>> The currier museum in
Manchester, New Hampshire, is
where you'll find two homes
designed by architect frank
Lloyd Wright on the same street
a rarity.
Special correspondent Jared
Bowen of
g-b-h-boston brings us the story
of how these homes now open to
the public came to be.
It's part of our arts and
culture series, canvas.
>> On a New Hampshire street
dotted with traditional new
England homes, there are two
very different ones. Built more
than 60 years ago, when the
neighbors cried there goes the
neighborhood, at least it was
going to architect Frank Lloyd
Wright
>> There was quite a stir at the
beginning. They referred to it
pejoratively as the chicken
coop, but today they've embraced
it.'
>> It is the Zimmerman house
built for a married couple in
1950. And echoed just a few
houses down in a home built for
the Zimmerman's friends, the
kalils five years later. Both
mark a moment when the aging
Frank Lloyd Wright, one of
America's most celebrated
architects, believed he still
had much to say.
>> He was influenced by prairie
architecture, but also by
Japanese architecture.
>> Alan Chong is the director of
the currier museum of art which
inherited the Zimmerman home,
fully intact, in 1988. It
purchased the Kalil house in
2019 the first time it had ever
come up for sale.
>> We regard these two houses as
works of art, so they're
technically part of the
collection. We maintain them for
the public; for the future.
>> Both couples busy, childless
professionals working in the
medical field wanted homes that
would be modern, but also feel
warm. So they reached out to
Wright. Then in his 80s, he was
re-engaging in residential
design. Kurt Sundstrom is the
currier museum's senior curator.
>> He saw this opportunity after
World War two with people buying
homes, the getting out of the
depression, that there was an
opportunity to create
beautifully designed homes for
the middle class.
>> Even if from the front and to
the neighbors' chagrin, it
didn't look that way.
>> If we look at the street
view, the facade of this
building, it's like a
militaristic building. It very
much keeps the privacy of the
individual. But then when you
look outside, you have this
magnificent open glass wall that
leads on to these beautifully
designed gardens.
And those colors integrate
beautifully with this building.
So what is actually a small home
feels expansive in this
environment, but also very
protective from the outside
world.
>> In all elements of the home,
Wright and his design team were
all in. Surviving letters reveal
the couple gave the architect
free reign right down to their
stationery and a music stand for
the music lovers.
>> He designed everything. For
him, it was the whole rather
than, I'll just build the house
and then you guys can furnish it
whatever way you want.
Architecture, in a building like
this, was a complete work of
art. You can see, even in the
woodwork, the level of detail is
extraordinary. This is Georgia
cypress. He takes planks and the
planks are married when they
turn a corner, so they're the
same piece of wood.
>> Wright designed both the
Zimmerman and Kalil homes while
also working on the Guggenheim
museum in New York City. All
three projects are similar in
that they adhere to his
philosophy of organic
architecture.
>> These houses are of the
Earth. The house almost seems to
rise out of the landscape and
you'll see in both houses,
certain areas of the house go
below grade. So that integration
right into the landscape is
essential for these homes.
>> The houses were also studies
in simplicity. Or at least they
were supposed to be. As the
currier's Andrew Spahr explains,
they were designed under a
system Wright called usonian
automatic.
>> Well, usonian was sort of his
play on the United States of
America, and usonian was his
philosophy for building these
houses and villages, cities. And
automatic was intended to imply
that the owner could construct
the house.
>> By way of a builder's roadmap
not unlike legos.
>> There are approximately 12 or
13 different, distinct blocks
that were designed to construct
this house. There were only
seven of these houses built,
ultimately, and the owner or the
contractor would construct
molds, and would then cast these
concrete molds to make the
blocks. And you would do a tally
as to how many of which kind of
blocks you needed to construct
the house.
>> To be clear, both the
zimmermans and kalils hired
builders. And for the subsequent
decades they lived in their
homes, the couples kept them
just as both they and the
architect wished. So that two of
Frank Lloyd Wright's final
projects could also be lasting
ones.
>> Their home, they recognized
they were only temporary owners,
and that it needed to be passed
on. It's the way we buy a work
of art. You know, someone, a
private person buying a
rembrandt, you're just a
temporary custodian. And that's
why the currier is so fortunate
to have two homes showing two
different aspects of a similar
type of home that he was
designing.
>> For the pbs newshour, I'm
Jared Bowen in Manchester, new
Hampshire.
♪♪