#471/Cameron Hassid + Darren Kelly + Patrick Cannon + Musical Guest Nicole Lvoff

Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio

0:00I'm Owen Hopkins, author of The Manifesto House, and you're listening to U.S. Modernist Radio. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Oh, I don't care what mama don't allow, gonna draw my modern anyhow. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio, where we talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world.

0:36I'm Tom Guile. Today, our guests include Cameron Hasid. He bought a bankrupt, boarded-up Richard Neutra apartment building in Los Angeles and turned its restoration into a second career. Bay Area architect Darren Kelly is an expert on Rush Creek Village, Ohio's little-known Usonian-inspired community, and the author of a new book. Patrick Cannon retired from public relations and wrote a comprehensive book on Frank Lloyd Wright's work in Oak Park and River Forest.

1:09Closing us out, returning musical guest Nicole Leboff. And now, here's your host, Mr. Modernism, George Smart.

How architecture schools fail clients

1:17Hey, thanks, Tom. Right now, in rooms with exposed ductwork and Noguchi lamps, independent architects are staring at phones that aren't ringing, with no text except from their mothers, and wondering why the world refuses to recognize their genius. The answer to this question was custom-installed, like a leaky dishwasher, in their architecture schools, and it has never been uninstalled since. Architecture schools prepare students brilliantly for clients who do not exist.

1:48Consider the architecture professor, the only client students practice on. The professor arrives on schedule. The professor has read the brief of the project because the professor wrote the brief. The professor spends 45 uninterrupted minutes contemplating drawings and says things like, I wonder if the party is fighting the section here. The professor cares deeply about the concept and wants to hear about the process, the design journey, the inspiration, the motivation,

2:19a complete psycho history of why the student made the front door face east. The professor never asks what anything costs because in studio, nothing costs anything. Materials are infinite, budgets are theoretical, even gravity is negotiable. Then, graduation happens, and the architect starts meeting actual clients. It is like training for five years to be a brilliant matador and then being asked to fight a golden retriever who wants a bigger garage.

2:49Real clients do not want to know your motivation. Real clients look at your carefully composed sketch that you stayed up until 3 a.m. rendering for maybe four seconds and say, Can the kitchen island be bigger? My sister Karen has a really big island. Real clients have never heard the word party and, if forced to guess, assume it's a typo. They think that cladding is a band Enya used to belong to. Real clients ask what things cost immediately, sometimes before hello.

3:22Real clients say devastating things like, I saw it on Pinterest and, My brother-in-law is a contractor. Michael Gerber wrote the E-Myth 30 years ago about small business owners. But he might as well have been sitting in an architect's office. His central idea, what he calls the fatal assumption, is that people believe that if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand the business that does the technical work. Architects don't just make the fatal assumption. They get it tattooed somewhere tasteful in Helvetica.

3:55They are, in Gerber's phrase, working in the business, not on the business. Hunched over their computers at midnight while the actual enterprise, marketing, sales, cash flow, and returning people's phone calls gets put off. All of this converges into one glorious, self-defeating truth. Most independent architects are catastrophic salespeople, and most of them are proud of it. The technician wants to be chosen, not sell. Chosen the way the professor chose them,

4:25with a knowing nod and an A-minus. Selling feels like pandering. And so they struggle with the boom and bust of cash flow. Their excuse to not sell when they need work is lack of money. Their excuse when they're busy is lack of time. Does this resonate with anyone? U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of Richard Neutra's Kauffman Desert House in Palm Springs, and six other houses in California. By the E. Faye Jones Conservancy,

4:55preserving the legacy of modernist architecture in northwest Arkansas. Efejonesconservancy.org. And by Diane Bald and the Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs. In November 1927, a brief notice appears in the L.A. Times. A Class B apartment house was under construction at Marathon Street, containing 43 apartments at an estimated cost of $225,000.

5:28The notice said nothing about what the building would mean.

Restoring Neutra's Jardinette Apartments

5:31This building was the Jardinette Apartments, completed in 1928. And it was the first solo commission in the U.S. for Richard Neutra, the Austrian-born architect who would become one of the defining figures of American modernism. And with us today is the man who took these apartments, which have been in disarray for some time, and restored them and made them wonderful again, Cameron Hasid. Welcome, Cameron. Hi. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. So what mental illness possessed you to take on this project, Cameron?

6:03Because this is a big haul. This is an expensive, time-consuming, complex project. What possessed you? How much time do you have? Because there's not one mental illness. I mean, there's multiple involved in taking on something like this. But it all started when a broker, wonderful broker by the name of Mima Ahadian, brought this property to me sometime in 2018 or 19-ish, I believe.

6:36It was under the previous ownership, or actually the ownership before that. And I looked at it, and I saw that I really liked the location because I believe Western Avenue is one of the main arteries we have here in Los Angeles. Yeah. And by artery, I mean goes all the way north to very far south and takes you through multiple cities and counties along the way. We have a few others, such as La Cienega, Westwood Boulevard, La Brea, you know, other

7:12streets like that. So that was one of the things that caught me. And then seeing that it was an opportunity to significantly overhaul and value add to an existing building that was vacant. Now, the historical aspect was one of the things in the beginning that kind of scared me, but didn't really scare me. It scared me because, you know, you have to go according to the historical structure report. You have to deal with multiple eyes and ears involved the entire way.

7:45But that ended up being a blessing in the end because we got so much help from the architectural and the historical community, starting with Dr. Barbara Lampricht, Corey Miller, and Anant Topiwala of June Street Architecture, Mike Norberg of Cali Planners, and then, of course, Lambert Giesinger and Melissa Jones of the Cultural Heritage Commission. That team alone, so much experience, so much knowledge about this, and they were just so,

8:20so supportive and helpful along the whole way. And I mean, I can't thank them enough. It was just unreal, the amount of help we got. And they helped us through multiple delays, sourcing materials for this property. It just, I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And without this team involved, I don't see any way that we could have possibly done this. And just so you know, this team was involved in this project about five or six years before I took over and bought it. They were involved two owners ago.

8:53The property kind of stalled for a little bit. And unfortunately, it was foreclosed on. And it came back around to me after the lender had foreclosed. They took it out to a few other buyers. They went in escrow a couple times, fell out, and then it came back to me. And when I saw the opportunity, I just jumped on it. At what point did you realize how significant this building is in the history of L.A. modernism? I thought I knew when I was in escrow, but I only realized how historically significant

9:28and how important this was to the historical community about a year, year and a half into the project when I just had multiple, multiple random architectural owners and Neutra fanatics and things like that reaching out to me out of the blue. Building was never on the market, was never advertised for sale. We were just going through the motions of getting everything permitted on the property, sourcing materials, and working to get all of our plans approved and finalized.

10:03And it just wouldn't stop. It seems like every month, two, three new groups would reach out. Oh my God, can we please come look at it? We're interested and we would love to help or we'd like to buy it or whatever. And it just, it hasn't stopped since. Even today till this very day, like once the L.A. Times went live with their article, which was about, I think it went live in the middle of March and it was a wonderful writer by the name of Sam Lubell.

10:36I know Sam. He's been a guest on the show. Yeah, he's awesome. I love that guy. Very cool. Very detailed. I mean, he spent a lot of time coming through asking all the questions in the world. And I think he put together a wonderful article thanks to him in the L.A. Times. I mean, the interest in this property has more than doubled since. What an art piece. I didn't realize how important and how significant it was. And I'm still learning more and more and more about this property every day.

11:09Well, I just want to personally thank you for taking this on because it's not every day that buildings like this get to survive and thrive and be remodeled again. So from all of us modernists, thank you. I very much appreciate that. But honestly, the credit has to go to the team. These guys deserve all the credit for the amount of blood, sweat and tears and sleepless nights they put into this project with me. I've grown to love these people.

11:41I appreciate them. And I highly, highly, highly recommend every single one of them. Well, let me ask you some practical questions about the restoration. So when you took title to the building, it had been through several other owners who had tried to restore it. What shape was it in when you found it and what was done and what surprised you that needed work? Oh, wow. Well, Sam asked me a similar question and I sent him a couple hundred photos of what

12:11it looked like when I bought it. It looked like the Beverly Hills Hotel gone bad. Okay. It was an ugly pink, peach and green color with a mixture of really ugly aluminum and vinyl windows next to the really, really cool and nice original windows. It looked like Frankenstein. There were so many mismatched parts and colors and flooring and cabinets and doorknobs and door

12:44handles and toilets and faucets. There was so much, unfortunately, of the original mind, body and soul of this building that had been replaced over the years. Original tile that was destroyed, sadly. But luckily, we were able to salvage a lot of it. And throughout the building, we were very careful, very delicate with keeping the original as much as possible. And for stuff that was just beyond repair, taking parts of it that we felt we could salvage and

13:18putting it back into the building. But honestly, when I drive to the building and I still go there daily, we still have some, you know, small touch up here and there, a few units that we're still doing flooring in on the first floor, second, third, and fourth floor completed and done. But compared to what it was when we first took over, night and day is an understatement. It's a completely different building. And I feel like Raymond, Neutra, Barbara, and everybody that's seen the building lately,

13:54we all agree we hope we made Richard Neutra proud. And I think we did. It's such a difference compared to what it looked like when we first took over. It does look fantastic. Now, when you were doing the restoration, was there any part of it that you were surprised was intact and you didn't have to fix? Apartment 302 is the most originally intact kitchen. It still has the icebox from 1928 in there. Oh, wow.

14:24Yeah. It still has the original sink in there, which we've done our best to preserve and restore and repolish. The backsplash is about half original. And the reason why I say half is some of the tile in the backsplash was so badly damaged that we had to take it out and restore. And we also had to get behind there to do the new plumbing. That's the most originally intact unit. We do have a few others, like about, I want to say, 20-ish bathrooms that still have original

14:58tile walls and hexagon tile flooring. We do have multiple bathrooms with the original cast iron tubs that were in there, which we're very happy that we were able to keep. And there are about 60 to 80 of the original windows that we were able to restore. We were able to take out, reweld, seal, paint, polish, and put new glass in. And we were able to relocate some of the windows because, like I said, I mean, sometimes in

15:34some of the windows, the Frankenstein effect, where they ripped out half of them and put them alongside some really ugly aluminum windows and vinyl windows. Now, the future of this building, these are going to be apartments. Yes. And you're looking to sell the building to some special person to be the next steward. What kind of person is that going to be? My dream come true would be selling it to either an architectural historian or an architectural

16:08school or somebody who is already involved in landmark historical preservation properties. That would be my dream come true. I know, but they don't have any money, so. Some of them do. You'd be surprised whether it's with donors or with endowment. Yeah, with donors and endowments, you can put something together. Sure. Yes. You know, we do have some interest from affordable housing groups, which would be fantastic too,

16:38because if you look in the original description of this building, it was built for affordable housing. So, those are the groups that I would like most to pass it on to, somebody who's going to appreciate this place and, God willing, keep it up to par for the next hundred years to come. That would be my dream come true. And when we were talking before this, you told me that if it does sell, you want to find another project and take this on.

17:10And I was counseling you that, you know, this may be terminal, Cameron. This is a fever that you catch of doing restorations, and it's hard to shake it. It really, truly is. And I honestly, you hit the nail on the head. It is a bug. It is terminal. But the amount of pride and happiness and satisfaction I've gotten out of doing this project, it's hard to match to anything.

17:40I mean, it's on a different level. It's so cool to be involved in something like this and just restoring this building to its original glory. It's hard to put into words. I mean... It's given you a new obsession. There's no fear. It really is an obsession. It truly is. It really, truly has become an obsession. Oh, yeah. I'm just so happy we did it. I started documenting mid-century modern houses about 20 years ago, and now we're 25,000,

18:13the 30,000 houses in so far. So it's just, it's not going to stop. A different flavor of that same obsession. Yeah. And once you see who you're doing this for and what it's all about is when you really realize, like, how much people really, truly care about this type of a property and the amount of interest in it, and, you know, they're not prying eyes. They're people that are just truly in love with the process, in love with the stories behind

18:48it, the amount of work that goes into it, and they know who, what, where, when, and how. I mean, the building literally has its own Wikipedia page, plus multiple books that were written about it, and it's awesome. It's really, truly awesome. Well, on behalf of all the modernist fans everywhere, thank you for taking this on. I know it took a long time. It was very expensive. You had a lot of headaches. You had a lot of ups and downs, but you made it.

19:19And you've given a gift to architecture, to the city of L.A., and to modernism in general. So thank you, Cameron. I've really enjoyed talking with you. It really, really means a lot to me. Both Barbara Lamprecht, Corey Miller, Anant Topiwala, Mike Norberg, Lambert Giesinger, Melissa Jones. The thanks and the credit goes to them.

Exploring Ohio's Rush Creek Village

19:42That was George's conversation with Cameron Haseed. Darren Kelly is an architect who spent decades designing health care spaces for organizations like Stanford Medicine. But he's best known as the foremost chronicler of Rush Creek Village, a remarkable 47-home, Usonian-inspired community in Ohio, inspired directly by a visit from its creator to Frank Lloyd Wright. Darren's definitive book even covers a neuroscience-based theory for why Usonian houses make

20:15people feel better. But George began his conversation with Darren Kelly by asking about food. Darren, before we start talking about architecture, tell me about how it is to eat llama at 13,000 feet in Bolivia. Oh my, your research team really is top-notch. Okay. That day that I did that, it was probably more enjoyable than I remember it being. I was suffering hypoxia at that point pretty badly, and I mustered within myself that fortitude

20:53of my upbringing to finish as much as I could. I remember it tasting a lot like dirt. Really? To be honest, would not, I mean, I would recommend the experience. But I was traveling up and down in elevation more than I should have been on that trip and was suffering a migraine like I'd never experienced before. And so I was kind of going through the motions. So I don't have many memories to post about llama soup at 13,000 feet.

21:26I was wondering if, you know, the usual expression is it tastes like chicken, but I've never heard of a meat that tastes like dirt before. It was the potatoes. It was the freeze-drying, the traditional freeze-drying of the potatoes. And let's not call it dirt. Okay. Let's say that the potatoes, the traditionally freeze-dried potatoes brought out the terroir in this recipe. Yeah, that you could really taste the flavor of the Andes. So have you ever tried llama at, like, sea level, like in a restaurant?

22:02No, I haven't. I haven't had the opportunity. There aren't many. As varied as the cuisine is here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I've never seen llama as an offering. Well, I'll have to Google for that. So tell me about this great place that you've written a book about called Rush Creek Village, because I don't think a lot of people have heard of it. Yeah, Rush Creek, I think it's survived and thrived from being obscure. I grew up in Worthington, about a quarter of a mile from Rush Creek, and would sneak over

22:40often just to see what was there. I knew that it was something different, certainly, than everything else in Worthington, certainly anything that I'd seen or imagined before. And, you know, it exists as this composition of 50 or so private residences tucked into the ravines and meadows of central Ohio, well-hidden and healthy for that, and thriving to this

23:11day as an intact community, neighborhood of families, 70 years after it started. Now, who designed all this? I think the concept originated with Martha Wakefield, which distinguishes, I think, Rush Creek from a lot of the mid-century undertakings like this. I'm not familiar of another residential development in the movement that was originated by a woman.

23:42So I think that distinguishes Rush Creek. Martha and her husband, Richard Wakefield, conceived an idea as a result of a benediction they were offered by Frank Lloyd Wright when they left his home there in Arizona in 1947. And he commanded them to go forth, to go home, to buy a jeep for some reason, to build themselves a home and then to build a home for their neighbor. And they did just that.

24:13And they did just that. They spent their entire lives realizing that. And they found in Theodore Van Fossen, who was a Columbus native, who had practiced on the West Coast for a time after World War II. So they found in him a kindred spirit, someone who shared their values and was willing to dedicate his life to doing this. And how long did it take to build out the neighborhood? The initial construction took about 20 years. So it was a slow undertaking.

24:46They started the Wakefield residence in 54. And the last building of the initial drive was finished in 76 with the Yurik House. Now, there have been a few buildings, a few homes added to the community more recently. But the initial push was 20 years of some impressive effort. You have spent your career designing a number of hospitals and health care facilities from San Francisco, Redwood City, Buffalo, Fullerton, and even in South Korea.

25:23Any of this growing up near Rush Creek influence how you do architecture? Well, I think I found in the experiences of the members at Rush Creek something relevant to the work that I had been doing in health care. I initially got into health care because when I got out of school, there was a job for me doing that. But as I kept doing that, I worked in medical planning and health care design for, I think, 10 or 15 years.

25:55And the stated goal of health care architecture always seemed to be wellness. And so what intrigued me about Rush Creek Village upon meeting the neighbors in the community was that they described the effects that living in their homes and in that neighborhood had on them. Tell me what those are because I'm interested. Yeah, to a single one, they all described similar experiences of being imbued with a sense of well-being, of slowing their lives down, of changing their values for some of them, to appreciate the natural environment around them.

26:39Because these are half to three-quarter parcels. They're not oriented. The houses are not oriented to the streets. They're oriented to the ravines, the woods, the meadows, and to one another. And something about that put the hook in me. There was something to be studied. There was something to be gleaned from that. And I think, initially, the promise of Rush Creek delivered something that conventional health care architecture just doesn't.

27:12I know the profession uses the rhetoric of wellness and healing spaces to sell the services. But I think that any notion of healing environment lacks an understanding of what it means to receive health care treatment. And I think there are treatment spaces. But the homes at Rush Creek Village, I think, do foster wellness in a way that one or two nights stay at a hospital can't. The occupants of these homes are immersed all the time in these environments that help them live better lives.

27:50It sounds Pollyanna, it sounds maybe a little romantic, but they all describe this sense of well-being that they ascribe to the homes, to living there. And with each other as neighbors. None of these homes are designed to exist as their own universe. They are nodes in a much larger composition. And they were planned deliberately as such. Well, it does sound fabulous, but tell me what makes this up.

28:21I mean, what are the elements that create this kind of vibe inside the houses? Yeah, there's a thing about Rush Creek. While the homes themselves, and they are clearly, obviously planned and designed according to Wright's organic planning principles. You look at them and you can see where they come from philosophically. They provide these environments on their own. Each house on its own provides these environments that project the occupant out into the natural environment.

28:53That's certainly delivered on those goals that Wright and much of mid-century design promised for the benefit of the building occupant. So you've got big windows and openings and courtyards and atriums and all of those things. Right, and features that Van Fossen would describe as psychological space to bring the inside to the outside. But what happened at Rush Creek, and it's still happening, is that the houses are aligned, are carefully planned within this natural flowing landscape that remains largely unaltered in order to create these exterior spaces that are very subtly defined.

29:43So you have the interplay of inside to outside, and then when the occupant is projected into the outside natural environment with the cycles and geometries of nature that we now know are beneficial for humans, there's an outside space for them. These subtly defined spaces, the houses, which can be seen from one another, never inside the houses, so there's always a sense of privacy, but you can see the houses exist almost as sculptures in a Japanese garden.

30:20These spaces between the buildings are activated. I always describe them as having an electric sensibility. Van Fossen described it as spatial tension, but what that does is that provides us a safe place for the occupant of the building to project themselves out into. Not vulnerable to others, not invulnerable to, but a safe space for them. And that exists within these interstitial spaces among the ravines and the meadows and within these wooded lots.

30:56Well, give me a sense of the scale we're talking about here. How big are these houses, and how big is the land each of the lots sit on, approximately? The lots tend to be half to three-quarter acre. Some of the homes are small. These homes were developed to be accessible to middle-class Americans. Small like how big? Of ordinary means. Some of them are as small as 1,200 or 1,400 square feet. Some of them as large as 2,000 square feet.

31:27Certainly, the newer buildings are built to our 21st century standards. But some of these homes were designed for people of limited means. There were no deed restrictions in terms of who could buy into the project. So, you could be black or Jewish or anything you wanted to be at that time. That's unusual. There were mixed-race couples. There was a Jewish couple among the original members. An unmarried woman was one of the original members.

32:00Which, you know, our younger, your younger listeners will find it shocking that in the United States, in most places, an unmarried woman or any woman could not get a credit card. By herself, yes. Or open a credit account at a department store without her husband's permission. Yeah. And so, these were those philosophical underpinnings that Martha Wakefield had, Martha and Dick, certainly, and Ted Van Fossen shared as well for their entire lives. That the project would be open to all, regardless.

32:33And that using these tools provided to them, by Wright and by others, that they could craft a sustainable community of individuals who could come together and form a community that may ordinarily otherwise not. Now, would these houses in Rush Creek be considered Usonian houses that some fans are familiar with? There's a group of them in New York, for instance. Right. I think, in the interest of being concise, you could say they're Usonian in the sense that they certainly utilize the Usonian language.

33:12Yeah. The 3 and 12 roof slopes, the flat roofs, full height glazing where appropriate, corner windows, the use of exterior finishes that continue into the interiors. But the framing of them is conventional. They're not the tricky framing that Wright would detail. It makes them easier to maintain in the present day than Wright designed Usonian. But, yeah, they certainly have that language. Did they have any miracle chemicals of the time, like asbestos, to deal with?

33:46Oh, I'm sure. Although, the material palette, it's limited. It's concrete masonry units, glass, and wood, a lot of mahogany. Wow. In profiles, you don't see much of today. Some of the original countertops were two-inch slabs of cypress, which Martha Wakefield explained to me were just fine because cypress grows in a bog and it loves the water. Ceramic tile, a very limited, simple palette.

34:16But, yeah, as you know, that some of the materials of the time present us with challenges today. Some of the buildings were constructed partially by the members in order to make them affordable. One subsequent member, upon purchasing one of the homes, found that when they went to investigate where the lights were flickering, found that the wiring for the house had been done with speaker wire and immediately had to rewire the house.

34:50Which was a little difficult, which was a little difficult given the amount of concrete block used to build it. But it became an immediate priority for obvious reasons. Now, does Rush Creek Village do anything during the year, like have a special weekend? I know Holland Hills and Alexandria, a similar neighborhood does, where people can tour some or a grouping of the houses. The membership association conducts guided tours of a limited number of the homes.

35:22You know, it's important to remember this isn't an array of buildings. It's a community. It's a neighborhood. And not all of the members today, you know, will want to open their homes to strangers. But the neighborhood association, I understand, still holds guided tours. I'm not even sure who to talk to about that. I know that the city of Worthington, which was once very skeptical and nervous about what the Wakefields and Van Fossen were doing there in those ravines.

35:55I know that they've now embraced Rush Creek Village for being as unique as it is. And they, the Worthington Historical Society, the Worthington Public Libraries, I think, participate to some degree in those guided tours. Are they ongoing or once a year? And how does it work generally? I believe it's once a year. Okay. If my memory serves correctly, they occur in late summer in August. It used to be that Theodore Van Fossen would come to Worthington and give those guided tours himself.

36:31I was afforded hours of VHS footage of Ted Van Fossen leading 20 or 30 residents of Worthington through the development. Have you digitized those yet? I did. I used those in writing the book, but I also just use them to spend time with my old friend from time to time. Yeah. Mr. Van Fossen passed away in 2010, and they are a convenient resource.

37:03Absolutely. The book is Interstitial, 60 Years at Rush Creek Village, published in 2017. And Darren has kindly allowed us to scan the book and put it online. So if you go to the U.S. Modernist Architecture Media Library, which is usmodernist.org slash library, and go to our book section, you can download the entire book with all the photos. And it's a great book. I love these houses. I'm very partial to houses that are smaller because they really do the job for that kind of living that you described earlier.

37:42We certainly stand in quiet opposition to so many of our current residential trends. Yes, like McMansions. I didn't want to use that word, but yes. I didn't want to bring that word into our discussion about things that I think are substantive, but yes.

38:02Well, it's been such a pleasure talking with you, and thank you for letting people have access to the book. And I can't wait to see what you do next. Well, thank you very much.

The history of Wright's Roby House

38:12That was George's conversation with Darren Kelly. For Patrick Cannon, the architecture of Chicago has inspired a career that spans more than four decades and established him as one of the most authoritative voices on Chicago's buildings, with books including Hometown Architect, Prairie Metropolis, The Space Within, At Home in Chicago, and Louis Sullivan, An American Architect. What's remarkable is that he did not publish his first book until age 68, after a 30-plus year career entirely outside architecture or publishing.

38:49Patrick's new book is The Roby House, a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece. He's written about the house, and he's given tours of the house. Welcome, Patrick. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. You were one of the earliest volunteers, I think 52 years ago, at the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio. Yeah, I was, and there aren't too many of us left, a few, but I started shortly after they purchased the home and studio in 1974 from one of the last owner, and they then undertook a complete restoration of the home and studio, of course.

39:25And we started giving tours during the restoration, and I've been giving tours ever since, with a couple years off for a couple of things. Was there excitement about it at the time, or had Frank Lloyd Wright really not caught on yet as a thing people loved? Well, there was a lot of enthusiasm for Wright beginning at that point, I think. I remember as a young man in high school and college, Frank Lloyd Wright was still alive. He died in 1959. And he was a colorful personality, and he really got a lot of attention in the media.

40:00I remember him being interviewed by Mike Wallace and others, and he always had an opinion, as you know, about things, and it was sometimes outrageous. And so I was interested in that. But then when I went to Northwestern, I was an art history minor. As part of the courses I took, there was a semester on the Chicago School of Architecture, taught by Carl Condit, who was a leading authority on the tall building, if you will. And although we emphasize historic buildings like Sullivan's and the Oliverton Road and others, we did visit the Roby House.

40:34It was not in great condition at that point. Remember, the living room looked like a waiting room. But nevertheless, I was impressed, obviously, by the outside. And then when they bought the home and studio, I thought, well, here's an opportunity to deepen my knowledge a little bit about Frank Lloyd Wright and add something to the community, because I was living at Oak Park at the time. So let's talk about the Roby House specifically. How did the Robys contract with Wright to start the house? Well, Roby did some reminiscences.

41:06He was talking to friends about what he expected to have in his house. He was doing well financially and just thought it was time to build a house. And he put a premium on a lot of natural light, also a sense of privacy and shelter and all those things. And somebody said, well, you must want one of those damn Frank Lloyd Wright houses. And so apparently, Roby, according to Roby, that's how it started. And he then contacted Wright. And they obviously had a meeting of minds.

41:37And what year was this, approximately? He would have met Wright in 1908. The design process lasted until 1909. And it was under construction when Wright left for Europe. So he left in September. And the house was under construction then. So he wasn't around when it was completed. What were some of the features of the Roby House when it was first built? He wanted the latest in technology. So the house had all those things.

42:07It had, of course, central heating, which was not as common as you might think in 1910. It had a central vacuum system. Really? In 1910, it had a central vacuum? It had a central vacuum system. It had an intercom system. It had a three-car attached garage. It had all the bells and whistles that really we expect now. And he put them in then. That's amazing. And Roby was a mechanical engineer himself.

42:38His company, his father's company, started out in the sewing machine business, parts. Then they got to making bicycles because Fred was quite a bicycle enthusiast. And then they started making motorcycles. And it turns out that the Excelsior motorcycle, which was eventually bought by Schwinn, was a very popular motorcycle right up into the 30s, I guess. And they are now collector's items. So Fred was quite interested in technology. And I think that's another meeting point with Frank Lloyd Wright. How long did the Roby family own the house?

43:11The Roby family moved in in 1910. And then things started going wrong for Roby. His father died. And it turned out his father was fairly deeply in debt. So Roby had to pay off the family debts. In the meantime, apparently Roby himself was strayed a little bit from the marriage bed. And his wife discovered it. And so she divorced him. And so they only lived there for about a year. When he sold the house to raise money, she moved back to Springfield, where fortunately for her, her father owned the bank and stayed in Springfield with the kids.

43:47So after that, it was owned by another family, the Taylors. Then he died. So it was like the curse of the Roby house for a while. And Mrs. Taylor decided she wanted to go back where most of her friends were in Wilmette, which is north of Chicago. And then the Wilbur family bought it finally in 1912. And they stayed until the mid-20s, when it was bought by the Chicago Theological Seminary. And what did the seminary do with it? Well, they used it as, apparently, part of it was used as a dining room for the faculty.

44:18The bedrooms, apparently, I found this out later. I gave a tour one day, and there was an elderly African-American lady on the tour at the Roby house. We were in the guest bedroom on the main floor, and she said, you know, this was my room once. And I said, oh, well, how did that happen? And she said the dormitories at the University of Chicago, when she was there, did not admit African-American to the dormitories. So they had to find her another place to stay, and that's where they put her.

44:50Wow. Isn't that amazing? That's a great break for somebody in unfortunate circumstances. Right, right. So eventually, it was donated to the university by William Zeckendorf of Webb and Knapp, the Manhattan real estate developers. They were working with the university, doing some development in Hyde Park, where the university is located. And the Roby house was going to be bought, or turned down, really, by the seminary. They wanted to build a bigger dormitory. And so Zeckendorf arranged to buy it and donate it to the university.

45:24And, in fact, the university still owns it to this day. Okay. And when did it start to go into steep decline? Well, you know, over the years, I think that it had so many uses. It was the alumni office. It was the Adelaide Stevenson Institute. Everybody tried to adapt it for whatever they needed. A lot of the original fixtures were taken out. For example, there were beautiful brass wall sconces in the reception area and on the second floor living room and dining room.

45:55They were all gone. They replastered the walls in a smooth texture. A lot of changes were made, mostly by deduction rather than addition. And so when we took it over, all of those things had to be returned. It had to be replastered. The life fixtures had to be returned to the original condition in place and so forth. Not only that, but a lot of structural work had to be done. A new roof and so forth. And they completely redid the exterior. The tuck pointing had to be redone.

46:26And it was very complicated because it's a very horizontal structure, as you probably have noticed. And the vertical joints between the bricks are the same color as the bricks. So the mortar had to be specially done. It was very expensive. The bricks were no longer made when they needed replacements. But they managed to find the original manufacturer in St. Louis. So it was really an interesting and long-term process. I assume there were some unfortunate renovations along the way.

46:56What were those? Well, for example, there's a garage court where the three-car garage is. And there's a small planning area there and a turnaround for cars. It had been an eight-foot wall with beautiful ornamental gates. And that was taken down completely. And a three-foot wall put in its place. So that had to be reconstructed. Again, the lighting had to be replaced and restored. A lot of the wood trim had been taken out for one reason or another. The kitchen had to be reconstructed as well.

47:29It was all gone. Most of the cabinets were gone. A lot of the cabinets, built-in cabinets in other parts of the house, had also been removed for whatever reason. So they had to be rebuilt. So it ended up costing well in excess of $10 million to restore a house that cost $60,000 when it was built. And what year was this? Well, the restoration was finished in 2019. It started about 10 years before then. Oh, really? That's a long time. They did the exterior first, obviously.

48:01The new roof and structure. They did all the structural stuff. And then they had to raise money to do the interior. So it was then slowly in stages as they got money to do it. Mm-hmm. And how is it now? Well, it's probably as close to Wright's original conception as it possibly could be. Everything that's there was there when Wright built it is returned. All the cabinets have been rebuilt. All the lighting is as originally specified. Aside from the fact that it, of course, has a modern climate control system and a sprinkler system and other modern touches for that space,

48:38it's pretty much as Wright designed it. Did the furniture survive? I know Wright did a lot of furniture and built-in pieces. Did they last over time or did they have to be recreated? Well, as I said, a lot of the buildings were taken out and they've been returned. There's a lot of furniture left. There's no original furniture in the building now. The university owns a lot of the furniture. For example, the dining room furniture, which has cornered lanterns and is very elaborate,

49:10has been on display at the university's smart museum from time to time. But most of the rest of it is in storage. I have a feeling that there are negotiations underway to either reproduce the furniture, if it's too valuable to be on site, or to return selected pieces from time to time. So a lot of the furniture still exists. So did they make replicas for the house currently? There are no replicas in the house at the present time. I don't run the place, obviously.

49:42My feeling is that they should have a fundraiser to make replica furniture. Okay. Because it's easily done. It's not cheap to do it, but it can be done. So how are they furnishing it now, if it's not the originals or the replica? They have a reproduction sofa. They have an exhibit from time to time in the bedroom level, upstairs in the third level, various pieces of Wright-designed furniture, including a chair from the Roby house.

50:13But most of the pieces they have in display are not from the Roby house. Okay. Where are they from? Well, they had a piece from the home studio, for example, a dining room chair. They had a chair from the Coonley Estate in Riverside, which is a western suburb of Chicago and near here, really. They had a couple of small chairs that were from a retail space at Wright-designed in the loop for a Japanese shop and a variety of things.

50:44And then actually last year, I think it was, there was a major exhibit of Wright furniture at the Milwaukee County Art Museum. I think that's gone now, but there's a lot of interest in Wright's furniture at the moment. Although, you know, the joke is that the dining room furniture is almost unsittable. Of course. With the high bags. That's always a story about Frank's furniture. I've sat in it, and it's not easy to sit in for a long period of time. How can people visit the Robey House now?

51:14The Robey House is open for tours. It's operated by the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, which is responsible for restoring it, as well as the home and studio in Oak Park. It's open almost every day. Probably the first tour might be about 10 o'clock and the last at 4, which is pretty much the pattern at the home and studio in Oak Park as well. So it's available for tours. If you go online to the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust website, you'll find all the information you need. The book is Robey House, a Frank Lloyd Wright Masterpiece.

51:45Thanks for talking with me, Patrick. You betcha, George. Thanks for having me. That was George's conversation with Patrick Cannon, who I think is missing out on a career as a movie trailer announcer. What a voice.

Musical guest Nicole Levov

51:58Returning musical guest Nicole Levov grew up in Santa Barbara, California. Her father was a Juilliard-trained violinist, her mother a classical pianist. She came to love jazz standards from the 1920s through the 60s, alongside Cole Porter and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Here's George's conversation with Nicole Levov. Nicole, you're from Santa Barbara, and I think the most that people know about Santa Barbara besides hearing it's beautiful is that Oprah lived there and Michael Jackson lived there at one time.

52:31So tell me, what else about Santa Barbara that is wonderful? Oh, it's everything about how beautiful it is. We have the mountains where you can go hiking and jump in a creek. We also have the ocean. And so the ocean is, it's pretty cold. It's nothing like Hawaii, but you can go swimming. You can go surfing. So you have these beautiful beaches that you can walk on.

53:01It's not crowded. And it's got a charming downtown. And of course, lots of wonderful musicians live in this town, which for being such a small town, you'd be surprised at the amazing quality of musicians we have. They're just, they're so professional and top-notch. But for me, it's the relaxed vibe of the town and literally the beauty of it. It's just the mountains and the ocean and the weather. It's pretty perfect. And when it rains, people tend to freak out because, wow, we're having a rainy day.

53:36But it's pretty much like in the 60s, 70s all the time. Well, thank you for coming back on the show. It's really great to have you here. You've got a new album out since we met last called The Nearness of You. And we're going to hear two tracks from that today. Tell me about this new album. Well, this new album, it's funny because it started about 13 years ago. I started it when I was pregnant with my son.

54:06And this album is very dear to my heart. Because of my pregnancy at the time, I felt like I'm probably not going to have a lot of time to do an album. So this might be a good time to do it now. So I started recording it. That's when I recorded the title track, The Nearness of You. And that's when I knew that's what the album was going to be called. I knew I was going to dedicate it to my son. And then I recorded Bejo Sane also. And then, of course, I had my son.

54:38And life, you know... Life came along. Life came along. And I just got busy. And I put the album on pause. So it's really exciting that I picked it up again. And then just decided I need to finish this. I started about maybe three years ago. And it took us two years to just finish it up. Well, let's hear a song from that. Here's Bejo Sane with Nicole and Vanessa Isaac.

55:08I'm not going to be the one who you left. But who did you leave? Love I'll go to the cap Decoded

55:40I drink all I kiss Morning I'm from Lira Mãezinha Of nobody High night It's my day And today It's my good

56:11I'm not more Who you Dejou Te ver Oh, a lapa Perfumada Virou Tras Beijos em Madrugada Sou da Lira

56:43Mãezinha De ninguém Noite alta É meu dia E a orgia É meu bem Eu não sou mais Mais Quem você Dejou Amor

57:13Amor Voa lapa Decodada Bem por todas Beijo bem Beijo e vem.

57:28Madrugada, sonalira, manhãzinha de ninguém. Lute alta é meu dia e a urgia é meu bem. Eu não sou mãe quem você deixou.

58:03Amor, amor. Lua, lava, decotada, bebo toda. Beijo bem, madrugada, sonalira, manhãzinha de ninguém. Lute alta é meu dia e a urgia é meu bem.

58:41E a urgia é meu bem. E a urgia é meu bem. E a urgia é meu bem. E a urgia é meu bem. E a urgia é meu bem.

59:14E a urgia é meu bem. E a urgia é meu bem. E a urgia é meu bem. E a urgia é meu bem. E a urgia é meu bem. E a urgia é meu bem.

59:44E a urgia é meu bem. Meus, você teve uma das minhas. Deu trabalho em um livro. Você trabalhou em uma vez em uma vez? Eu ainda mais. Sim, eu ainda mais. Você ainda mais. O que é? Sim, eu ainda mais. Eu tenho um o secret life. Eu sou uma das minhas de um dia e um do dia, um dia e um dia de um dia, um dia e um dia. That's a movie plot right there. It is. I think Batgirl had a secret life, too. I think she was a librarian. Was she a librarian? Some versions of Batgirl, I think she was.

1:00:16Yeah, that was Marlo Thomas. And I'm trying to remember the rest of the cast of that crazy show from the 60s. I don't know. I know in the comic books, I think there's one version where she's a librarian. Okay. Tell me what you do in the library. Well, at the library, I just do basic circulation. I check out books to patrons, and I get to do processing. So I get to handle all the new books that come in. My expertise is processing the children's books. So I get to see all the fun children's books that come in.

1:00:48The favorite part of my job is that I get to do story time with toddlers. Ooh, story time. Yeah, it's wild. It's a wiggly story time with Miss Nicole. So I've got a little following, so it's really fun. I bet you're just like the rager for toddlers. It's a wild time. We break out the bubbles. We do some freeze dances. And of course, we sing songs. Do they get cookies and graham crackers at the end?

1:01:19They do not. Yeah, no, they do not need that sugar, so they have their own natural energy. Yeah, I know that they do. Yeah, that's really fun. Let's hear another song from the album. This one is Easy to Love. I know too well that I'm just wasting precious time In thinking such a thing could be

1:01:51That you could ever care for me I'm sure you hate to hear That I adore you, dear But grant me just the same I'm not entirely to blame for You'd be so easy to love

1:02:26So easy to idolize all others above So worth the yearning for So swell to keep every home fire burning for And we'd be so grand at the game So carefree together

1:02:58That it does seem a shame But you can't see Your future with me Cause you'd be oh So easy to love So easy to love

1:03:44Thank you.

1:04:14It would be so easy to love, so easy to idolize all others above, so worth the yearning for, so swell to keep every home fire burning for an end. We'd be so grand at the game, so carefree together that it does seem a shame that you can't see your future with me.

1:05:02Because you'd be oh so easy to love, easy to love. Oh so easy to love, easy to love.

1:05:52Of course I love the jazz standards and I love swing tunes, but I think I would do kind of a quieter album with just instrumentation of guitar, bass, drums, and then maybe do a trio with piano, bass, and drums. But I was thinking more of a heavily guitar-influenced album with bossa nova tunes, standards, but sung in a bossa nova style. That sounds like a job for Lucinda Lane, your band. Oh yeah, that's funny. That band is very different. That has original songs by my friend Joe Woodard, and we kind of veer off and do more of a country-ish vibe.

1:06:36So, it's bossa nova twang, but we veer into original music with kind of some swing, some bassa, but a lot of country. I guess it depends on what country you're in, right? Exactly. Exactly. You're so funny. Nicole, thank you.

1:07:21And by Diane Bald and the Budman family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs. Visit usmodernist.org's massive archives to listen to past shows, discover documentation of 25,000 significant modernist houses, and access 5 million pages of classic 20th century architecture magazines. U.S. Modernist Radio is produced by Soundtracks Recording Studios in Raleigh, North Carolina. Our theme song was performed by George Smart and Robinson Earl with guest research by Bobby Morris.

1:07:54Got a guest to suggest for the show? Write her at bobby at usmodernist.org. U.S. Modernist Radio is a production of Modernist Archive Incorporated, a nonprofit educational archive for the documentation, preservation, and promotion of modernist residential design. I'm Tom Guild, George, and I'll be back soon with another no-cladding, no-party edition of U.S. Modernist Radio. Go in ya! Go in ya!