This is what it is like to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright House

Signature tile at Taliesin. The Bogk House does not have a tile

Architecture is a visual medium. A three dimensional visual medium. And all architecture is dependent on many externalities. To steal shamelessly from Witold Rybczynski, some of these are:

1. Ideas
2. The Setting
3. Site
4. Plan
5. Structure
6. Skin
7. Details
8. Style
9. The Past
10. Taste

(read his book) 

I am not going to go into each one of these characteristics as I write about what it is like to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright House (should I say WIILTLIAFLWH? No? ok) because I am trying to capture something that is while not ethereal exactly, at the least somewhat intangible. I know we live in the age of "vibes" and I think that is the epitome of lazy writing, but indulge me for a moment. 

It is the vibe of the house that you first notice when you enter. 

I'll try to explain with words. (You may notice a lack of images in this post. This goes against everything I have learned about blogging over the past 25 years, but I guess I am trying to make a point. There are a lot of images of the house in many of the other posts. You can go look at those if you want)

You enter the house into a foyer that is small and has a relatively low ceiling. (yes, a little compression) The, as you walk up the three steps into the living room, you see a couple of things: The Crane Fountain, perfectly framed by a gap in the bookcase; the bookcase and the leaded glass doors; and finally, the release of a 10' 6" ceiling that towers above the orange carpet, the 1917 Wright designed library table, the other bookcase and leaded glass cabinet, and the Henredon furniture that Wright designed in the 1950s.

It takes your breath away.

You stand in silence for a moment as you take it all in. Unconsciously your eyes sweep the room and notice the fireplace. The built-in desk and settee. The sconces that seem to float out of the walls. The map rail. The ceiling detail.

And mostly, the proportions. 

The Golden Mean is golden for a reason. The living room is a manifestation of the Golden Mean. You want to (you need to) sit and take it all in. You don't want to talk, and you don't want to "learn" about the house. You want to just, well, experience the vibe.

Because everything you see is in the right place. Every detail, on first glance, is what you want to see, when you turn your head to look. 

The square motif that recapitulates the details in the lintel over the door.

The long, deep rake of the horizontal mortar joints.

The almost invisible narrow vertical mortar joints.

The wire cut tapestry brick that is exactly the same as the brick on the exterior of the house. 

And you understand that the whole was written in the detail of the parts. The Golden Mean is self referential, and the House is self referential as well. Every single part of this room, this first room you see, tells you that you have entered a special place, a place you don't want to leave.

And that is just the living room. Each room in the house has details that it takes time to recognize, and time to understand. You are overwhelmed at first, but slowly you begin to realize what a magical place you have come into. 

The step up to the dining room brings you closer to the Crane Fountain mentioned above, as well as the details around the planter and conservatory that exploit the "borrowed view" of the neighbor's garden. 

The Wright designed dining room table, chairs (lightly modified by George Mann Niedecken to make  them more comfortable) , ceiling fixture (again, a Niedecken design) as well as a card table, a built in buffet, and the glorious art glass windows that reflect the same windows that are in the living room. 

I could go on. There are only three rooms downstairs (ignoring the coat closet and power room) and each one will track you attention and reward your investigation into detail. In previous posts I try to capture some of that magic. But this media does not reward such attempts richly.

But that is not what it is like to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. That is what it is like to be in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. 

You need to understand that you live in this house like you live in any other house. You need to park your car. You need to carry groceries into the house. You need to put away the groceries. You need to do laundry, wash dishes, and prepare meals. You need to nap, to sleep, to have parties, and to read books. 

Plumbing needs to be maintained, electrical outlets and switches need to be fixed, windows need to be repaired, and everything needs to be cleaned. There is magic in the house, but magic does not obviate the need to do your everyday living. This is still a 108 year old house, with all the problems and issues that every 108 year old house has. Wright or no, if you are not willing to deal with these things it will be a hard slog.

The sense of wonder and the ability to uncover some hidden details never ends. The previous owners lived here for almost 70 years and raised five kids in this house. I know (because I asked) that they felt that they were finding new things out about the house until the day we they left, and we moved it.

Now it is our turn to experience that wonder, as well as the headaches, heartaches, and expenses that come with owning this house.

"What's it like to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house?"

That is, by far, the most common question we get about the house. (Well, maybe after the question, "YOU bought a Frank Lloyd Wright house???")

And I can see why. 

So let me start by telling the story of how we got here.

The thought of living in a Wright house was not even a figment of our imagination until about five years ago, when the Mason House in Wausau, WI was put up for sale. It is a Usonian House, which brings to mind a couple of things. Low ceilings, simple and elegant layout, no garage or basement. (all those being general rules). It was listed for $425k, which did not seem out of reach.

The Mason House

This intrigued Doreen to no end, her being such a Wright fan. So we asked the realtor if my brother Mark, who lives in Wausau, could visit to assess the height of the ceilings, and the general condition of the house.

We were told "no" and so we just passed on that house, and did not think too much about it. 

But a seed had been planted in Doreen's (sometimes) obsessive mind that owning a Wright house would be possible.

Then the Keland House in Mount Pleasant, WI was offered up for sale in 2022. It was a bigger house, but still called a Usonian. Mount Pleasant is south of Milwaukee, just west of Racine. But it looked like it had a nice view of the Root River, and it was on 3 acres. Nice! More expensive that the Mason House, but still sort of reasonable. 

The Keland House

We were late to the game on this house, and they were having a sealed bid auction. There wasn't a chance we could see it before this happened. So this, too, passed us by.

This is probably the right time to mention that I come from a large family, (I am one of seven) and most of the family, and extended family, live in Wisconsin. (some forever, some returned). All the family knows About Doreen's Wright obsession, and they all (seem to) want us back in Wisconsin, too.

So in September of 2023 when the Bogk House came on the market, we started getting many emails, texts, and Signal chats from the family saying that we really needed to come and see this house!

And we did need to see it! It was featured in the Wall Street Journal's "Mansion" section, in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "Real Estate" section, and an untold number of scraped House Porn magazines.

We did not want to sleep on this one (I had just retired, and we were thinking about getting a summer place where it is cooler than Houston. Doreen was "thinking" about retiring soonish) So I called my sister who lives in Milwaukee and asked if we could spend the weekend. She said "Of Course!" (of course) and we flew up the next day.

The house was listed by Christies (because, of course) we arranged a meeting with the agent for that Friday. 

But before we arrived, Doreen did a ton of work. She made sure I could stand up in house (it is NOT a Usonian, and it is NOT a Prairie Style), she contacted the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy to see what easements were on the house (nothing that we would not have asked for ourselves), she contacted the Milwaukee Historic Preservation Commission to see what neighborhood restrictions were in place, and she contacted the Homeowners Association to see what OTHER restrictions were in place. She did a LOT of work. 

So when we arrived for the showing, we knew what was what, and what we should be concerned about.

It could not have gone better. The house was beautiful, the neighborhood was fantastic, the weather was gorgeous. 

But now hard decisions had to be made. Doreen was really still working, and was not seriously thinking about retirement (as much as I was trying to get her to). We spent a day walking around the neighborhood and visiting open houses to get a sense of the FLW premium (very low, by the way) and to think about what our lives would be like if we would pull this trigger.

We made our decision over the weekend, and contacted the agent and let her know. After a brief negotiations with the owners (Who are lovely to a one of them. We still keep in touch, and take advantage of their knowledge of the house that they lived in for almost 70 years! They have become friends) we came to a number, an an agreement, and a date to close later that year.

I will stop here for now, and in my next post answer the question that is the title of this one. 

Trying to capture the new paint color

 I am finding it quite difficult to capture the new trim color in the context of the whole house. This is partly because the windows are deep set, the color is a dark red, let's call it Cherokee Red, and the light does not fall on the front of the house to give it the best representation.

Here is one view:

I think that does a pretty good job. I posted this earlier:

So you can see the difference between the old and the new color. I think it is quite nice! In my mind, it really makes the house look happy. 

You can see this in detail on the back door:

And the front door:

Lots of folks say it makes the color "pop" and I cannot disagree.

The other colors will remain the same.

And a shout out to O'Brien Painting here in Milwaukee. They are doing a fantastic job. 

And even more furniture!

We have a couple of single beds in the small guest room. We call it The Kid's Room, or The Oh-Boy's room, for the only folks who have stayed there (with us) so far. Now we have beds:

Nice, eh?

Gustav Stickley.

First look at the new paint color

 

What do you think?

Why yes, we are getting some furniture!

When we bought this house, we bought a passel of furniture with it. The original dining room, library, and game table that Mrs. Elsner tracked down in the 1950s and 60s, as well as several Wright pieces that had been manufactured by Henredon in the '50s and '60s. Almost all of this furniture was downstairs. 

We did buy a bed, and with the help of friends and family were able to sleep on an actual bed the day we closed on the house. (Thank you Mel, Frank, Matt, and Laurie; as well as the staff from Christie's)  

But we did not have a desk, or many chairs that we could use upstairs.

That did not stop us from making do with what we had:

Yes, that is a camp chair on the right, and the desk is made from moving boxes that we shipped up here with our books in them, and two of the leaves from the dining room table. It worked, I am very happy to say.

But recently Doreen found a Wright designed table that was manufactured in the '90s, and it would fit right in:

Provenance:

Licenses from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. 

Detail:

You can see that the square motif is preserved in this desk.

And when we get it set up it looks like this:

Except for the camp chair, it is pretty nice! That other chair is one of the Henredon chairs. (And if you look closely, you can see what I am writing on the screen. Sort of self-referential) 

We are now looking for other desk chairs that will fit, both physically and from a design standpoint.

But this is a good start!

Starting to paint the exterior

As I mentioned earlier, we are going to change t he color of the trim on the windows, reverting back to the original Cherokee Red color beloved by Wright. You can imagine this color in your mind by thinking of an old red barn sitting out in the sun in the farmlands of Wisconsin. This is a color that Wright grew up with, and you see over and over again in his houses, from Taliesin to the Usonian genre. I have a photo of the house with these colors in a previous post. Oh heck, here it is again:

I will, of course, update our true colors once they are up.

But first a little pallet cleanser of sunrises over Lake Michigan:

That was not intended to get you in the mood for red, but heck, whatever works.

Now, here are some colors being auditioned. (The background you see here is the door of our Houston house. Synchronicity)

We are also having the concrete cleaned up around the house.

I can dig up some "before" photos if there is demand, but since I am seldom overwhelmed by comments, I will probably just let this be.

The guy does a fantastic job

Jayke Orvis is the concrete guy. We hope to see him perform sometime later this month. I will report back.

It is not pleasant around the house with all the sanding, scraping, and to-ing and fro-ing by the crew.

But good work requires good prep.

Fire. Gas fire that is

 I did not take photos of the process of installing the new chimney liner, or the logs themselves. But I do have photos of the fireplace as it was:

Fireplace setting

Fireplace detail, with scorching for character

as well as our "aspirational" fireplace (from the Meyer May house): 

The fireplace that started it all

Wright was fond of fireplaces. We have three in this house. We are only putting gas logs in one, mainly because of the cost of relining  the chimney flue, which we were told is necessary. Of course, it probably is.

According to "sources" (that means lost to history) Mrs. Bogk (Mary) did not like fires inside the house (someone after my own heart) and didn't use the fireplaces while she lived here - and she lived here until 1953.

The fireplaces were certainly used by the Elsners, though. You can see that in the above photos. Two of the three fireplaces had their dampers mortared closed, certainly for energy conservation purposes. We are not opening them up. 

Enough of that history. We need to get on with the plan.

We had to do two things, and while I was only dealing with one salesman, I had two quotes, two teams, and two installations.

First, we had to get a new chimney liner. Of course, you have to trust these guys, and here is what they said:

This took a couple of days, and the process sort of morphed into modifying the liner rather than modifying the tiles as the crew realized that the tiles would be almost impossible to remove.

So they pounded the liner (which looks like a typical AC duct, but I am sure is much more robust) into a rectangular cross section so it would fit down the existing flue. After sliding the new liner into the tiles,  the pumped in an insulating material made of vermiculite and some other magic stuff that solidified and keeps us safe/

The only downside we experienced was the driveway was cracked by the lift truck. But that will be fixed by the end of August.

Then the gas log installation team came by and started their magic.

The first thing they had to do was find the gas line and route it up to the fireplace.

There is a gas line in place that was probably used for a firestarter, but it would not make sense to use that for these logs (you can see it in the second photo above). So the team tapped into the gas line to the water heater, and then snaked the line into the ash chute and into the fireplace.

After much work, we ended up with this:

We will (some tims soon?) install a fender in front of the logs (look at the aspirational photo above) that will look like the original andirons designed for the house:

which I think will be very, very cool.

In the meantime, this is what we get to enjoy!

Thanks to everyone at Chimney Concepts!

A little Houston break

We spent last week in Houston. There were some chores to catch up on, some errands to run, and more importantly, some people to see.

Roxy, Doreen, Jeannette, Trouta

We were  contemplating driving down, but the time we take (three days, two nights) is just too much for a one week trip. So a quick flight (delayed both ways because of weather, but we got where we were going never the less) and we were back at the "other" coast. I think I will call Houston the "Third Coast" and Milwaukee the "Fresh Coast". Makes sense to me.

So on the Third Coast we were able to see many friends and catch up with family. When you spend 40 years in a place to tend to put down roots. Or at least I hope you do! I saw friends I made at the many companies where I've worked, and we had dinner with other friends whose company we like to keep.

We also made pancakes for family:

Me, Roxy, Quinn, Riley, Doreen, Zoe, Jeannette, Renee, Trouta

It was a joyous affair. We ate two pounds of bacon and a double batch of buttermilk pancakes. (has there ever been a better breakfast food?) 

You forget about the heat (which is probably a good thing) but to tell the truth, it wasn't that bad last week. And besides that, it was hot in Milwaukee as well.

Here is a funny anecdote from one of my lunches with old friends (there were four of us in total). Bob was talking about one of the companies he had worked for and could not quite remember the name. (not a memory issue, and you will see.) I asked "Object Reservoir?" "No, not Object..." Marty asked "3DGeo?", "No". "Peter Duncan's Company?" "No, not Chroma..." so you can see the problem. We, each of us, have worked for many companies. (I claim 10, but it is really more like 15, but that just sounds like too many companies)

We never did figure out what company he was talking about.

Now, windows

 There are about 100 windows (more or less. Well, more) in the house. 

Each window needs to be assessed, cleaned, perhaps repaired, and painted.

What we have:

Bogk House today

What we want:

Bogk House from the Avery Library collection. Probably from the 1920s

This is not a small job.

We talked to three different groups with three different approaches and three wildly different prices for this job.

The first approach is the most expensive. You look at each window, remove the window and take it to a woodworking shop. Strip, fill and repaint. Repair all the hardware that needs to be repaired. Return the windows to the house and reinstall - and make sure everything opens and closes as needed. A fantastic way to solve the problem, but also very time consuming and expensive. We love this group, but are somewhat intimidated by the process and the cost.

The second group will work on each window in situ. There will be sanding, and filling as necessary. The repair on the window hardware may be out of this groups reach, but they will do what they can. We may need to follow-up with a dedicated window repair specialist. It will take much less time, is much less intrusive, and the person who is offering this service has painted many houses in the neighborhood, so they have an incentive to do this right.

The third is simply to hand the job over to the general contractor, once we select one. We are not leaning in this direction.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is having their annual meeting in Milwaukee, and will be stopping by the house in September, and we would like to have the painting finished by then. That might be a tall order. They are mainly talking about what we did for the Air Conditioning, and some work that was performed before we bought the house.

We will not be messing with the art glass windows, which you can see in this image:

I can't remember how many of those windows are in the house, but I think it is over 50. They are all in good shape, because they are all recessed and protected from the weather. 

You may recall that these are the windows that Great Nephew Oliver used as a model for a cake he made:

Which was not only spectacular, but delicious as well.

We will have a decision this week, and as the painting starts, I will have updated posts.

Selecting vendors and contractors - let's focus on tile

 Oh boy.

After we got the first quote back for our General Contractor, we were shocked by the size of the bid. Not that we expected this to be cheap, but it felt as if there was a "Frank Lloyd Wright" premium. And maybe there was, or maybe the extensive work we needed, and some of the choices we made for materials force the price up.

There are some "rules of thumb" in construction, and that usually works pretty well. But in our first pass, we sort of ignored the price of various materials (tile, especially) and focused on the "look" of the results.

Original Pewabic tile alongside the Casota Limestone, and my foot.

The problem with that is that one of the rules of thumb is that the installation of the tile is about equal to the cost of the tile. (just like in the olden days when you expected the cost of software should be equal to the cost of the hardware.) But that resulted in a cascading price that added probably 30% to the overall cost of the project. The tile we like (and will now use sparingly) is Pewabic, a ceramic manufacturer that was founded in 1903, and used in many Wright houses. You might recall this:

You can see the layout of the tile on the floor. I don't think this is the final design.

Here are some other designs we are considering:

It is more complicated that it should be selecting what we want.

The first prices of the tile and installation came to about 13% of the total project cost. That seems unreasonably high, so we are looking at other options.

When we "Value Engineer" (term of art) the tile project, we can get the total tile cost down to under 10% of the total deal. Maybe less. That is a big savings.

We have a total of about 443 square feet of tile we will be installing. 45 in the "little" bathroom, 158 in  the primary, and 240 in the guest. The guest is the largest area because we are replacing the floor and the wall. It was originally the most expensive due to the tile we were looking at, but we changed that selection (we Value Engineered it) it became much more reasonable.

We are still working through these numbers, but we are getting close.

A Month in Milwaukee

 We've been settling in fort the summer, and spending a lot of time talking to contractors and service providers as we try to figure out the path forward.

I can't even tell you how explosive all the flowering trees were when we got here. Doreen called it a "rolling spring" since we had already been through these blossoms in Houston.

Japanese Magnolia

And the sunrises were just as spectacular as we remembered.

Though we are trying to not get up so early as to see every one.

The Canada Geese are having goslings/

and they are very cute.

Our trees look pretty good, too:

Lulu seems happy enough to be back.

and we are stating to make some selections that will affect us for as long as we own the house.

That being said, (and of which I will say more) we also have time to visit the West Siders, who seem to live in a pot of gold under the rainbow.

and the turkeys are strutting/

We found Frederick Bogk's grave while visiting Forest Home Cemetery on Memorial Day. (They have reenactors!)

And we had some nighttime visitors stop by to check out Doreen's new Dahlias. 

And that seems to be enough for now. I will expand on our contractor selection process soon. 

Little Rock to Springfield, IL

 

We left Little Rock after a nice breakfast of cinnamon rolls from a local bakery. I brought coffee with us, so we had some freshly brewed coffee as well.

Then we headed north. We had plenty of time, so we stopped at Cahokia along the way.

The museum was closed, but the site was open. It is amazing every time I see it.

The place Doreen found for us in Springfield was just a few short blocks from Lincoln Park, which is adjacent to the Oak Ridge Cemetery, which is where Abraham Lincoln (our greatest President) is buried.

So we walked over to the cemetery, even though we knew the tomb was closed (more later)

It is quite a thing to see:

And here is the front:

There is a brass sculpture of Lincoln's face. The nose is shiny because you are supposed to rub it for luck.

He shows great forbearance 

As we were heading back to try and figure out what we were going to do for supper, we saw that a very spririted and very crowded softball game was going on in the park.

It turns out it was the Illinois House vs Senate annual game!

Which was great for us, because they had free beer and Italian beef sandwiches! 

We got ours wet.

They were delicious!

They shot off fireworks afterwards, which Lulu did not care for.

The next morning before we left, we walked down to visit Lincoln's tomb.

But first we had to stop at the Mel-O-Cream donut shop. One from Doreen's childhood (and our friend Gary's as well)

We got a small box. They were delicious. 

Then on to the cemetery, where we found Roy Bertelli:

We had to wait for the tomb to open, so we had a couple of donuts there in the cemetery.

It was very impressive. Makes you wonder how the world would be different had he not been assassinated. 

About five hours later we were walking on the shores of Lake Michigan.