99% Invisible - 343- Usonia Redux

Episode Date: February 27, 2019

Frank Lloyd Wright changed the field of architecture, and not just through his big, famous buildings. Before designing many of his most well-known works, Wright created a small and inexpensive yet beautiful house. This modest home would go on to shape the way working- and middle-class Americans live to this day. Usonia Redux This episode is a recut combination of episodes 246 & 247

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. If I asked you to think of the most famous architect in American history, even if you don't think you know anything at all about architecture, I bet you could take a guess. And I bet your guess would be... right. Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright, perhaps the greatest architect of the 20th century. The genius with a T-square has been called the paste center of modern-day architecture.

One of the most extraordinary man of art is that he has literally established the pace for innovations and new ideas in the field of architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright left a legacy of some of the most iconic and gorgeous buildings in the United States, like the Spiraling Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Falling Waterhouse in Pennsylvania, which straddles a waterfall, and the futuristic Marin Civic Center, which is the backdrop for Gatica, which is an awesome movie.

And that is producer Avery Trouffleman. By the end of his career, Wright was on a level of celebrity, usually reserved for actors and rock stars. He was a household name, and he was on late-night talk shows. Some quarters have denounced Wright as an impractical visionary and a poppers windbag. He was a household name, and he was a character. He often wore this outfit that included a flowy cape and a hat and cane. He wrote manifestos, launched insults at other architects and loudly critiqued politicians,

religion, and society. He declared himself the greatest architect who ever lived. He was unashamed. He's the early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change now. And Frank Lloyd Wright had this wildly scandalous private life. There were suits against him, property seed, jail,

finally divorce. The raw material for big, spicy headlines, Frank Lloyd Wright was the darling of a sensational press. But this bombastic character ultimately changed the field of architecture and introduced a new philosophy of building. Before many of Wright's iconic and famous structures were completed, before falling water, before the Guggenheim, before the Marin Civic Center, his most significant contribution to our everyday lives was something much more modest. A small, sturdy, inexpensive, and most importantly, very beautiful house designed with the American

working class and mind, and it all started with a journalist from Milwaukee. In 1934, a Milwaukee journal reporter named Herbert Jacobs was assigned to take a drive over to Springgreen in Central Wisconsin. He was told to write about Tally Esson, Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio. Jacobs didn't really know anything about architecture, and at that particular time he wasn't really interested in learning anything about it. Because Herbert Jacobs had other things on his mind. In that November of 1934, his wife was very, very pregnant. The night before his reporting trip, he had brought her to the hospital and stayed up with

her until dawn. The nurse has assured her birth that he could go on his reporting trip without missing the birth. And so, he set out that morning alone. Blirriade, completely unprepared. He drove 120 miles through the chill, gray Wisconsin countryside for his assignment. To me, with Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright, who was 67 in 1934, couldn't have cared less about his appointment with Herbert

Jacobs of the Milwaukee Journal. Actually, Wright forgot all about it, which wasn't unusual. He was known to blow off journalists. When Jacob arrived at Frank Lloyd Wright's compound, completely distracted by thoughts of his wife and their baby, he learned that the architect was actually on his way out the door. They got to talk for just over 10 minutes before Wright left abruptly saying, some of the boys will talk to you now.

The boys were Frank Lloyd Wright's apprentices. They had come to him from all over the world, and they're a part of a fellowship program that Wright established at his home in studio, a campus he called Tally Essin. Tally Essin, a Welsh word, meaning shining brow. Welsh because it was built on land settled by his family who were farmers from Wales, but the shining brow also has to do with Wright's building philosophy. So Tally Essin actually is built kind of on the brow, just like your brow of your head.

The main Tally Essin building crawls around the side of a hill, almost like a crown. He felt that you should never build on top of a hill because that destroyed the integrity of the hill. This is Floyd Hamlin. He's an architect at Tally Essin. Also part of the faculty of the hill. This is Floyd Hamlin. He's an architect at Tally S. Also, part of the faculty of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, and I've been here since starting as a apprentice back in 1987.

Hamlin works and lives at Tally S. in full time. Here on Frank Lloyd Wright's family land, we're right used to play as a boy. So where are we now? So where are we now? So where are we? We are. This is just outside of Spring Green, Wisconsin.

It's a very beautiful green valley with rolling hills. So he spent a lot of his summers working this land. So he was very familiar with the landscape. And this connection with the outdoors was really formative for right. He thought that architecture should help people live harmoniously with their environment rather than shield them from it. The house could become part of nature

if it was made with local materials and had big windows and was oriented for just the right amount of sunlight. The orient, the house, just right so that you take advantage of what nature has to offer and you're living with nature rather than trying to fight against it. You know, living on the brow of the hill, not on top of it. This all folded into a concept, Frank Lloyd Wright called organic architecture. He wanted to spread this gospel to the next generation, which is why he returned to the valley he knew as a boy

and established the Taliessan Fellowship. The fellowship was the thing that the Milwaukee Journal wanted Herbert Jacobs to cover in his article. When Jacobs drove into Taliessan that morning in 1934, the fellowship had been going on for two years, and it was hard for the public to wrap their minds around it, including this NBC announcer. The Talias and Fellowship. Just what is it?

A school and yet not a school. A colony of devoted men and women. A principality whose king is Frank Lloyd Wright. A parenthesis there called, not students, they are as Mr. Wright as the fingers of my hand. The apprentices had to pay $1,100 a year to attend the Tallyesson Fellowship, nearly 20 grand today, and it wasn't like an accredited institution or anything. Students had to do a lot of grunt work like bailing hay, plowing fields, and making meals. But they got to learn Frank Lloyd Wright's philosophy of architecture, and live with

him, and work with him, even though oftentimes is meant serving as an unpaid labor force. When Jacobs was getting his tour of Tally Essin, he described the apprentices as rather long-haired, smiling, and polite young men, who tried their best to explain to him what organic architecture means. Organic architecture is architecture of its time and of its place. You're not trying to make it look like something that it's not. Right thought that there should be no wallpaper to cover things up.

No paint, no plaster. Wood should look like wood, stone should look like stone. Concrete should look like concrete. When Frank Lloyd Wright worked with plywood, he liked to leave the edge of the plywood exposed so that you saw those layers in there and that became part of the almost ornament or detail. Which was different from frilly traditional European style architecture with rococo gold ornaments and clofet chairs and parlors full of knick-knacks.

Just think of Victorian houses stuffed with lots of tiny rooms and covered in bright paint and lacy curtains. This idea of organic architecture wasn't just a break from these traditions. It was a break from new trends in modern architecture too. Cities all over the world were building huge, boxy, class and steel structures, designed to be hyper-sleep machines for living and working. Wright explains that these were simply not comfortable for human animals. They are like goldfish and a globe, and these houses that are so classified as they know

are, they're not sensible, it's an abuse of privilege and an abuse of material. Frank Lloyd Wright took the traditional old materials and put them into sleek modern forms. His organic architecture was a new style, born in the United States. An organic architecture, a new sense of what constitutes humanity under harmonious conditions, a harmonious place in which to live and a harmonious way to live in it. But Franchloid Wright didn't explain this grand philosophy to the journalist Herbert Jacobs,

because Wright wasn't there. The apprentices did the best they could, but again, Jacobs was very distracted and was only thinking of his wife in the hospital. He thanked the two young men who showed him around Tallyesson and got back in his car. Jacobs later wrote, finally I started back to Milwaukee, learning on the way through a telephone call young man who showed him around Tallyesson and got back in his car. Jacob's later road. Funnily, I started back to Milwaukee, learning on the way through a telephone call to the

hospital that I had become a father at about 11 o'clock that morning, at the very moment when I was interviewing right. Herbert Jacobs, his wife, Catherine, and their new daughter, lived in Milwaukee for two more years on his reporter's salary of $20 a week. This was in the mid-30s, the Great Depression. So when Herbert Jacobs was offered a slightly higher-paying job with a paper in the state capital of Madison, the family moved right away. and our newspaper man's price range, it was what we figured would be nice to live in. This is the voice of Herbert Jacobs himself from a 1956 NBC interview.

When he and Catherine moved to Madison, they didn't see any houses they liked, or that they could afford. So a cousin of my wife had been out at Taliesin and Mr. Wright and suggested that we have Mr. Wright do something for us. Jacobs didn't really remember much about his first visit to Tally Aston two years ago. Any murmured something along the lines of very interesting, which his wife's cousin took as a yes. But he made an appointment for us to go out there and we went along with that idea.

Then on the way out, my wife and I were trying to think, what is it that we can tell this great man, the architect of rich plants, what can we say to him that would interest him in our very small case? In the past, when Frank Lloyd Wright had designed private homes, they had not been for people like Herbert and Catherine Jacobs. Wright had designed gorgeous, wide homes

with broad roofs and expensive living rooms for wealthy people. His constructions were masterpieces. They were works of art, and they were expensive. So we put it as a sort of challenge. What the country needs is a decent $5,000 house. Can you build one? In today's money, $5,000 is about $85,000. That's a pretty reasonably priced house in most real estate markets. Mr. Wright told us that we were the first clients that ever asked him to build a little cost house.

He said, for 20 years, you've been wanting to build one, but no one ever asked him to. Now Wright had long wanted to make a more democratic form of housing, even early in his career. He had been playing around with inexpensive methods of building and other structures, and he had a lot of concepts that he had been scheming around urban planning. But now, Wright had the chance to make some of his concepts a reality. He had the willing clients, and he had time on his hands. In 1936, he was in a bit of a slump in his career. People couldn't afford fancy big new homes.

Again, it was the depression, and a number of big projects had been cancelled, and also Wright had already been practicing for decades, and he was slowly getting written off as a husband. And then incomes this young, open-minded couple, Wright could tell them his philosophy and teach them how to live well through good architecture. Then he said, do you really want a $5,000 house? You said most people want a $10,000 house for $5,000. Are you willing to give up the things

that you have to give up? Mr. Wright made a list of the things that the Jacobs would have to do without if they really wanted a $5,000 house. Tile bathrooms, extra trim, finish and things like that. Are you willing to give those up? We didn't know anything about it, and we said, sure, it's okay with us.

Herbert and Catherine Jacobs didn't know it at the time, but that modest little house that Frank Lloyd Wright was to build for them would be the most practical expression of his ideology. The Jacobs would own the first house in a movement that right called euconia. The house that Herbert Jacobs built was the first of the euconian houses. Euconian, a right word meaning the United States is it ought to be at its democratic zenith.

Euconia was Frank Lloyd Wright's name for the United States of North America. In Wright's vision, euconia would be a country full of modest, well-made, beautiful, comfortable little houses that the working class could afford. These Eusonian homes would inspire, educate, and write believed, create a new culture for all Americans. I believe now people are going to know what constitutes good architecture and of course good living has to go with it. Good conduct also, good dressing too,

because you wouldn't dress in a loud and vulgar way in a quiet and beautiful room. All these good things are dependent more or less one on the other and add up to something we call culture. It's only by a natural growth that you can attain culture. Right believe the way to build a better American culture was not on mass, not in apartment buildings or cookie cutter developments. It was to be catered to the individual.

Culture is not for the club. Culture is an individual thing. And that's what our forefathers struck when they declared that the individual is sovereign. Which, to Frank Lloyd Wright, meant that the masses should be unmasked. They should spread out away from the city. Well, the city, of course, is a thing of the past. There was a time during the Middle Ages when there was the only source of culture. There was no way of acquiring this thing we call culture

except by direct contact, you see. But for right, that wasn't true anymore. People were connected to culture through radio and telephones and automobiles. They have transportation, speed, listening, this, we're using now. It's no longer essential for people to crowd together, anywhere. That was Frank Lloyd Wright's vision for America, and it would start to become reality in 1936 with the Jacobs House, which he called Eusonea 1.

Jacob's House was one of the first ones built. This was just a wide open farmland when it was built out here. This is Bill Martinelli, manager of Eusonea 1. It's in a suburban street outside of Madison, now lined with little suburban houses, but Eusonea1 really stands out. Even if you don't know what it is and you're just driving by, because from a street,

it almost just looks like a beautiful wooden wall. The house turns its back on the road. Well, I want to get inside or if we go around back, you'll see the whole back of the house is all glass. It's all open to the back. And you know, we did that intentionally that kind of closed it off to the street and then open it up to the back. As right saw it, the point of the house was not to have a big facade

to show off to your neighbors with a useless and wasteful patch of lawn in the front in a grand entry way. No. The house should be built for residents, not onlookers. Also, from the street, you can see that there's no garage. A car is parked under a wooden awning, just a little flat roof with no sidewalls. This is the car port, a term that Frank Lloyd Wright coined. Well, this is the car port of the house.

Consider the first named car port that was a term that Wright came up with. This was one of the many tiny ways Wright kept costs down, and also the Carport was an education in lifestyle. Without a garage, the Jacobs wouldn't have space to store their junk. They'd have to simply minimize their possessions and toss what they didn't need. But the Carport isn't purely utilitarian. The woodwork on the Carport roof has this lovely geometric pattern. It was like these wood kind of stripes in the ceiling. Yeah, it's funny. When I heard about the carport and like scene pictures of it, I didn't expect it to be so beautiful and

like, it's really nice. It's the thing in this house, the more you look around the more, the more you see, you know, like with the ceiling here in the carport, you wouldn't expect that. When you get inside, you'll see the same thing. Euconia 1 is full of small, elegant details. Can we go inside? Sure. A warm in here.

Oh, wow. You see how the sun comes in. It's so red, like the brick and the wood and the. Your eye kind of gets drawn in. Euconia 1 is one floor. And inside, it's pretty much one room and a loud cat. The space is all open. No walls between living room, dining room, kitchen. That was kind of innovative for the time.

The kitchen is an alcove adjacent to the living slash dining space with no door. It's a very, very tiny area. This is the kitchen. It's just a little bit wider than the length of my arms I think. Well, each foot plate, each foot square probably. There's a small hallway with tiny bedrooms but mostly the one main room is the focus. It's where you're supposed to eat, relax, read, live all together. Again Herbert Jacobs. Mr. Wright is an advocate of the open plan and housing that is the removal of the boxes within boxes, sort of thing, so that you don't have many partitions.

The temptation is to be together much more. The open plan was pretty novel, and it was cost was cost saving to not have many walls. The Euconian house is full of these clever, less expensive solutions like the lights on the ceiling. So that's just a steel channel with the wires just laying in there and then bare-sock, it's bare bulbs. So that's considered the first track lighting another first to the house. And now you see track lighting everywhere, where you see lights or bulbs affixed to a single beam. That's a euconian invention. Other innovations euconia popularized include the use of flat roofs, built in furniture,

and heated floors. Herbert Jacobs loved those heated floors. Floor heating, now very general, but at that time there were no floor he did residences in this country. All of these innovations were meant to help the family live well and frugally. They saved money while they lived in the house, and they had also saved costs in the construction of the house. But right used some other cost-saving measures that were kind of cheating. Like, he stole some bricks from another building of his that he was constructing nearby. Well, Wright didn't steal the bricks himself. He sent a bunch of his apprentices over to

Racine Wisconsin, where his design for the Johnson Wax Building was under construction. He told the apprentices to grab as many bricks as they could and bring them back to Madison. If you're familiar with the Johnson Wax building, the corners are curved so you can see some of these bricks are Convec and some are concave. Well those would depend like corner bricks Another way right kept costs down was by taking a huge pay cut himself Bill I paid was for $5,500 which included Mr. Wright's fee of $450. By hook or by crook, Wright did it. He met his challenge of building a beautiful house

that Herbert and Catherine could afford. I mean, it wasn't perfect. It was a total adjustment for the family. And the house had problems with rain drainage and little things were missing, like initially Wright forgot to put screens in the windows. Which were the kinds of complaints right got a lot. He mostly focused on aesthetics and principles of building

rather than practicalities. And ultimately, the Jacob's house was small. After Herbert and Catherine had two more children, they couldn't fit into the house anymore. And so after six years of living in Eusonia one, the Jacob's family would move off to the countryside, where Frank Lloyd Wright would design them a second Eusonian house. But Herbert Jacobs thought of their first home very fondly.

Living in that house was fantastically wonderful. I think it would be nice if a lot more families had that same sort of thing happen to them. Mr. Wright thought so too. He thought everybody should live in a house, designed by him and, you know, the dishes and clothes designed by him and all of furniture and... He did design a lot of his furniture. And in at least one case,

he did design a dress for the wife of a client. This was all about changing culture, one home at a time. Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to redesign America, and by that token, Americans. Good design he thought would make a kinder, more beautiful, more enlightened country. Nowadays, Eusonian houses may be seen the country wide. You don't need a guide book. By 1939 Wright had built Eusonian homes all over the country, including houses in Alabama, California, Illinois, Michigan, and Virginia.

But he wanted to build more. He wanted to have a central factory that made prefabricated Euconian parts modifiable for each client depending on their needs for space and site conditions. And originally the whole idea was all these walls would be manufactured in a factory that never really happened. This was all site built. Frank Lloyd writes factory for Euconian Homes never came to pass. And it became increasingly clear to write that the $5,000 price tag for Euconian Homes

just wasn't feasible after the Depression. Also Wright's career picked up shortly after Eusonia won. He started getting bigger commissions, the ones we all know him for, like fallen water. Among the Wright houses, none has been more widely publicized than the Pennsylvania home of Edgar Kaufman, which straddles the waterfall. Wright worked on Eusonia homes up until near the very end of his life. But it was a group of his apprentices that would carry on his vision by building an entire community of Euconian houses.

Turn right onto Euconia Road. Up next after the break, a trip to Euconia, New York, to see what became of Frank Lloyd Wright's vision and how these little houses have affected the ways we live. 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. I have been accused of saying I was the greatest architect in the world and if I had said so,

I don't think it would be very arrogant. Wright believed 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 that I could do for this country. And a big part of his plan, his philosophy, his proposed building system, was called

usonia. Here again is Avery Trouffleman. 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 writing and principles. Turn right onto Euconia Road. Nestled in Levy Hills near Pleasantville, New York, about an hour north of Manhattan, is a little village called Euconia.

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 e-walks. There's no big welcome sign, no gift shop or leaflet, but in the middle of the community, there is a plaque. Eusonia Homes, 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 Essin, 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 picket fences. David Hanken and his family looked for 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 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 in 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. The supposed $5,000 cost turned out it was not a realistic number. During an after-world war two, materials and labor became more expensive, and the building of usonian 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 Usonia 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 got to come and see Insania. When Roland and his wife signed up for the community, they thought they'd work with one of the Tallyesson 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 Essin. And it 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 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. Also. 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 are all, they're all the adults by their first name. You have to say that children growing up here had 50 aunts and uncles in New Sonya. For the first 40 years of Euconia New York, only 12 of the 48 houses changed hands. Six are those two next only 12 of the 48 houses changed hands. Six of those to 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 Eusonia, 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 Frankwood 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 landmark, 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 Eusonian homes. We've completely redone the kitchen. As was the case in most Eusonian homes, kitchen in Evans' home was this little alcove, very efficient and very, very tiny.

Right never realized that the whole family might actually want to 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 usonian 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 own thought. That's a weird joke about but there isn't. That's Betty and John Moore. They live in Wisconsin and the house called Jacobs 2. It's the second Euconian house that Wright 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, Jacobs too had a carport, big windows, and open plan in concrete floors with a heating system in it. The floor is nice and cool now, so. What's in the winter, you come downstairs with it. The floor is nice and cool now, so. What's the winner? You come downstairs and bear feet in the nice and warm.

I mostly wanted to play that clip because I love how Betty and John actually complete each other 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 was a curiosity, but nobody wanted to live here. They've been really not for everyone, the reason they sit on the market sometimes for so long is because people consider them a difficult to live in. 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 Usonian homes exist. So how many are there? I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea. 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. Euconia certainly never came to pass in the way that Frank Wood Wright originally envisioned, with every American living in an affordable custom home. And in fact, elements of the usonian home have evolved into something else entirely.

So it is kind of true that the usonia 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.

Right might not have been pleased the concepts of euconia got absorbed into, essentially the epitome of cookie cutters of bourbon housing, but at least these houses really were affordable for the middle class, unlike all the euconia houses after euconia won. 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, a way in which natural wood, bricks and masonry are used in a simple, modifiable way, away 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, Franklin Wright's influence can be found in ranch homes and the suburbs and in the details of all kinds of homes, all around us and ways Wright never imagined. Eusonia lives on. 99% Invisible Was Produced This Week by Avery Trouffleman, Music by Sean Rial. Katie Mingle is the senior producer Kurt Colstead is the digital director. Thres the team includes our senior editor Delaney Hall, Sheree Fusif, Emmett Fitzgerald, Taren Mazza, Joe Rosenberg, Vivian Lee, Sophia Klatsker, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7 KALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful, downtown, Oakland,

California. 99% invisible as a member of Radio Topia from PRX, a fiercely independent collective of the most innovative shows in all of podcasting. Find them all at radiotopia.fm. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars in the show at 99PI Orc. We're on Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit too. But if you want to drool over some usonia homes, look no further than 99PI.org.

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