The Wright Stuff.

Today we drove into downtown Grand Rapids to see another Frank Lloyd Wright house. We had no idea it was here until we arrived in the town, so it was another lovely surprise to find it. After our experience at Fallingwater we just had to go and see if Mr Wright was just a one trick pony.

450 Madison Avenue, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Another family home.

All in all F.L.W. was responsible for 532 buildings created for various purposes, so I don't think we'll be popping in on all of them. But we both love the way he put his houses together.

Where the boring neighbours lived a few doors down.

 

This one was built for Meyer S. May, a clothes retailer, in 1908-9 (now please bear those dates in mind) and was always meant to be a family home. This was at a time when motor cars still hadn't taken over from the horse and carriage, electric lights were still experimental and all the neighbours were living in more traditional houses.

This is the back of the house - what the neighbours saw.

 

 The children who lived here told of their friends thinking they were odd, because they lived in the strange house on the corner. Well it looks anything but strange now does it?

This was built on what was called the 'Prairie Style', accentuating the horizontal line - as the land and sky does on the prairie.






The brickwork is specially laid to help reinforce this effect. The mortar is of two colours, one to blend in with the vertical lines, and one deeply recessed to accentuate the horizontal.

On the second storey you can see the bricks laid in protruding lines - with the same effect.





And going in to the house the same trick is used as in Fallingwater. The entrance is low and dark, compressing the space around. Then when entering the lounge, the sensation of light and expansiveness is stronger. This guy didn't miss a trick.

The skylights had electric lights inside for when darkness fell.

You can see for yourself the beautiful proportions of the room - although the line of the top of the window cuts directly across most people's sightline. Aha! But not for Mr. Mey! He was a very short man, and this house was tailor made for his height. Bend your knees and bring yourself down to five feet four and it all works.

There is double glazing, and blinds hidden behind the horizontal frames. The cords are hidden by the vertical frames.

The attention to detail is breathtaking, from the F.L.W. designed rugs, lamps, chairs, tables, windows etc etc...










...to the lamps which are integral with the dining table. The whole house is one work of art in it's entirety.






In fact we were told that hanging pictures was discouraged by F.L.W., because the house was the art.

No prizes for guessing who designed the dinnerware.

With both of the house we've visited so far, the most surprising thing to us was how they felt when we were inside. They were lovely spaces that we could easily have lived in, they were real homes as well as being statements of architectural art.

                                We think that is cleverest trick Frank Lloyd Wright pulled off.

The master bedroom window.

Windows onto the stairs.

 Unfortunately his houses weren't always watertight, and also had a few structural problems over the years - living in an artwork must have some drawbacks. Owners over the years also wanted to adapt their home to their needs, so after three quarters of a century the house was suffering.

Lovely, but expensive to maintain.

Nowadays the property is owned by a company called Steelhouse. They purchased the property in 1985, and embarked on one of the most complete restorations of a Frank Lloyd Wright house anywhere. It was in a terrible state when they acquired it, but some member of the board decided that whatever the cost it must be saved. And now anyone can turn up and have a free tour round the house, with the services of an expert volunteer guide to boot.

Everything in the house is part of the whole.

Who said nothing was free in America?

If you'd like see the story of just how bad things were before it was resurrected, here it is:

http://meyermayhouse.steelcase.com/house

Is our journey the destination?

Here we are in America, travelling around with no plan, no agenda, no pre-planned route. How does it all work?

We are Jacksons...

To tell you the truth I have no idea. It's disconcerting, a little worrying and at times very unnerving. But if we just let ourselves go with the flow and stop worrying about how things will turn out, things do turn out - and usually very well indeed. It shouldn't work - but it does. Maybe it's just because we're receptive to whatever turns up - possibly even grateful. But it doesn't seem that way - something else seems to be at work.

...and I lived near Brighton. The omens are good.

Today was a very good example of how it all happens.

We went to Detroit to see the Ford Museum, and didn't feel like hanging around afterwards. We saw Grand Rapids on the map, and because we liked the name, we came here. On arrival it's onto the net to research what is here that might be of interest to us.

So, what is there in Grand Rapids?

Well it's where ex President Gerald Ford came from. So he has a museum here of course. We're not great fans…

Then there is the Meijer Garden and Sculpture Park.

"The what?" you say - "Never heard of them!"

Well, neither had we, but seeing as there's so much lovely mown grass in America, we missed the flowers of England. So we reckoned it was worthy of investigation.

And, as I was explaining at the beginning of this blog, we ended up having a very pleasant surprise.

Mr Frederik Meijer. A volunteer guide told us he was a very nice man.

Frederik Meijer was a wealthy local businessman who liked sculptures and art. And, because he could afford it, he could buy some of the best. In his advancing years he was asked if he would sponsor these gardens to show his beloved sculptures in, and he agreed - as long as the gardens and sculptures complemented each other.

Sadly he passed away late last year, but what a legacy he left.

If you have to have concrete, why not pretend it's a tree?

We thought the whole place was a delight. Say what you like about the Americans, but when they want to get something done it happens. Walking round the convoluted route, it was obvious that much thought and care had been spent placing every item as there was a delightful surprise round every green bend.

Antony Gormley keeps popping up everywhere. Is one missing from the Liverpool mud?

Another thing we loved; there was unmown grass. If it was mown we could walk on it - unmown keep off! What a subversion of the American obsession.

Now my one neuron has a friend - courtesy of Roxy Paine.

Twenty years ago there was nothing here. Thirteen years ago the sculpture park wasn't even started.

Now this kiss is the real thing. Thank you Rodin.

When we drove to Grand Rapids we had no idea that the following day we'd be inspecting works by Rodin, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Elizabeth Frink - as well as the more contemporary David Nash.

A monumental Moore.

 

 

There were huge pieces and intimate pieces.

Some we couldn't make head or tail of, and some we loved...

...but we had a glorious five hours enjoying great work by renowned artists.

Apparently this is the right place for tools.

Hepworth frames Miro.

Any good at Scrabble?

Elizabeth Frink's vision of ?

So thank you Mr. Frederik Meijer. Or just Fred, as he used to tell his employees. (He married one his checkout girls…)

We think this is a Donnie Darko tribute.

                                And so far, that's how this philosophy of travelling works.

                                             But of course it could go horribly wrong.

Automania and more.

Detroit is a city going through enormous change. It's here where the motor car first became mass produced at a cost that ordinary folk could afford and in numbers that would change the world.

But the last twenty years or so haven't been kind to Detroit. The industry it spawned has moved elsewhere, and the jobs with it. What was once a thriving community is now in retrenchment. The population has decreased from two million in the fifties to around seven hundred thousand, and whole areas have been decimated.

(If you want to see the Detroitus go to http://www.100abandonedhouses.com/)

But we didn't want to see any of that! We made our way straight to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, home of the mass produced motorcar.

A sign said that cameras were banned - even from parking lots.

We were cheerfully given permission to stay overnight in the car park; we wanted to be through those doors as they opened in the morning.

A small entrance for what lies behind.

This wondrous museum was started by Henry Ford himself, and has been added to over the years since his death in 1947. It contains what seems to be an eclectic mix of objects, from Spinning Jennies to steam tractors. And of course a delightful selection of cars ranging across the years.

That's a Rembrandt Bugatti sculpture of an elephant on the radiator cap. Why I don't know.

Diane's favourite was the Bugatti Royale. There's only six on this planet, and I was told this was worth around $20,000,000. Diane obviously has expensive tastes. But there are only six because they didn't really sell. In fact the French government bought several hundred of the Bugatti engines and used them to pull passenger trains. I think the car looks prettier.

The black one or the white one?

I couldn't make my mind up between the Cord and the Duesenberg - but I imagine both together would cost rather less than the Bugatti.

A Cadillac Eldorado at the height of 1959 tail finnery.

It's when one see these cars in the flesh and hear of their prices that it becomes apparent that they are in the league of works of art - beautifully crafted and irreplaceable.

Space was the final frontier.

But these are also icons of style and fashion. It's interesting to see how far the designers could push the limits of what would be tolerated. Some may look ridiculous in their excesses nowadays, but there's no denying the care and detail that went into the creation of these sculptures. When does something stop looking naff and start to look classic? it's a process that still baffles me.

Now I really think they went too far with the Edsel. So did the public - this car was a flop.

But we like their free Wi-fi.

A fifties dining experience today.









And then there's the history created with cars. Here is the car that carried President Kennedy when he was assassinated - by exactly who we'll never know. I've seen this very car glide by in the grainy, shaky footage from Mr Zapruder's camera so many times I felt a sense of deja vu when I walked up to it - it was like seeing an old friend.

Things may have been very different if the top had been there on 22nd Nov. 1963.

This car rushed Kennedy, Jackie his wife and Governor Connelly to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, with blood on its seats and the Presidents brain over its trunk. If only it could bear witness to that day.

The driver's cab is where the steps are on the left.

And then on to one of the most powerful steam engines ever, built to haul loads of coal one and a quarter miles long from the vast coal mines in West Virginia across the Allegheny mountains . It's over 125 feet (38 meters) long.

What the driver saw on one of the biggest steam trains on Earth.

Two of these monsters were used to haul the coal over the mountain range, then one was uncoupled and returned with empty wagons. The Earth itself must have feared the weight of these monster loads.

But technology ever moves on, and diesel locomotives signalled the death of these beautiful creations after only fifteen years of work. (This one still managed to travel not far short of half a million miles in that time though.)

The Americans are very good at relocating things.

There's a timeline in the exhibits to follow as well. (Which I haven't done in this blog.) A 1760 Newcomen steam engine is here, rescued from a mine in Cornwall and resurrected in Detroit.

The very early days of electricity production.

Huge turn-of-the-century generators, built at a time when steam was still the driving force of industry, and it wasn't clear whether AC or DC current was where the future lay.

Tucked away in a corner.

And then an amazing find - Nikola Teslar's death mask. The adjoining information about the rivalry between Tesla, Edison and Westinghouse was rather biased, and thin on credit to Tesla, but as one chap behind me said, "The winners get to write history."

Tesla when he was well.

Now Nikola Tesla had an astonishing mind, and in my opinion intellectually far outweighed Edison or Westinghouse - and I'm glad to say most people who I met at this little corner of the museum agreed with me. He had a way of visualising his ideas that is very rare, much in the same way that Warther, our ivory carver, could see 511 wooden pliers in a shaped piece of wood.

Even if you're not interested in science, a little research on Tesla will give you plenty of food for thought.

The other magic bus.

 One of the more thought provoking exhibits was the bus that Rosa Parks was riding in when she refused to move to the back seats. This was in 1955. There were two sets of doors, one at the front for whites and one at the back for 'coloureds'. She was asked to move back to make room for a white guy, and she refused. The law at that time couldn't let that happen, so she was arrested.

Rosa Parks looking cheesed off.

The look of wearied resignation on her face as she was fingerprinted and photographed says a lot. She'd had enough.

There's more information here: http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/rosaparks/story.asp

Coloreds in the back only.

The movement for black equality started from the actions of this brave young woman, and became an unstoppable force.

But what gave me most food for thought...

...is that all this has happened in my lifetime. It wasn't really all that long ago.





We left with the last stragglers as the museum closed. Overall I came away with a feeling of awe at the creative achievements of mankind. The inventors most probably wouldn't have been able to produce detailed plans for the factory, the draftsman wouldn't have been able to cast the metal. The foundry worker wouldn't have been able to mill and shape the result of his labours and the machinist would have found it difficult winding the coils or laying the foundations for these huge machines.

But by working together with each others skills, truly wondrous things have been crafted.

They still craft wondrous sandwiches.