The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

Finding a wonderful new book in your mailbox is a treat, when you have come home late from work, tired, hungry, and a bit cranky. You perk up, de-crankify yourself, and put dinner off as you open the package and leaf through the latest addition to your library (this doesn’t work with an e-book, does it?).

Tonight’s treat is Jeffrey Chusid’s book about Frank Lloyd Wright’s Samuel and Harriet Freeman House (1923-24) in Los Angeles (“Saving Wright - The Freeman House and the Preservation of Meaning, Materials, and Modernity,” W. W. Norton & Co., 256 pp., $55).

Chusid’s career was shaped by his experiences with the Freeman House. Chusid, a professor at Cornell University, has not only been a director of the house, and its preservation architect, from 1986-1997, but he was first a tenant in the house beginning in 1985, the year after Mrs. Freeman gave the house to the School of Architecture of the University of Southern California. Mrs. Freeman lived in the house until she died in 1986, so Chusid had the opportunity to know Wright’s client.

The book has multiple layers. The title tells us that this is much more than another book about another Wright house, its clients and its design. The book is a detailed case study in historic preservation and the myriad of challenges entailed in the task.

Chusid writes in depth about every detail of this textile block house, which he asserts was “deeply flawed in both design and execution.” He discusses the materials used to build the house, and their properties. He tells us about other architects who were an integral part of the history of the house, including Lloyd and Eric Lloyd Wright, Rudolph Schindler, and Richard Neutra. We learn about the challenges faced by USC, as the School of Architecture tackles the daunting task of preserving and stabilizing the house which was damaged in 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Chusid writes in his Preface that he owes his career in preservation architecture to Harriet Freeman, and that his commitment to make the restoration of the Freeman House an important “learning experience” for preservationists is part of his way of thanking her. The book, he continues, is part of his way of returning her “gift” to him. “Saving Wright” is richly illustrated with historic and contemporary photographs, and copies of numerous plans of the house. (I was pleased that Chusid selected some of my photos for the book). Chusid also includes the text of the contracts and other agreements between Wright and the Freemans.

“There is no doubt that the Freeman House has been more of an educational experience for me and for a quarter century of students and visitors than if it had ‘worked’ and never required the level of study and intervention that it did,” Chusid writes near the end of the book.

Some people look at Wright and his work idealistically. Truth be told, his roofs often leaked and even Fallingwater’s cantilevered balconies sagged precariously because they were poorly engineered. The Freeman House is an exciting design, built on a wonderful site, but it did not “work” perfectly. That is what makes Chusid’s book compelling reading for scholars and aficionados of Wright’s work.