99% Invisible - 247- Usonia the Beautiful

Episode Date: February 15, 2017

Frank Lloyd Wright believed that the buildings we live in shape the kinds of people we become. His aim was nothing short of rebuilding the entire culture of the United States, changing the nation through its architecture. Central to that … Continue reading →

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. The future of architecture is the future of the human race. The two are one. If humanity has a future, it is architecture. That is architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who never shied away from making grand statements about architecture. Or himself. Right believe that the buildings we live in affect the kinds of people we become, the tastes we have, and the comforts we seek. And he said that he could rebuild the entire culture of the United States.

He claimed that he could change the nation by changing its architecture. I did say that, and it's true. It's amazing what I could do for this country. And a big part of his plan, his philosophy, his proposed building system, was called usonia. That's reporter Avery Truffleman. And if you're like Euconia, what's that? Well, listen to part one of this story.

That's the last episode of this show. This is part two, and it'll make a lot more sense after part one. But to summarize, Euconian homes were simple, but beautiful, custom homes designed to exist in harmony with the natural landscape around them. Wright had hoped to make these homes inexpensive enough to be affordable for middle and working class Americans. The first Euconian home cost $5,500, about $85 grand today. Wright built it for journalist Herbert Jacobson's wife Catherine in Madison, Wisconsin, in

1937, and many would come after it, though none managed to be as inexpensive as the first one. But there are usonian houses in Alabama, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and beyond. The house that Herbert Jacobs built was the first of the usonian houses. Usonian, a right word meaning the United States is it ought to be at its democratic zenith. Nowadays, usonian houses may be seen the country wide. The right word meaning the United States is it ought to be at its democratic zenith. Nowadays, Usonian houses may be seen the country wide. You don't need a guidebook.

You'll know when you see one. Long, low, part of the very earth. You can practically hear the house boasting, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. But that old timey announcer actually doesn't have a quite right. They're not all designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Towards the end of his life, Bright would become preoccupied with large commissions,

things like the Marin Soek Center and the Guggenheim. He would have less time to focus on his vision for Eusonia. But Wright's ideas about living in harmony with nature, using organic materials in a modern way, and creating affordable democratic housing had inspired a new generation of architects so much so that they would go on to found an entire community based on righty and principles. Turn right onto Eusonia Road.

Nestled in Levy Hills near Pleasantville, New York, about an hour north of Manhattan, is a little village called Eusonia. All the homes have low flat roofs. They're tucked away into the trees, so you can hardly see them on lush summer days. It almost looks like some sort of Star Wars planet, fit for suburban Ewoks. There's no big welcome sign, no gift shop or leaflet, But in the middle of the community, there is a plaque. Eustonia Holmes, a cooperative was founded in 1944 by idealistic young families to pursue the dream of owning a modern affordable home in the country

following World War II. The cooperative was started by a couple of right disciples who had studied at Frank Lloyd Wright School, Tally Esson, most notably a man named David Hanken. And although Wright would be involved with the project, it was Hanken who guided it, as the Black says, This land was acquired in December 1946 and in April 1947, Frank Lloyd Wright, the supervising architect, sent the unique site plan.

The site plan put 40 some houses on circular properties without fences, so that the property boundaries would flow into each other. Homes wouldn't be on little square plots with white-picked fences. David Henken and his family looked for other similarly-minded people who could come and join their community and invest in it. And among those idealistic young people was Roland Reisley. He and his wife had just been married in 1950. We had no money, we had no children, we were both only children.

We wanted to plant our roots and start a family. And we heard from a friend that there's a community in northern Westchester that's building affordable homes supervised by Frank Lloyd Wright. This building project had a communal mortgage. They would pay for the houses together. On land, they all owned. It's a cooperative. Let's take a look, curious.

And we came up here, and there were already 10 or 11 homes that were near completion or beginning to be occupied. We were welcomed with open arms and the enthusiasm of the people who were here and talking about their project was infectious. And we were hooked. We decided that we'll join the community.

But it wasn't all a big romantic adventure. It was a real risk. First of all, first was radical. It's not these days that's called mid-century modern, but the architecture then was radical. Meaning, these homes were so strange looking to the larger world that the people who chose to live in them were seen as radical. And in some ways they were. Some of them were lefty Jews from the Bronx with socialist ideals about land ownership. The true cooperative that we were was radical.

True cooperative in the sense that no one owned their house? Yes. Also, this was a financial risk, since the houses were not as cheap as they were supposed to be. You're cooperating in the sense that no one owned their house? Yes. Also, this was a financial risk, since the houses were not as cheap as they were supposed to be. The supposed $5,000 cost will turn out it was not a realistic number. During and after World War II, materials and labor became more expensive, and the building of Euconian homes involved special skills and custom fixtures, and the houses ended up being double or triple their price estimates.

The Reisley's house was over 20 grand, but the members of Euconia would not be deterred. We were determined to go forward with this, we were all very optimistic. Peel would come occasionally to see these houses under construction. You gotta come and see Insania. When Roland and his wife signed up for the community, they thought they'd work with one of the Taliesin graduates to design their house, not the master himself. We didn't dream of approaching Frank Lloyd Wright, I mean, really. Who would throw such a thing?

But Frank Lloyd Wright did, in fact, want to design Roland's house. They met up in New York and they exchanged letters and ideas about the plans and Roland went out to see Wright at Tally Esson. And he was a real person. You could talk to him. You could exchange a joke. I mean people don't see him that way. But there it was. Roland was 26. Wright was 83. He said, come on Roland, sit down. You're my client, I'm your architect. I'll redesign your house as many times as I have to until I've satisfied all of your needs. You have to speak up if you don't,

you'll take what you get. Roland's house would be one of three in Eusonia, New York that Frank Lloyd Wright designed himself. About five years after the Riesley's moved in, when Roland and his wife had kids, Frank Lloyd Wright added an extension to their house. In fact, Roland is the last living owner of a Frank Lloyd Wright eustonian home built specially for him, and he still lives in it. I came to realize after some years living here that there had not been a day in my life when I didn't

see something beautiful, even the terrible days that occur in every life. The house is completely usonian, with a simple carport and sumptuous wooden walls that almost glow and one big main room and a tiny kitchen. It almost feels like you're outside because it has these big glass windows with long roof overhangs to draw the eye out towards the thick forest of trees just outside. I think that it has had an effect on me, in many ways.

The neuroscientists say that that kind of sense reduces stress and is good for your emotional health. And maybe good for physical health too, I'm 92 years old, I'm pretty good shape in 92. And I attribute that partly, I mean, who knows. I'd like to attribute that to experience beauty around me for most of my life, which is quite remarkable. As Roland sees it, Frank Lloyd writes idea that better architecture could create a better way of life, has been entirely true.

We could depend on each other if there was a problem or a need. The kids were all the adults by their first name. We used to say that children growing up here had 50 aunts and uncles in New Sonia. For the first 40 years of Euconia in New York, only 12 of the 48 houses changed hands. Six of those, the next generation members of the community. There were only two devices. I had to joke, they couldn't decide who'd get the house. But life started to move at different paces for people living in Euconia.

Suddenly they weren't all new young families. They were all groups of people in different phases with different needs. And when it was time for homes to change hands, perspective buyers were thrown off by the cooperative nature of the village. In the first decades of euconia, members didn't own their homes. We decided very reluctantly to grant title to the individual home sites to each member while retaining all of our common land as a cooperative. And that made a big difference.

Suddenly people were more willing to look at them. But if you're not Roland Reisley and your house wasn't custom built for you by Frank Lloyd Wright himself, the Usonia houses can be a bit of an adjustment. Today, most of the homes in Usonia, New York have been expanded. Any and all new additions have been built in a Usonian style, using local materials, flat roofs, big glass windows, and writing sensibilities. They have to be built that way. While the outsides are not landmarked, they are governed by the board of Usonia.

The insides are not at all. This is Evan Kingsley, he's one of the newcomers to Usonia. Relatively, he's been there since 2003. But I think for the most part, those of us who have chosen to move here are really sensitive to the aesthetic of the interior. But there's one specific part of the interior that has changed in a lot of the Usonian homes. We've completely redone the kitchen.

As was the case in most usonian homes, the kitchen in Evans' home was this little alcove, very efficient and very, very tiny. Right never realized that the whole family might actually wanna hang out in the kitchen. Nowadays, it's as much a place to gather as the living room or the dining room. Evans has added new tiling and appliances and expanded his kitchen, but not by much.

Well we bumped that wall out by taking some closet space away and we gained, I don't know, maybe 10 inches there. That's all that we gained in doing that. There are a smattering of usonian homes throughout the United States, some designed by right and some by his apprentices, but all following the same basic principles. And like Evan Kingsley's home, many of these other Euconian houses are hard to modify, because they're often governed by boards who are trying to preserve them as historic pieces of architecture.

And also, the owners themselves want to make sure they keep within the principles of the house. You have X number of cabinets, you don't have cabinets up at the top. They weren't put there and if you could add them, you would violate the principles. There's no Frank Lloyd Wright police who come around and look and see if you change the old stuff. That's a weird joke about it, but there isn't. That's Betty and John Moore.

They live in Wisconsin and the house called Jacob's two. It's the second Euconian house that right designed for that journalist Herbert Jacobs. Yeah, well, you want to make sure that you can adapt to the house because it's not going to adapt to you. You aren't going to change it much. Like most Euconian homes, Jacob's two had a car port, big windows, an open plan, in concrete floors with a heating system in it. The floor is nice and cool now, so. What's the winner?

You come downstairs with bare feet and it's nice and warm. I mostly wanted to play that clip because I love how Betty and John actually complete each other's sentences. Betty and John's house needed a lot of attention, which is why it was on the market for four and a half years before they bought it. Oh, everybody wanted to look at it. It's a curiosity, but nobody wanted to live here. They have been really not for everyone.

The reason they sit on the market sometimes for so long is because people consider them a difficult living. That's John Eifler, an architect in Chicago who has restored a number of right houses, including Yusonia One. In order to preserve them, you sometimes have to modify them in order to make them more livable. But even experts like Eiffler have a tough time keeping track of how many Yusonia homes exist.

So how many are there? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I've't know. I don't know. I've heard numbers ranging from 27 to 140. It all depends on your definition of what an authentic Euconian house is. You could consider Euconia a period in Frank Lloyd Wright's

life, a period in American architectural history, which would include the houses by the apprentices, or just a general architectural style. Depending on your definition, the number of Euconian houses continues to grow. In 2013, a new Euconian house was built on the campus of Florida Southern College. It was a design of rights from 1939, but constructed 74 years later, all according to rights, plans, and principles. Eusonia certainly never came to pass in the way that Frank Woodwright originally envisioned, with every American living in an affordable custom home.

And in fact, elements of the Eusonian home have evolved into something else entirely. So it is kind of true that Eusonia directly influenced the development of the ranch home. Oh, without a doubt, yes, I think so. Ranch style houses are all over the country, and nearly every suburb, they are horizontal, close to the ground, one story, they have an open floor plan with few walls. So it's not hard to see the similarities to Euconia. Although ranch homes are generally less inspired, they don't have the elegant details and they're made with standard materials.

Wright might not have been pleased the concepts of euconia got absorbed into, essentially the epitome of cookie-cutter suburban housing. But at least these houses really were affordable for the middle class, unlike all the euc houses after usonia one. After World War II, the American suburbs were full of ranch homes. There weren't that many variations after the war, and the suburban ranch home was pretty much it. I mean, that, unless you were living in some humongous mansion or something, everyone was living in ranch homes in Suburbia. It was a very prevalent form of housing. Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959 at age 89,

three years after finishing Roland Reisley's house in New York. He died having created an American style for home building, away in which natural wood, bricks, and masonry are used in a simple, modifiable way, a way that is cozy, stylish, organic, and honest. His influence is there where you see lots of wood and stone and where you see big, open floor plans, where homes are oriented to the sun,

or away from the street, where you see a structure built into a hill instead of on top of it, connected and responding to the landscape. And yes, whether he would have liked it or not, Frank Lloyd Wright's influence can be found in ranch homes in the suburbs, and in the details of all kinds of homes.

All around us, in ways right never imagined, Eusonia lives on. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Avery Trouffleman, which is refive, Delaney Hall, Emmith Fitzgerald, Sam Greenspan, and me Roman Mars. Katie Mingle is our senior editor, Kurt Colstead is our digital director, Teran Mazza is our office manager, and Sean Rial composed all original music for this episode. Special thanks this week to Jim Sharp, Sam Sharp, Ayal Podel, Josh Podel, Lloyd Trouffleman, Alison Churnow, and Jim Dennis. We are a project of 91.7K, LW in San Francisco, and produced on Radio Row.

In beautiful, downtown, Oakland, California. One of the Vanguard shows in the radio topia trot is the heart. It's all about love and intimacy and how those two things intersect with our lives. Right now they're in the middle of a series about how femininity, femininity. That's right. Intersects with masculinity. It's called fancy. I love the idea of being able to like on a hot summer's day wear a skirt. If I want to wear a big chunky necklace one day I will wear it. If I want to paint a nail I'll do it. If it were socially acceptable for me to wear eyeliner I want to wear a big chunky necklace one day, I will wear it if I want to paint a nail, I'll do it. If it were socially acceptable for me to wear eyeliner, I would absolutely wear eyeliner.

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Which right now has all kinds of extra frankloid-right articles and good stuff going on. at 99pi.org Radio Tapio. From PRX. you