Usonia, New York : building a community with Frank Lloyd Wright

192 Pages·2001·13.986 MB·English

by  Reisley, Roland, Timpane, John Philip

Usonia, NEW YORK
PROOF 1

Usonia, NEW YORK
Building a Community with Frank Lloyd Wright
ROLAND REISLEY with John Timpane
Foreword by MARTIN FILLER
PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS, NEW YORK
PROOF 2
PUBLISHED BY This publication was supported in part with
PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS funds from the New York State Council on the
37 EAST SEVENTH STREET Arts, a state agency.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10003
Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Ann Alter, Amanda
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         First edition Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reisley, Roland, –
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any Usonia, New York : building a community with
manner without written permission from the publisher Frank Lloyd Wright / Roland Reisley with John
except in the context of reviews. Timpane ; foreword by Martin Filler.
p. cm.
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify isbn ---
owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected . Usonian houses—New York (State)—Pleasant-
in subsequent editions. ville. . Utopias—New York (State)—Pleasantville—
History. . Architecture, Domestic—New York
All photographs © Roland Reisley unless otherwise (State)—Pleasantville. . Wright, Frank Lloyd,
indicated. –—Criticism and interpretation. i. Title:
Usonia. ii. Timpane, John Philip. iii. Title.
The drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright are copyright ©  na.p r 
the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ. 
Frontispiece: Detail of Frank Lloyd Wright’s  original
site plan of Usonia.
Editing and layout: Clare Jacobson
Design: Deb Wood
PROOF 2
Acknowledgments vi
Foreword, Martin Filler viii
Preface xii
Introduction xvi
Chapter . DREAMING OF USONIA 1
Chapter . GOING FORWARD 8
TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter . BUILDING USONIA 22
Chapter . A COMMUNITY AT LAST 44
Chapter . WORKING WITH FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT 62
Chapter . REORGANIZING THE COOPERATIVE 84
Chapter . DAVID HENKEN: OUR MOSES 92
Chapter . COMMUNITY LIFE AND ACTIVITIES 104
Chapter . USONIA REVISITED 118
Epilog. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND THE REISLEY HOUSE 126
INDEX OF USONIA’S HOMES 152
PPRROOOOFF 22
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
vii
I could not have produced this account, fourteen years in For transforming a final draft to this completed
the making, without significant help. Surely credit is due text, I thank my editor, Clare Jacobson. Her enthusiastic
to the early Usonians who typed and mimeographed—and participation made it happen.
saved—the thousands of single-spaced communications A much appreciated grant from the New York
during the creation and growth of Usonia. (Analogous State Council on the Arts helped to pay some of the costs
communications today, much of it by e-mail, or stored on of this project.
magnetic media, is not likely to survive fifty years.) The Decidedly not least, I thank my wife Ronny, who
Frank Lloyd Wright Archives was another valuable endured my preoccupation with this history and offered
resource. informed comment on much of the text.
My friend “Pete” Guerrero contributed beautiful I am grateful to the many Usonians who shared
historic photographs and encouraged my efforts, but also their memories of the struggles and triumphs in the life of
introduced me to Dixie Legler. I was at an impasse until Usonia, and especially to David and Priscilla Henken, Judy
Dixie came on to edit my words and to help me integrate and Odif Podell, Aaron and Millie Resnick, Herbert
some of John Timpane’s well-crafted text. She has my Brandon, and Rowland Watts, without whose commit-
gratitude. ment Usonia may not have succeeded.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT VISITS USONIA, 1949.
HENRY RAPISARDA, COSMO-SILEO ASSOCIATES
Martin Filler FOREWORD
ix
COMMISSIONING A BUILDING BY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
WAS SUCH AN EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCE THAT OVER THE
YEARS SEVERAL OF HIS CLIENTS HAVE WRITTEN REVEALING
MEMOIRS ABOUT THEIR ADVENTURES WITH THE MASTER,
WHICH SOME HAVE REGARDED AS THE OUTSTANDING EVENT
OF THEIR LIVES. MULTIPLE VOLUMES OF PUBLISHED CORRE-
SPONDENCES SHED FURTHER LIGHT ON WRIGHT’S RELATIONS
WITH OTHER OF HIS PATRONS. THOSE VARIOUS ACCOUNTS
ARE ALIKE IN THEIR REITERATION OF THE VERY SIMILAR
roller-coaster course of emotions—admiration, adoration, ed his Midwestern client base, as did the scandal he caused
exhilaration, exasperation, resignation, expectation, and by abandoning his wife and six children to run off with
ultimate fulfillment—that Wright’s clients went through the wife of a client. The s witnessed Wright’s attempt
in the arduous process of bringing his singular designs to to reestablish his practice in Southern California and the
reality. Southwest, with just a few houses completed and several
In  (the year that large-scale construction major projects that came to naught. The onset of the Great
resumed in the United States after wartime restrictions Depression only deepened his woes, and he retreated to
on rationed materials and nonessential building were Taliesin to found an academy that seemed his last best
finally lifted) Wright turned eighty. Though he had been a hope for survival. Wright’s wholly unexpected resur-
nationally and internationally acclaimed architect for gence in the late s, with his astonishing trio of late
almost half a century, only during the postwar period masterpieces—Fallingwater, the Johnson Wax Building,
did his workload finally catch up with his fame. Whole and Taliesin West—returned him to the forefront of his
decades of his exceptionally long career had been blighted profession, though World War II soon put an end to his
by circumstances both within and beyond his control. In prospects here and abroad.
the s a shift in fashionable taste away from the arts- Wright always had a deep understanding of the
and-crafts movement and toward the colonial revival erod- national psyche, which is one reason why his work speaks
VIEW FROM THE BALCONY OF THE REISLEY HOME, 1997.
PROOF 1
x Usonia, New York
THOUGH REISLEY AND HIS FELLOW in the U.S. (hence the name Usonian) during and after
the Great Depression, when even the rich sought to live
COOPERATORS IN THE DEVELOPMENT less ostentatiously. Abandoning the late Victorian formal-
ity that marked his epochal Prairie Houses (with their
OF USONIA WERE ATTRACTED TO THE
requisite dining rooms, basements, stables or garages, and
servants’ quarters), he advocated a much simplified format
WRIGHTIAN AESTHETIC AND THE MAS-
(with small dining areas, concrete-slab construction, car-
ports, and no provision for domestic help) that accurately
TER’S BELIEF THAT A HOUSE MUST BE
predicted the nature of postwar family life. His insights
ONE WITH ITS SETTING, THEY WERE into suburbanization were particularly prescient. Indeed,
many of Wright’s principles—from the private automobile
ALSO POSSESSED OF A KEEN SOCIAL as preferred mode of transportation to the conviction that
a new generation of homebuyers would be more receptive
INSIGHT THAT MAKES THEIR EFFORT
to modern architecture—were appropriated by commer-
cial real-estate developers who quickly debased them, to
ALL THE MORE ADMIRABLE.
their great profit and the detriment of the landscape.
to a vast American public in a way that no other architect’s Just as Wright had attracted a clientele of adven-
does. He was a true Jeffersonian in his inherent distrust turesome self-made technocrats in turn-of-the-century
of the city and his belief that the basic building block of Chicago and its environs, so did his work appeal to those
our democracy must be the freestanding private house. who, after the upheaval of World War II, wanted to
Since the early s Wright cherished the idea of design- remake their world in a more idealistic image. Wright’s
ing affordable housing for the masses; he published plans ubiquity as a colorful media personality and his care-
for low-cost residences in popular magazines, even while fully crafted persona as a homespun American character
he produced his epochal Prairie Houses—richly detailed, encouraged several young admirers to approach him with
labor-intensive, and costly—for an upper-middle-class requests that he design houses for them. The architect
clientele. was especially intrigued by the proffer to create an entire
The fallow years of the s gave Wright ample suburban subdivision in Westchester County, north of
time to rethink the question of the modern suburban New York City, to be called Usonia in homage to his new
house, culminating in his plans for Broadacre City, a low- residential concept.
rise, low-density vision of hypothetical exurban develop- Roland Reisley, one of the active participants
ment, as well as in his first Usonian houses. Those radi- in that project and the author of this account of Usonia
cally simplified structures represented Wright’s intuitive and the house he and his wife, Ronny, built there, can be
response to the future direction of domestic architecture counted among the most important of Wright’s clients.
PROOF 1