage House, Darwin D. Martin House, Jewett Parkway, Parkside, Buffalo, NY : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Carriage House, Darwin D. Martin House, Jewett Parkway, Parkside, Buffalo, NY / w_lemay
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-継承 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | Built in 1903-1905, this Prairie-style mansion was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Larkin Company executive Darwin D. Martin, whom built the house as a way to bring his family, which had been scattered in various parts of the United States when his mother had died early in his childhood. The house was the culmination of immense personal wealth and professional success that Martin had enjoyed in his life despite his difficult childhood, starting as a soap seller in New York City, being hired by the Larkin Company in 1878, before moving to Buffalo and becoming the single office assistant to John D. Larkin in 1880, and in 1890, replaced Elbert Hubbard, who was a person that Martin immensely admired, as the Corporate Secretary of the Larkin Company. When the Larkin Company was seeking a designer for a major new office building for the company at the turn of the 20th Century, Martin, whom had witnessed Wright’s work in Chicago and Oak Park, wished to hire the architect as the designer of the new building, but needed to convince the skeptical John D. Larkin and other executives at the company of Wright’s suitability for the project. As a result, Martin decided to have Wright design his family estate. Darwin D. Martin became such a close friend of Wright that he commissioned the family’s summer house, Graycliff, located south of Buffalo on the shores of Lake Erie, to be designed by Wright in 1926, and spearheaded the effort to assist Wright with his finances when his personal residence, Taliesin, was threatened with foreclosure in 1927.The main house is made up of four structures, those being the house itself, which sits at the prominent southeast corner of the property closest to the intersection of Summit Avenue and Jewett Parkway of any structure on the site, the pergola, which is a long, linear covered porch structure that runs northwards from the center of the house, the conservatory, which sits at the north end of the pergola and features a statue of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, which is visible from the front entrance to the house down the long visual axis created by the pergola, and the carriage house, which sits immediately west of the conservatory and behind the west wing of the house, enclosing the rear of the house’s main garden.On the grounds of the mansion are two other houses, those being the Barton House, built at the northeast corner of the property along Summit Avenue to house Darwin D. Martin’s sister, Delta Martin Barton, and her husband, George F. Barton, which was the first structure to be built on the property and very visually similar to the main house, using the same type of bricks and incorporating many smaller versions of features found on the main house, and the Gardener’s cottage, built in 1909 to house gardeners who maintained the grounds of the property, which is the smallest and plainest of the three houses, which is sandwiched into a narrow strip of the property between two other houses, fronting Woodward Avenue to the west.The main house features a buff roman brick exterior with raked horizontal mortar joints and filled in vertical joints, giving the masonry the appearance of being made of a series of solid horizontal bands with recessed joints, accentuating the horizontal emphasis of the house’s design and creating texture with shadows. The roof is hipped with wide overhanging eaves, with the gutters draining into downspouts that drop water into drain basins atop various one-story pillars at the corners of the house, with the roof having a T-shaped footprint above the second floor and three separate sections above the first floor, which wrap around the second floor to the south, west, and north, with the roof soaring above a porte-cochere to the west of the house, as well as a separate roof suspended above a porch to the east. The house’s roof is supported by pillars that sit near, but not at the corners of the building, with windows wrapping the corners. The windows are framed by stone sills and wooden trim, with some windows featuring stone lintels. The front door is obscured inside a recessed porch on the front facade, with the tile walkway to the door turning 90 degrees upon its approach to the doorway, a quite common feature of many of Wright’s houses at the time. The house is surrounded by a series of low brick walls with stone bases and stone caps, with sculptural decorative stone planters atop the pillars at the ends of many of these walls, with some of the planters containing carefully chosen decorative vegetation, and others serving as semi-hidden drainage basins for the adjacent one-story roofs.Inside, the house features a foyer with a head-on view of the pergola and the conservatory to the north, simple but finely crafted wooden trim elements, the beautiful Wisteria Mosaic Fireplace between the foyer and dining room on the first floor that reflects light in different ways via various types of tile with different types of glazing, rough plaster painted a variety of colors, careful use of shadow to highlight certain elements while obscuring others, art glass windows featuring stained glass and clear glass panes in decorative patterns, wooden built ins and Frank Lloyd Wright-designed furnishings, a large kitchen with lots of white surfaces and wooden cabinets overlooking the garden, a living room with a vaulted ceiling and brick fireplace featuring an arched hearth opening, extensive use of expansion and compression via ceiling height to drive movement through the space, ventilation ducts that can be operated via decorative casement windows at the pillars ringing the various spaces of the house, wooden screens to obscure the staircase and second floor, custom light fixtures, art glass ceiling panels, and five large doors with art glass lights to the eastern porch on the first floor. The second floor of the house has multiple bedrooms with a variety of Frank Lloyd Wright built-in and freestanding furniture, wooden trim, and multiple bathrooms. The house is further decorated with Japanese art pieces procured by Wright in Japan, as well as being heavily inspired by traditional Japanese architecture, with usage of shadow and light to obscure and highlight different features, as well as the general form of the house, with the wide eaves providing ample shade to the interior during the summer months, while still allowing light to easily enter the space during the darker winter months.To the north of the main house is an approximately 90-foot-long pergola with evenly spaced brick pillars framing the tile walkway, decorative wooden trim on the ceiling at each column, light fixtures at each column, and a glass transom and a door with large glass lights and a narrow frame providing a nearly unobstructed view of the interior of the conservatory at the north end of the pergola, focusing the attention of visitors upon their entrance to the house, as the conservatory and pergola form a continual visual axis from the foyer to the statue of the Winged Victory of Samothrace that stands in the northern end of the conservatory. This entire section of the house was rebuilt during its restoration, having been demolished in the 1960s after falling into disrepair. The pergola features a gabled roof that terminates at the bonnet roof around the perimeter of the conservatory to the north and at the first floor hipped roof of the house to the south.The conservatory sits at the north end of the pergola, and has a latin cross footprint, with a glass skylight roof with a gabled section running north-south and a pyramidal hipped section at the crossing. The skylight terminates at a parapet that surrounds it on all sides, which features distinctive and decorative “birdhouses” at the north and south ends, apparently intended to house Blue Martins, but were not designed appropriately for the specific needs of the species, and have thus never been occupied. Two of the birdhouses survived the decay and demolition of the original conservatory in the 1960s, and were prominently displayed atop a wall in front of the house until the restoration of the complex in 2007. The interior of the conservatory features only a few concrete planters flanking the walkways and below the large Winged Victory of Samothrace that sits in the northern alcove of the space, with this apparently not having been what the Martin family had in mind, leading to the erection of a prefabricated conventional greenhouse made of metal and glass to the west of the Carriage House shortly after the house’s completion. The conservatory utilizes the same small tile on the floor as other areas of the house, with suspended wooden trim frames breaking up the large void of the space into smaller sections, supporting the space’s light fixtures and carefully framing the planters, fountain, and sculpture.To the west of the conservatory is the two-story Carriage House, which features a simple pyramidal hipped roof with wide overhanging eaves, recessed corner pillars with central sections featuring wrap-around bands of windows on the second floor, a large carriage door in the center of the south facade, flanked by two smaller pillars and two small windows, and a one-story rear wing with a hipped roof. The interior presently houses a gift shop, but is set up like the original structure, demolished in the 1960s, would have been, with horse stables, red brick walls, a utility sink, and a simple staircase to the upper floor.The house complex was home to the Martin family until 1937, when, owing to financial difficulties brought on by the loss of the family fortune during the 1929 Black Friday stock market crash and Darwin D. Martin’s death in 1935, the house had become too difficult for the family to maintain, with the family abandoning the house, allowing it to deteriorate. Additionally, Isabelle Reidpath Martin, Darwin’s widow, did not like the house’s interior shadows, which made it difficult for her to see. D.R. Martin, Darwin’s son, tried to donate the house to the City of Buffalo and the State University of New York system for use as a library, but neither entity accepted the offer, and the house remained empty until 1946, when it was taken by the city due to back taxes. In 1951, the house was purchased by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, which intended to convert the house into a summer retreat for priests, similar to the contemporaneous sale of Graycliff by the Martin family to the Piarists, a Catholic order. However, the property languished until 1955, when it was sold to architect Sebastian Tauriello, whom worked hard to save the architecturally significant and by-then endangered property, hoping the house would avoid the fate that had befallen the Larkin Administration Building five years prior. The house was subdivided into three apartments, with the carriage house, pergola, and conservatory demolished and the rear yard sold, and two uninspired apartment buildings with slapped-on Colonial Revival-style trim known as Jewett Gardens Apartments, were built to the rear of the house. In 1967, the University at Buffalo purchased the house, utilizing it as the university president’s residence, with the Barton House and Gardener’s Cottage being parceled off, both converted to function as independent single-family houses. The university attempted to repair the damage from years of neglect and did some work to keep the house functioning, modernizing portions of the interior and returning several pieces of original furniture to the house. The house would exist in this condition for the next half-century.In 1975, the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1986, was listed as a National Historic Landmark. In 1992, the nonprofit Martin House Restoration Corporation was founded with the goal of eventually restoring the historically and architecturally significant complex, and opening it as a museum. In 1994, the organization purchased the Barton House, and had the Martin House donated by the University of Buffalo in 2002. The restoration of both houses began under the direction of Hamilton Houston Lownie Architects shortly thereafter, and the Jewett Gardens Apartments were demolished upon the acquisition of the site by the nonprofit around the turn of the millennium. In 2006, the Gardener’s cottage was purchased from private ownership, and work began to rebuild the lost Pergola, Conservatory, and Carriage House, which were completed in 2007. Additional work to restore the house continued over the next decade, restoring the various interior spaces, with extensive work being put in to restore the kitchen and bedrooms. Finally, in 2017, the last part of the house was restored, being the beautiful Wisteria Mosaic Fireplace between the dining room and foyer, which had been extensively altered. An addition to the grounds, located on the former rear yard of an adjacent house, is the contemporary, sleek glass and steel-clad Eleanor & Wilson Greatbatch Pavilion Visitor Center, designed by Toshiko Mori, with a cantilevered roof that appears to float and tapers to thin edges, with glass walls on three sides, which houses the visitor information desk, ticket sales, presentation space, a timeline of the Martin House’s history, and restrooms. The restoration of the house marks one of the first full reconstructions of a demolished Frank Lloyd Wright structure, and is one of several significant works by the architect in Buffalo, including three designs that were built posthumously in the early 21st Century - the Fontana Boat House in Front Park, the Tydol Filling Station at the Buffalo Transportation Pierce Arrow Museum, and the Blue Sky Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery, which was designed for the Martin family in 1928, but not built until 2004.Today, the restored Darwin D. Martin House complex serves as a museum, allowing visitors to experience one of the largest Prairie-style complexes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, faithfully restored to its circa 1907 appearance, giving visitors a sense of the genius and design philosophy of Wright. |
| 撮影日 | 2022-07-31 14:01:45 |
| 撮影者 | w_lemay , Chicago, IL, United States |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | Buffalo, New York, United States 地図 |