american is a difficult word. It can refer to all people from or associated with all countries in North America and possibly South America, but it is most commonly used with reference to the United States. for frank lloyd wrightFor a linguistic and architectural perfectionist, this was an intolerable situation. In his mind, the newest civilization of the New World, a vast land that offered humans a rare opportunity to reinvent themselves, needed its own adjective. So, recycling the devil’s language suggested by geographer James Duff Law in the 1900s, Wright began calling not just architecture but broader cultural projects: Usonian.
Wright completed the first so-called “Usonian House,” the Herbert and Catherine Jacobs House, in Madison, Wisconsin, during the Great Depression. Taking on the challenge of “Building a decent house for $5,000” The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation website states:the architects seized the opportunity to create “an affordable new architecture, free from European conventions and responsive to the American landscape.”
This first Usonian home, and its 60 or so successors, “had a direct connection to the earth, unencumbered by foundations, front porches, overhanging chimneys, or obtrusive shrubbery. Glass curtain walls and natural materials such as wood, stone, and brick further connected the homes to their environment.” Pleasantville, New York, is also home to the Usonian Historic District, of which three of its 47 homes were designed by Wright himself.
BBC Global video at the top of the post offers a tour of one of the homes in the Usonia Historic District led by its only surviving original owner, 100-year-old Roland Leasley. Architectural Digest video on It features the Leesley home and the Bertha and Sol Friedman home, which Wright called Toy Hill. Both have remained as true as possible to the vision that inspired them and that was intended to inspire a renaissance of American civilization. Usonian houses may have fallen short of Wright’s utopian hopes, but they have had a certain influence on postwar suburban builders and have greatly enriched the lives of their more appreciative residents. Although Lesley, who is over 100 years old, attributes his remarkable youthfulness to the artificial and natural beauty of his home environment, this last Usonian also happened to be one of the few clients who hit it off with Frank Lloyd Wright.
Related content:
Frank Lloyd Wright’s unusual windows tell us about his architectural genius
12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Homes Now Offering Virtual Tours: Hollyhock House, Taliesin West, Fallingwater and More
How Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture evolved over 70 years and changed America
Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See the Hand-Drawn Sketches of the City of Broadacre (1932)
How Frank Lloyd Wright Became Frank Lloyd Wright: Video Introduction
Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages and cultures. His projects include the Substack newsletter books about cities and a book Stateless City: A Stroll Through Los Angeles in the 21st Century. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
