The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

We know Patrick Mahoney as the man with the answer to countless Frank Lloyd Wright questions. He is at almost any significant Frank Lloyd Wright meeting you might attend. He estimates that he has driven 120,000 miles from his home in Buffalo to see as many Wright buildings as he can. We also know him as a founding member of the Graycliff Conservancy, which has shepherded the restoration of Isabelle R. Martin’s summer home near Buffalo. Now we know him as an author and photographer.

Mahoney, a licensed architect, has published “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Walter V. Davidson House: An Examination of a Buffalo Home and Its Cousins from Coast to Coast” (Hamburg, N.Y.: Evenhouse Printing, 136 pages, $34.99).

Walter V. Davidson worked for the Larkin Company in Buffalo when he and his wife, Christiana, commissioned Wright to build a stucco home for them in 1907. They were familiar with Wright’s work because of the Barton and Darwin Martin houses in Buffalo, and the Larkin Building in which Davidson worked.

Mahoney has written a thorough history and architectural analysis of the Davidson House, as well as writing about many other Wright commissions which he says evolved from Davidson. He offers a rich history of Wright’s extensive work in Buffalo. He also writes about Davidson’s later unrealized Wright commissions: graphic designs for product labels, a market, farms, and a home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

While the book’s primary focus is on the Davidson home, a private residence not open to the public, Mahoney sets the story of the house in a broader context. Although Davidson was not Wright’s first house with multi-story living spaces (Mahoney cites the Thomas P. Hardy House built in Racine in 1905-06 as an example), Mahoney offers the thesis that the Davidson house was the precursor to many homes, including the mid-50s split-level, ranch-style house.

The book is profusely illustrated with photos and drawings of Wright homes that Mahoney traces to the Davidson House design. Mahoney even regards the curved masonry of the unrealized Davidson Market (1928) as a harbinger of the lines of Wright’s SC Johnson Administration Building (1936).

There is a wealth of material about a wide variety of homes designed by Wright and other Prairie-style architects but the book could be better organized. The book begins with the Davidson House, moves on to Wright’s other Buffalo work and many homes which may trace their roots to Davidson, before Mahoney comes back to the Davidson House and Davidson’s later commissions, on page 101.

Mahoney has had admirable access to a wealth of archival material, much of it probably never before published. Some of it, however, is only tangentially related to the theme of the book. A photo of John Larkin in 18th century costume in the living room of his classical-design house (a stark contrast to the Larkin Building) is interesting, but it is a non-sequitur. There is a short illustrated discussion about Cornelius Vanderbilt’s The Breakers home in Newport, Rhode Island (1895) because like some Wright homes, it, too, had high-ceilinged public spaces. There is a photo of Ebbetts Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, because Davidson was a Dodgers fan.

In spite of all the detail in the book, some things could use more explanation. We learn about a home Wright proposed for William Norman Guthrie in Sewanee, Tennessee. Guthrie was an important client of Wright’s. Mahoney publishes a photo of Wright with a model of the St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie tap-root apartment buildings designed for Guthrie. Missing is an explanation of how significant this unrealized commission was. St. Mark’s led to the design of a number of other skyscrapers, including the SC Johnson Research Tower in Racine and Price Tower in Bartlesville. Not all the other commissions shown in photos and plans have project years mentioned. The index is incomplete. Although there are photos of the Christian House, the Gordon House, and the SC Johnson Administration Building, they are not listed in the index.

Mahoney was granted rare access to photograph the Davidson House. His eye is good, and he offers the reader a wonderful variety of contemporary and historic photos (there are 154 illustrations in the book). Regrettably, the printer’s quality control is less than it should be. The dark brown trim is blue in some of the pictures.

Mahoney has created more than another single-house book. He adds to the lore of Wright literature by placing the Davidson House in the context of Wright’s career into the 1950s.

Additional mini-reviews:

I have written in the past about Tim Sakamoto’s innovative inter-active tours of various Frank Lloyd Wright commissions. Previously available only on DVDs, Sakamoto now has an iPad app for his Fallingwater tour.

Here is a link to the demo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCQ5aFqGnDU

One of the more recent architecture books is Randolph C. Henning’s monograph, The Architecture of Alfred Browning Parker, Miami’s Maverick Modernist (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011; 356 pp., $50).

This website is generally about Frank Lloyd Wright’s work. Wright was not known for complimenting other architects. In that sense, perhaps the greatest compliment to Parker’s work is that Wright praised Parker’s work, and they corresponded for many years. Henning, a practicing architect, and author of two books about Wright, offers a very complete monograph about Parker’s work. It is well written and well illustrated. Many of the photographs are by Ezra Stoller. That alone says much about the importance of Parker’s work. Parker was 95 when he died shortly before Henning’s book was published.

Cindy and I had the pleasure of having dinner with Roland Reisley in his Frank Lloyd Wright home in Usonia, in Pleasantville, New York, last spring. It was a delightful evening, with a fine meal, good conversation, a personal tour of Usonia, and the gift of a signed copy of Reisley’s wonderful book, Usonia, New York - Building a Community with Frank Lloyd Wright (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001, 171 pp., $40). The book was published ten years ago, but I had not read it yet.

Reisley, one of Wright’s original clients, has written an engaging history of Usonia, which was to be a cooperative utopian community. There are 47 homes in Usonia, which was built after Word War II, near New York City. Reisley chronicles the joys and struggles of trying to build an idealistic community. The book is well illustrated, with copies of archival letters, plans, and newspaper stories about Usonia, as well as many of Reisley’s wonderful photographs of his own home and his neighbors’ homes.