It's not every day that a structure designed by the late Frank Lloyd Wright makes its debut. MIt's even more unusual when a Wright building gets torn down. MBut by next Sunday, both those events may have occurred in Pittsburgh, as part of a private group's resurrection of a never-built masterwork by one of America's best-known architects nearly 40 years after his death on April 9, 1959.
The Pittsburgh area has long been associated with one Wright masterpiece -- Fallingwater, a vacation home designed in 1935 for department store magnate Edgar J. Kaufmann and his family, and finished three years later at nearby Bear Run, Pa.
But Wright designed a second Pittsburgh residence for the Kaufmanns nearly 20 years later: an apartment that would have occupied the top level of a 10-story residential tower called Point View designed to perch on a cliff overlooking the Pittsburgh skyline.
Wright envisioned it as the full-time urban counterpart to the family's weekend retreat at Bear Run, and promised it would be far more luxurious.
"Nothing in your city nor any other can show anything so complete in eminence ... to live in," Wright wrote to his client. "Your own quarters at the crown are superb."
The tower was never built, due to unfavorable economic conditions in the mid-1950s and Kaufmann's deteriorating health. But now a full-scale model of Kaufmann's residence has been carefully constructed and furnished to Wright's original plans, and is on view for the next week at the Pittsburgh Convention Center.
The residence is the feature attraction of the Pittsburgh Home and Garden Show, which opened Friday and runs through March 21.
The show's organizers wanted to identify and showcase the finest home designed in Pittsburgh since 1900. The consensus from local experts was that the clear choice was Wright's never-built design for Kaufmann. So the exhibitors set out to construct a facsimile inside the convention center that would be authentic in every way.
"People from throughout the nation will be able to visit this most extraordinary Pittsburgh home, exactly as it was designed by one of the great creative spirits of our century," says John DeSantis, executive director of the Home and Garden Show. "It is all the more exciting as a masterwork that has waited 46 years to be constructed will exist for just 10 days and then returns to a set of drawings on the archive shelf."
Before they could construct the apartment, the show's organizers needed permission from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, owner of Wright's designs. Its trustees agreed to cooperate, on two conditions: all construction and furnishings had to be authentic in every way, and the apartment had to be destroyed at the end of the 10-day exhibition.
It's only the second time the Wright foundation has allowed a design to be created for a temporary exhibit. In 1988, it allowed the Smithsonian Institution to construct one of Wright's free-standing "Usonian" houses for an exhibition of Wright's work that began in Washington and traveled to seven other cities.
Last year, the city of Madison, Wis., opened Monona Terrace, a convention center, on a site for which Wright had designed a similar project nearly 50 years ago. Although the building clearly bears Wright's influence, it was actually designed by a successor firm, Taliesin Architects, which modified Wright's plan.
The Kaufmann apartment in Pittsburgh was created at an estimated cost of $300,000 to $400,000 by Pittsburgh architect Gerald Lee Morosco, who worked closely with Taliesin Architects Ltd. and the Wright Foundation.
Morosco, a 39-year-old alumnus of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, supervised a meticulous and faithful construction of the apartment, including the living room, dining room, porch and master bedroom, complete with built-in furniture and some free-standing pieces. Wright- designed lights, tapestries and other pieces were drawn from collections that are already licensed and commercially marketed.
"This is just as Mr. Wright designed it," says Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, a vice president of the Wright Foundation and director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, who flew in from Scottsdale, Ariz., to tour the apartment last week. Pfeiffer said he was afraid it might come across as a Hollywood set, but it doesn't at all. The space is "absolutely miraculous," he says. "You can't believe it's a model. The carpentry is exquisite. It's breathtakingly beautiful."
Morosco says he sees this project as a way to expose people to more of the work of Wright, especially if all they know is Fallingwater. "That was designed as a vacation home," he says. "Now they can see a vision for a year-round residence. The reality of the space, the poetry of the space, is all here."
He also notes that the project will help kick off a series of Wright exhibits and events at the Carnegie Museum of Art and other Pittsburgh-area locations this year.
Suzette Lucas, director of external affairs for the Wright foundation, says the organization periodically receives requests from groups that want to execute Wright designs and is careful about what it grants. By one count, she said, 1,191 buildings or objects, including pieces of furniture, were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and 535 were executed, At present, she says, a group in the Midwest would like to construct a Wright-designed fraternity house.
Lucas said the foundation was comfortable with the Kaufmann project because the idea came from Morosco, an apprentice of the Taliesin school from 1981 to 1986 and well known to the foundation.
She said the foundation stipulated that the apartment be demolished at the end of the exhibit because it doesn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. If the sponsors have ideas for displaying it beyond the initial exhibition, she said, the foundation would entertain them.
Beyond the apartment itself, the exhibitors have added another Wright artifact: a large photomural of a 1947 Wright rendering of the Pittsburgh skyline, showing the way he believed the Golden Triangle area could take shape in the future. It's a nighttime view of the city with fanciful spires and sweeping bridges crossing the riverfront.
Also, Pittsburgh composer Philip James Gilberti wrote a musical piece, "Point View," which he performed during the Thursday night benefit preview of the apartment.
Organizers of the home and garden show say they expect more than 300,000 visitors, including some aficionados from around the world who make a practice of visiting every Wright building in existence. Many will be combining their visits with tours of Fallingwater, one hour east.
Pfeiffer, says he would like to see the Kaufmann apartment exhibit retained for display at some other location, possibly at the Carnegie Museum later this spring. "We hope it can travel," he said. "It really should. It would be a shame to throw it in the Dumpster."
Wright resurrected
The 1999 Pittsburgh Home and Garden Show runs through March 21 at the Pittsburgh Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh. Show hours are 4 p.m to 10 p.m. weekdays (11 a.m. to 10 p.m. March 19), 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays. Admission is $8.50 for adults and $3.50 for children ages 6 to 12; children under 6 are admitted free. Information is available by calling 412-565-6000 or 412-922-4900.
Pub Date: 03/14/99