#Carports buildings and structures Wisconsin | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

clearspantents · 6 years ago

Link

Contents

Wisconsin steel truss manufacturer

Storage shelter including

West los angeles medical center

Extensive retail branch network

Clear Span Steel Trusses Steel trusses are one of our specialties. As a wisconsin steel truss manufacturer, we design, engineer, and manufacture steel trusses. An established steel truss manufacturer – here for you! Clear Span Garages On May 28th at 9:00pm EST, the company will be featured on an episode of "How It’s Made" airing on the Science Channel. Buildings Salvage Clearspan.com Growerssupply.com is tracked by us since May, 2012. Over the time it has been ranked as high as 208 199 in the world, while most of its traffic comes from USA, where it reached as high as 41 215 position. commercial distribution Center It’s entitled for more than 20 million square feet of commercial Temporary Shelters custom instant portable garage shelters and carport building kits for all weather instant storage shelter including garages, carports, easy up canopies, outdoor party tents, green houses, animal shelters and more The VA west los angeles medical center, part of the VA Greater Los angeles healthcare system. The campus will be the site of … Portable

With a focus on providing end-to-end material handling solutions … region is serviced through an extensive retail branch network, which includes locations across Australia, New Zealand …

Clearspan Building ClearSpan Fabric Structures announced a huge savings opportunity on the company’s non-truss fabric buildings. starting today, customers can take advantage of free shipping on all of ClearSpan’s non-tr… ClearSpan Freestanding Buildings. Ideal for boat, hay, grain, sand and salt storage, livestock production, truck and tractor garage and much more. • compare our price to the

Worldwide, CLARK has one of the broadest product lines in the industry with five major lines. Trucks ranging from 1,500 to 18,000 pound capacities, LPG, gasoline, dual fuel, diesel, narrow-aisle stackers, electric riders and powered hand trucks.

Material handling involves short-distance movement within the confines of a building or between a building and a transportation vehicle. It uses a wide range of manual, semi-automated, and automated equipment and includes consideration of the protection, storage, and control of materials throughout their manufacturing, warehousing, …

Clear Span Garages On May 28th at 9:00pm EST, the company will be featured on an episode of "How It’s Made" airing on the Science Channel. ClearSpan’s segment will highlight what it takes to manufacture the company’s li… ClearSpan buildings come with industry-leading warranties that include 50 years on frames, 25 years on corrugated metal and 20 years Clearspan.com Growerssupply.com is tracked by us since May, 2012. Over the time it has been ranked as high as 208 199 in the world, while most of its traffic comes from USA, where it reached as high as 41 215 position. Commercial Distribution Center It’s entitled for more than 20 million square feet of commercial and

Toyota Material Handling Group (TMHG) was created in 2006 and is a division of Toyota Industries Corporation, founded in 1926 by …

Industrial Automation , Material Handling Equipment

Linde Material Handling GmbH, a KION Group company, is a leading global manufacturer of forklift trucks and warehouse trucks, …

The post Material Handling Network appeared first on Clear Span Tent Manufacturers.

Source by: https://ift.tt/2y2S5ty

#clear span tent structures #construction tents #commercial tents #temporary fabric structures #clear

0 notes

gillespialfredoe01806ld · 6 years ago

Text

7 Fantastic Frank Lloyd Wright Homes on the Market Right Now

realtor.com

In the world of American architecture, one name stands apart: Frank Lloyd Wright.

Wright breathed life into organic architecture, an approach to building with an eye always fixed on the structure’s natural surroundings, grounded in simplicity and function above all else.

Dubbed by the American Institute of Architects as the “greatest American architect of all time,” Wright designed more than 1,100 buildings, 532 of which were eventually built. From his early designs in the low-slung prairie style to the efficient, affordable Usonian style inspired by the Great Depression, everything Wright created aimed to create spaces that he described as “eloquent and humane.”

Thanks to fans of his work, and the dedication of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, many of his designs have been preserved and are still in use today.

In fact, we spied seven incredible homes designed by Wright on the market right now. Let’s have a look…

1. 5212 E Exeter Blvd, Phoenix, AZ

Price: $12.95 million David and Gladys Wright House: Built in 1951, this home was designed for Wright’s son David, and his wife, Gladys. It was a warmup of sorts—a spiral design that preceded Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The home needs fairly extensive repairs, including structural and electrical, but the guesthouse has been recently updated. Included with the sale of the home is a dining table, chairs, and a reproduction of the “March Balloons” carpet Wright designed for the home.

The house designed for David and Gladys Wright

realtor.com

———

2. 2107 West Lawn Ave, Madison, WI

Price: $799,000 American System–Built Home: Wright partnered with the Arthur L. Richards factory to design prefabricated, ready-to-assemble structures to cut costs. Several of these homes still stand in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. This three-bedroom version, built in 1917, was recently verified as a genuine Wright design.

American Systems–Built Home

realtor.com

———

3. 2607 Glendower Ave, Los Angeles, CA

Price: $23 million Ennis House: Perched atop a Los Feliz hill with views of the Los Angeles skyline and the Pacific Ocean, the Ennis house has been meticulously restored. Built in 1924, the three-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom “textile block” home has been featured in many movies, TV shows, and commercials, including “Mulholland Drive,” “Beverly Hills Cop II,” and “Blade Runner.”

Ennis house

realtor.com

———

4. 350 Fairbank Road, Riverside, IL

Price: $800,000 The Coonley Playhouse: An early example of the Usonian style, this building was constructed in 1912 to serve as a small private school, but was later converted into a single-family home. It has been carefully restored, including the striking abstract balloon-and-confetti glass windows surrounding the main interior space.

The Coonley Playhouse

realtor.com

———

5. 2801 Burnham Blvd., Minneapolis, MN

Price: $3.4 million Cedar Lake house: With only two previous owners, this Wright-designed home has been meticulously maintained. Built of stone and wood in 1951, the three-bedroom home overlooks Cedar Lake and is listed on the National Historic Register.

Cedar Lake house

realtor.com

———

6. 281 Bloomingbank Rd, Riverside, IL

Price: $1.3 million Avery Coonley house: This very first example of Wright’s prairie style was built in 1910 for entertaining on a grand scale. The 6,000-square-foot home is filled with signature Wright touches, including art glass windows. The home was designed in “zones,” meaning spaces were grouped based on their function across its two levels. Sitting on more than an acre of land, the home has been carefully maintained to preserve Wright’s design details.

Avery Coonley house

realtor.com

———

7. 11 Orchard Brook Dr, Pleasantville, NY 10570

Price: $1,425,000 Sol Friedman house: Located less than an hour from Manhattan, this three-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom home built in 1948 has been documented by architecture photographer Ezra Stoller and featured in publications such as the New York Times. The circular home is punctuated by a whimsical, mushroom-shaped carport situated just off the front of the home and surrounded by tall trees.

Sol Friedman house

realtor.com

The post 7 Fantastic Frank Lloyd Wright Homes on the Market Right Now appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from DIYS https://ift.tt/2CJ043W

#DIYS

0 notes

repwincoml4a0a5 · 8 years ago

Text

The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners

Paul and Helen Olfelt | Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

Gerte and Seamour Shavin of Chattanooga, Tennessee, were sure the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright would be too busy to design a house for them. So they wrote a letter, in 1949, asking him to recommend a good architect. Wright responded, “The best one I know is myself,” Gerte, now 95, recalls.

In 1954, Bette Koprivica Pappas, now 90, and her husband, Theodore (since deceased), spent a week composing a missive to Wright, asking him to design a house for them outside St. Louis. They expressed both trepidation (“I don’t know if we can afford two bathrooms”) and excitement (“Our faith in you is so great that I am sure if you did accept our offer it would be exactly what we wanted”).

When Wright agreed to work with the Shavins and the Pappases, they felt he was doing them a favor. Perhaps, but at the same time they were allowing him to extend his creativity into the last years of his life.

Wright, whose 150th birthday is being celebrated this year, was phenomenally productive up until his death at 91, in 1959. As the late architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable noted in her 2004 biography, Frank Lloyd Wright: A Life, “More than one-third of his total executed work was done in the last nine years of his life.” Those projects included not only important public buildings, like New York’s Guggenheim Museum—16 years in the making, it opened just months after Wright died—but also scores of private houses, each one customized down to the built-in furniture. “I think he was flattered when young people would seek him out,” says Paul Olfelt, 92, who was 33 in 1958 when he commissioned Wright to design his house in Minneapolis.

Original homeowners like Olfelt, Shavin and Pappas are a source of valuable insight into Wright and his practice, a 21st-century connection to the man Philip Johnson puckishly called “the greatest architect of the 19th century.” Barry Bergdoll, the curator of a major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, opening in June, says that “because Wright’s work always arose from conversations with clients, their memories are almost as important as drawings to understanding the origins of his designs.”

Wright was born in Wisconsin in 1867. After taking classes at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he moved to Chicago in 1887 and found work as a draftsman. The next year, he was hired by the architect Louis Sullivan, and in 1893 he opened his own studio. In 1911, Wright commenced work just south of Spring Green, Wisconsin, on his famous Taliesin compound, which would become his home and studio. (In contrast to his well-ordered designs, his personal life was somewhat turbulent, involving a scandal-making affair, a murdered lover, tragic fires, ongoing financial stress, eight children, three marriages and two divorces.)

During the Great Depression, to help make ends meet, Wright began taking on apprentices, called fellows, who paid tuition. In 1937, he started building the outpost that became Taliesin West, in what is now Scottsdale, Arizona. Wright and his students were soon dividing their time between the two Taliesins, where Wright worked with T-square, straightedge, compass, triangles—and lots of sharpened pencils.

In the postwar years, Wright’s practice flourished as his innovative approach jibed with the country’s newly optimistic mood. His relatively affordable houses, which he called Usonian (the term is sometimes said to be a combination of U.S. and utopian), were generally single-story brick or wood structures. Large living/dining rooms, often with massive fireplaces, were served by small, efficient kitchens. Bedrooms lined up like ships’ cabins. Outside, roofs extended over carports (which Wright claimed to have invented) in front and terraces in back. The layouts, Huxtable wrote, were designed for “a generation living a simpler, more mobile and much less formal life,” attracting, she noted, “well-educated professionals and intellectuals in middle-class communities.”

Gerte Shavin in her living room, seated on a banquette typical of Wright’s designs.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

OVER THE COURSE of his 70-year career, Wright completed more than 300 houses. A decade ago, when I started tracking the Wright clients still living in their Wright homes, I found dozens, including several spry octogenarians whose houses seemed to give them a sense of purpose. When I returned to the subject last year, for this article, the number of houses still in original hands had shrunk to five. There were seven owners: two widows (Bette Koprivica Pappas of St. Louis and Gerte Shavin of Chattanooga); a widower (Roland Reisley, who lives in Westchester County, New York); and two couples (Paul and Helen Olfelt of Minneapolis and Bob and Mary Walton of Modesto, California).

“I’m aware that I’m part of a rapidly dwindling group,” notes Roland Reisley, a retired physicist. But he’s hanging on. “People have observed that I’m in pretty good shape for 92,” he says. “It’s pure speculation, but I have reason to believe that living with a source of beauty in a comforting, enriching environment is psychologically beneficial. There’s not a day of my life when I don’t see something beautiful: the sun on a particular stone; the way the wood is mitered.”

The two wings of the Olfelts’ home overlook a sloped lawn. “I did all the mowing until last year,” Paul says. “Then the kids got after me.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

Not all the homeowners are faring as well. Last year, because of health concerns, the Olfelts reluctantly moved out and put their house—their home since 1960—on the market. Still, in December, the couple hosted their annual Christmas Eve celebration there, as they have for more than 50 years.

A few months before the Olfelts moved, I met with them in their living room, where a vast sloped roof extended the house into the landscape. “We feel like we’re practically outside,” Paul said, adding, “Mr. Wright believed the outside should be a living space.”

Helen Olfelt, 92, pointed to a Wright-designed coffee table, which she noted was big enough for all of her great-grandkids to crowd around at mealtimes. Paul put his feet up on a hexagonal ottoman and recounted how the couple came to own a Wright house. “Helen and I were both undergraduates, and we knew someone working at Taliesin,” he said, referring to Wright’s Wisconsin studio. “We asked [our friend] if there were any good apprentices. He said, ‘Speak to the boss.’ ”

The next thing they knew, Wright himself was designing a home for their nearly four-acre plot. (The architect never visited the site; he worked off detailed topographic maps and photos.) Paul, a retired radiologist, led me on a tour of the house, which included two small children’s bedrooms. In Wright’s original plan, there were doors from those rooms to the backyard. Paul remembered, “I said, ‘Mr. Wright, we don’t want our children escaping in the middle of the night.’ ” Helen jumped in, saying, “He gave us quite a lecture on why we shouldn’t be so controlling of children.” The Olfelts were adamant, and Wright replaced the doors with windows. But other issues remained, including a master bedroom with windows so irregular, Paul noted, “it was impossible to hang drapes.”

The Olferts’ large living room features a dramatically angled ceiling. Wright hid structural supports in the window mullions.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

In Modesto, Mary Walton explained that her older brother studied under Wright, and while still in high school she met “the master” at his Arizona studio. Impressed with the architecture and the “marvelous conversation,” she waited until she was married and then told her husband, who is British, that she wanted a Wright house. “Bob was very skeptical of the whole thing,” she says—which makes it ironic that their house, completed in 1957, became known, in the sexist terms of that era, as the Robert G. Walton House.

The Waltons scheduled a meeting with Wright. “I took to him when I met him,” says Bob, who is 94. “What impressed me was that before he would even think of designing the house, he wanted an aerial photograph, he wanted to know the flora and fauna. And he wanted to know how we were going to live.” Bob had to persuade Wright to factor in a living room wet bar. Meanwhile, the couple thought two dormitory-style bedrooms would suffice for their six children. Wright told them, Bob recalls, that “every child needs a place to be alone, to meditate.” On this point, Wright prevailed, designing the home’s most distinctive feature: a bedroom wing with a hallway nearly 100 feet long.

The Waltons wanted an adobe house, but Wright persuaded them to use concrete block. The flat roof leaked for many years.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

Asked what he thinks of the house today, Bob says, “We enjoyed having a large family, and the house fit very well into the management of that family. And I’m happy that Mary got something she always wanted.” Bob adds, of other Wright homeowners, “There is a tendency for some people to almost make Wright a religion. I look to him as a man who made good-looking houses that were very practical.”

WRIGHT SPENT a lifetime challenging structural conventions. Each commission gave him a chance to try new materials, new room arrangements and new geometries. Reisley marvels at Wright’s genius in basing his suburban New York house not on rectangles but on hexagons: “It wasn’t about showing off; it was a geometric system that gave him two more directions to work with.”

And unlike most 1950s houses, which stood straight up on flat suburban plots, Wright’s houses often burrowed into the land. “It looks like a part of the hill, like it’s been there forever,” says Gerte Shavin of her house, completed in 1952. Made of crab orchard stone and cypress, it has stunning views of the Tennessee River.

But Wright’s unusual designs often caused complications. “Getting a building permit wasn’t easy, because they didn’t know if the roof was going to stay up,” Paul Olfelt explained. “Eventually the building inspector said, ‘If you’re that crazy, go ahead.’ ” The flat roofs of some of the houses resulted in leaks; Mary Walton said it took “10 or 15 years” to get their dripping under control.

For all his talk about accommodating clients’ wishes, Wright, Huxtable wrote, “was relentlessly dictatorial about building in furniture of his own design and including his own accessories—he was known to go into his houses during the owners’ absence and rearrange everything to his taste.” Reisley had a formula for working with him. “If you said, ‘I’d like this here instead of there’ ”—questioning Wright’s judgment—“that’s what led to all the sparks. But if you described a need, he’d try to satisfy that.”

The carport of the home of Roland and Ronny Reisley, an innovation Wright claimed to have invented.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

Wright, by all accounts, didn’t care much for budgets, either. Reisley says his house came in at “several times the estimated cost”—about $100,000 altogether. He adds, “I was frustrated, but I was lucky that as our circumstances improved it became affordable.” Wright, meanwhile, wrote him, “Stretch yourself. Building this house is one of the best things you’ll ever do. I promise you’ll thank me.”

Paul Olfelt says he gave Wright a budget of $30,000–$40,000. “We stayed within twice that. It was a lot of dough for me.” The couple did much of the construction themselves. But, Olfelt says, “cutting bricks at 60-degree angles was a lot of work.”

When Theodore and Bette Pappas told Wright they were concerned about money, he advised them, self-servingly, “Don’t worry about the money. It will come. It will come. It always does.”

Meanwhile, the couple asked his advice on finding the right piece of land. According to Bette, Wright told them, “Go out as far as you can go, and when you get there, go 10 miles farther, and still you won’t be out far enough. By the time your home is completed, you will be part of suburbia.” He was correct, especially because the house, which he designed in the 1950s, wasn’t completed until 1964. (Bette couldn’t be interviewed or photographed, but she told the story of the house in her 1985 book, No Passing Fancy.)

Roland Reisley has kept the house exactly as it was when it was finished.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The owners didn’t think of their houses as investments, and it’s just as well. Several Wright masterpieces, such as Fallingwater, in western Pennsylvania, are considered priceless, but most of his houses go for little more than nearby listings by lesser architects. At savewright.org, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy maintains a database of Wright houses for sale. At press time, there were five, including the Olfelt House, at $1.395 million. The others ranged in price from $365,000 for a small house in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, to $1.95 million for a larger place in Bernardsville, New Jersey.

Janet Halstead, the conservancy’s executive director, explains the market this way: “Wright houses do receive a premium in some cases, but that premium might not be as high as the sellers imagine.” The maintenance required and the scrutiny of preservationists are drawbacks. Brokers say it can often take a year or more to find the right buyer.

Though a number of Wright’s best houses are open to the public, including the Frederick C. Robie House (1910), in Chicago; Fallingwater (1939), in Mill Run, Pennsylvania; and Wingspread (1939), in Racine, Wisconsin, most Wright homes are privately owned, and their owners often struggle to balance notoriety, which brings steady streams of architecture buffs, with the desire for privacy.

“Our kids were not impressed that we lived in a house by probably the best architect of the 20th century,” Paul Olfelt says. But his daughter Jean notes, “It was impressive to have busloads of Japanese tourists outside.”

Reisley, who has also written a book about his experiences with Wright, didn’t mind the attention. He says that he and his late wife, Ronny, expected the home to be “beautiful and a good place to raise a family.” But unexpectedly, he says, “it turned out to be much more than that: A community of Wright owners and Wright enthusiasts developed that continues to this day. It has become a central core of my life that I could not have anticipated.”

Each time an owner dies, a Wright house is endangered. “Even selling to someone who appears to be very preservation-minded can lead to surprises later as the new owner’s circumstances change,” says Halstead. To protect his house, Reisley plans to execute a preservation easement, limiting the ability of future owners to alter it—and almost certainly lowering its market value.

“I don’t like mismatched things,” says Mary Walton, “so I like the furniture because it was all made for here.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

But the Waltons have chosen not to go that route. “My children really thought that would make it harder to sell the house after we died,” says Mary Walton. “I’ve had a lot of enjoyment from it, but you have to be somewhat practical about it.”

The Olfelts too have no control over the future of their house. “Its fate is entirely in the hands of the next owner,” Paul Olfelt said in a phone message. Sounding emotional, he added, “I think we were good stewards of the house, and we assume that anyone who buys it will be the same.”

The post The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners appeared first on Real Estate News & Advice | realtor.com®.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2l3dJHY

#DIYS

0 notes

repwinpril9y0a1 · 8 years ago

Text

The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners

Paul and Helen Olfelt | Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

Gerte Shavin in her living room, seated on a banquette typical of Wright’s designs.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The two wings of the Olfelts’ home overlook a sloped lawn. “I did all the mowing until last year,” Paul says. “Then the kids got after me.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The Olferts’ large living room features a dramatically angled ceiling. Wright hid structural supports in the window mullions.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The Waltons wanted an adobe house, but Wright persuaded them to use concrete block. The flat roof leaked for many years.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The carport of the home of Roland and Ronny Reisley, an innovation Wright claimed to have invented.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

When Theodore and Bette Pappas told Wright they were concerned about money, he advised them, self-servingly, “Don’t worry about the money. It will come. It will come. It always does.”

Roland Reisley has kept the house exactly as it was when it was finished.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

“I don’t like mismatched things,” says Mary Walton, “so I like the furniture because it was all made for here.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The post The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners appeared first on Real Estate News & Advice | realtor.com®.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2l3dJHY

#DIYS

0 notes

exfrenchdorsl4p0a1 · 8 years ago

Text

The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners

Paul and Helen Olfelt | Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

Gerte Shavin in her living room, seated on a banquette typical of Wright’s designs.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The two wings of the Olfelts’ home overlook a sloped lawn. “I did all the mowing until last year,” Paul says. “Then the kids got after me.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The Olferts’ large living room features a dramatically angled ceiling. Wright hid structural supports in the window mullions.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The Waltons wanted an adobe house, but Wright persuaded them to use concrete block. The flat roof leaked for many years.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The carport of the home of Roland and Ronny Reisley, an innovation Wright claimed to have invented.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

When Theodore and Bette Pappas told Wright they were concerned about money, he advised them, self-servingly, “Don’t worry about the money. It will come. It will come. It always does.”

Roland Reisley has kept the house exactly as it was when it was finished.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

“I don’t like mismatched things,” says Mary Walton, “so I like the furniture because it was all made for here.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The post The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners appeared first on Real Estate News & Advice | realtor.com®.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2l3dJHY

#DIYS

0 notes

realtor10036 · 8 years ago

Text

The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners

Paul and Helen Olfelt | Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

Gerte Shavin in her living room, seated on a banquette typical of Wright’s designs.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The two wings of the Olfelts’ home overlook a sloped lawn. “I did all the mowing until last year,” Paul says. “Then the kids got after me.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The Olferts’ large living room features a dramatically angled ceiling. Wright hid structural supports in the window mullions.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The Waltons wanted an adobe house, but Wright persuaded them to use concrete block. The flat roof leaked for many years.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The carport of the home of Roland and Ronny Reisley, an innovation Wright claimed to have invented.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

When Theodore and Bette Pappas told Wright they were concerned about money, he advised them, self-servingly, “Don’t worry about the money. It will come. It will come. It always does.”

Roland Reisley has kept the house exactly as it was when it was finished.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

“I don’t like mismatched things,” says Mary Walton, “so I like the furniture because it was all made for here.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The post The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners appeared first on Real Estate News & Advice | realtor.com®.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2l3dJHY

#DIYS

0 notes

wisconsincarports · 1 year ago

Text

Elevate Your Space with Premium carports buildings and structures by WisconsinCarports

WisconsinCarports is the premier dealer of carports, RV carports, and steel buildings in Wisconsin. Our structures come with inclusive labor and installation, often completed in a single day. Engineered for year-round use, our steel buildings provide unparalleled protection. Our design consultants guide you to the ideal solution, and we take pride in the industry-leading delivery times for carports buildings and structures across Wisconsin, USA.

#carports buildings and structures #carports near me #build your carport #carports buildings and structures wisconsin #build your carport wisconsin #rv carports #carports near wisconsin

0 notes

realestate63141 · 8 years ago

Text

The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners

Paul and Helen Olfelt | Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

Gerte Shavin in her living room, seated on a banquette typical of Wright’s designs.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The two wings of the Olfelts’ home overlook a sloped lawn. “I did all the mowing until last year,” Paul says. “Then the kids got after me.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The Olferts’ large living room features a dramatically angled ceiling. Wright hid structural supports in the window mullions.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The Waltons wanted an adobe house, but Wright persuaded them to use concrete block. The flat roof leaked for many years.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The carport of the home of Roland and Ronny Reisley, an innovation Wright claimed to have invented.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

When Theodore and Bette Pappas told Wright they were concerned about money, he advised them, self-servingly, “Don’t worry about the money. It will come. It will come. It always does.”

Roland Reisley has kept the house exactly as it was when it was finished.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

“I don’t like mismatched things,” says Mary Walton, “so I like the furniture because it was all made for here.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The post The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners appeared first on Real Estate News & Advice | realtor.com®.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2l3dJHY

#DIYS

0 notes

bestforlessmove · 8 years ago

Text

The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners

Paul and Helen Olfelt | Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

In 1954, Bette Koprivica Pappas, now 90, and her husband, Theodore (since deceased), spent a week composing a missive to Wright, asking him to design a house for them outside St. Louis. They expressed both trepidation (“I don't know if we can afford two bathrooms”) and excitement (“Our faith in you is so great that I am sure if you did accept our offer it would be exactly what we wanted”).

Wright, whose 150th birthday is being celebrated this year, was phenomenally productive up until his death at 91, in 1959. As the late architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable noted in her 2004 biography, Frank Lloyd Wright: A Life, “More than one-third of his total executed work was done in the last nine years of his life.” Those projects included not only important public buildings, like New York's Guggenheim Museum-16 years in the making, it opened just months after Wright died-but also scores of private houses, each one customized down to the built-in furniture. “I think he was flattered when young people would seek him out,” says Paul Olfelt, 92, who was 33 in 1958 when he commissioned Wright to design his house in Minneapolis.

Original homeowners like Olfelt, Shavin and Pappas are a source of valuable insight into Wright and his practice, a 21st-century connection to the man Philip Johnson puckishly called “the greatest architect of the 19th century.” Barry Bergdoll, the curator of a major retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art, opening in June, says that “because Wright's work always arose from conversations with clients, their memories are almost as important as drawings to understanding the origins of his designs.”

In the postwar years, Wright's practice flourished as his innovative approach jibed with the country's newly optimistic mood. His relatively affordable houses, which he called Usonian (the term is sometimes said to be a combination of U.S. and utopian), were generally single-story brick or wood structures. Large living/dining rooms, often with massive fireplaces, were served by small, efficient kitchens. Bedrooms lined up like ships' cabins. Outside, roofs extended over carports (which Wright claimed to have invented) in front and terraces in back. The layouts, Huxtable wrote, were designed for “a generation living a simpler, more mobile and much less formal life,” attracting, she noted, “well-educated professionals and intellectuals in middle-class communities.”

Gerte Shavin in her living room, seated on a banquette typical of Wright's designs.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

“I'm aware that I'm part of a rapidly dwindling group,” notes Roland Reisley, a retired physicist. But he's hanging on. “People have observed that I'm in pretty good shape for 92,” he says. “It's pure speculation, but I have reason to believe that living with a source of beauty in a comforting, enriching environment is psychologically beneficial. There's not a day of my life when I don't see something beautiful: the sun on a particular stone; the way the wood is mitered.”

The two wings of the Olfelts' home overlook a sloped lawn. “I did all the mowing until last year,” Paul says. “Then the kids got after me.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

Not all the homeowners are faring as well. Last year, because of health concerns, the Olfelts reluctantly moved out and put their house-their home since 1960-on the market. Still, in December, the couple hosted their annual Christmas Eve celebration there, as they have for more than 50 years.

A few months before the Olfelts moved, I met with them in their living room, where a vast sloped roof extended the house into the landscape. “We feel like we're practically outside,” Paul said, adding, “Mr. Wright believed the outside should be a living space.”

Helen Olfelt, 92, pointed to a Wright-designed coffee table, which she noted was big enough for all of her great-grandkids to crowd around at mealtimes. Paul put his feet up on a hexagonal ottoman and recounted how the couple came to own a Wright house. “Helen and I were both undergraduates, and we knew someone working at Taliesin,” he said, referring to Wright's Wisconsin studio. “We asked [our friend] if there were any good apprentices. He said, 'Speak to the boss.' ”

The next thing they knew, Wright himself was designing a home for their nearly four-acre plot. (The architect never visited the site; he worked off detailed topographic maps and photos.) Paul, a retired radiologist, led me on a tour of the house, which included two small children's bedrooms. In Wright's original plan, there were doors from those rooms to the backyard. Paul remembered, “I said, 'Mr. Wright, we don't want our children escaping in the middle of the night.' ” Helen jumped in, saying, “He gave us quite a lecture on why we shouldn't be so controlling of children.” The Olfelts were adamant, and Wright replaced the doors with windows. But other issues remained, including a master bedroom with windows so irregular, Paul noted, “it was impossible to hang drapes.”

The Olferts' large living room features a dramatically angled ceiling. Wright hid structural supports in the window mullions.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

In Modesto, Mary Walton explained that her older brother studied under Wright, and while still in high school she met “the master” at his Arizona studio. Impressed with the architecture and the “marvelous conversation,” she waited until she was married and then told her husband, who is British, that she wanted a Wright house. “Bob was very skeptical of the whole thing,” she says-which makes it ironic that their house, completed in 1957, became known, in the sexist terms of that era, as the Robert G. Walton House.

The Waltons scheduled a meeting with Wright. “I took to him when I met him,” says Bob, who is 94. “What impressed me was that before he would even think of designing the house, he wanted an aerial photograph, he wanted to know the flora and fauna. And he wanted to know how we were going to live.” Bob had to persuade Wright to factor in a living room wet bar. Meanwhile, the couple thought two dormitory-style bedrooms would suffice for their six children. Wright told them, Bob recalls, that “every child needs a place to be alone, to meditate.” On this point, Wright prevailed, designing the home's most distinctive feature: a bedroom wing with a hallway nearly 100 feet long.

The Waltons wanted an adobe house, but Wright persuaded them to use concrete block. The flat roof leaked for many years.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

Asked what he thinks of the house today, Bob says, “We enjoyed having a large family, and the house fit very well into the management of that family. And I'm happy that Mary got something she always wanted.” Bob adds, of other Wright homeowners, “There is a tendency for some people to almost make Wright a religion. I look to him as a man who made good-looking houses that were very practical.”

WRIGHT SPENT a lifetime challenging structural conventions. Each commission gave him a chance to try new materials, new room arrangements and new geometries. Reisley marvels at Wright's genius in basing his suburban New York house not on rectangles but on hexagons: “It wasn't about showing off; it was a geometric system that gave him two more directions to work with.”

And unlike most 1950s houses, which stood straight up on flat suburban plots, Wright's houses often burrowed into the land. “It looks like a part of the hill, like it's been there forever,” says Gerte Shavin of her house, completed in 1952. Made of crab orchard stone and cypress, it has stunning views of the Tennessee River.

But Wright's unusual designs often caused complications. “Getting a building permit wasn't easy, because they didn't know if the roof was going to stay up,” Paul Olfelt explained. “Eventually the building inspector said, 'If you're that crazy, go ahead.' ” The flat roofs of some of the houses resulted in leaks; Mary Walton said it took “10 or 15 years” to get their dripping under control.

For all his talk about accommodating clients' wishes, Wright, Huxtable wrote, “was relentlessly dictatorial about building in furniture of his own design and including his own accessories-he was known to go into his houses during the owners' absence and rearrange everything to his taste.” Reisley had a formula for working with him. “If you said, 'I'd like this here instead of there' ”-questioning Wright's judgment-“that's what led to all the sparks. But if you described a need, he'd try to satisfy that.”

The carport of the home of Roland and Ronny Reisley, an innovation Wright claimed to have invented.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

Wright, by all accounts, didn't care much for budgets, either. Reisley says his house came in at “several times the estimated cost”-about $100,000 altogether. He adds, “I was frustrated, but I was lucky that as our circumstances improved it became affordable.” Wright, meanwhile, wrote him, “Stretch yourself. Building this house is one of the best things you'll ever do. I promise you'll thank me.”

When Theodore and Bette Pappas told Wright they were concerned about money, he advised them, self-servingly, “Don't worry about the money. It will come. It will come. It always does.”

Meanwhile, the couple asked his advice on finding the right piece of land. According to Bette, Wright told them, “Go out as far as you can go, and when you get there, go 10 miles farther, and still you won't be out far enough. By the time your home is completed, you will be part of suburbia.” He was correct, especially because the house, which he designed in the 1950s, wasn't completed until 1964. (Bette couldn't be interviewed or photographed, but she told the story of the house in her 1985 book, No Passing Fancy.)

Roland Reisley has kept the house exactly as it was when it was finished.

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

The owners didn't think of their houses as investments, and it's just as well. Several Wright masterpieces, such as Fallingwater, in western Pennsylvania, are considered priceless, but most of his houses go for little more than nearby listings by lesser architects. At savewright.org, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy maintains a database of Wright houses for sale. At press time, there were five, including the Olfelt House, at $1.395 million. The others ranged in price from $365,000 for a small house in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, to $1.95 million for a larger place in Bernardsville, New Jersey.

Janet Halstead, the conservancy's executive director, explains the market this way: “Wright houses do receive a premium in some cases, but that premium might not be as high as the sellers imagine.” The maintenance required and the scrutiny of preservationists are drawbacks. Brokers say it can often take a year or more to find the right buyer.

Though a number of Wright's best houses are open to the public, including the Frederick C. Robie House (1910), in Chicago; Fallingwater (1939), in Mill Run, Pennsylvania; and Wingspread (1939), in Racine, Wisconsin, most Wright homes are privately owned, and their owners often struggle to balance notoriety, which brings steady streams of architecture buffs, with the desire for privacy.

Reisley, who has also written a book about his experiences with Wright, didn't mind the attention. He says that he and his late wife, Ronny, expected the home to be “beautiful and a good place to raise a family.” But unexpectedly, he says, “it turned out to be much more than that: A community of Wright owners and Wright enthusiasts developed that continues to this day. It has become a central core of my life that I could not have anticipated.”

Each time an owner dies, a Wright house is endangered. “Even selling to someone who appears to be very preservation-minded can lead to surprises later as the new owner's circumstances change,” says Halstead. To protect his house, Reisley plans to execute a preservation easement, limiting the ability of future owners to alter it-and almost certainly lowering its market value.

“I don't like mismatched things,” says Mary Walton, “so I like the furniture because it was all made for here.”

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson for WSJ. Magazine

But the Waltons have chosen not to go that route. “My children really thought that would make it harder to sell the house after we died,” says Mary Walton. “I've had a lot of enjoyment from it, but you have to be somewhat practical about it.”

The post The Last Original Frank Lloyd Wright Owners appeared first on Real Estate News & Advice | realtor.com®.

0 notes