Set high on a cliff with sweeping views over Lake Erie, Graycliff stands as an architectural jewel awaiting your discovery.

Built between 1926 and 1929, the Graycliff estate was designed by the renowned American architect Frank Lloyd Wright for Isabelle R. Martin and her husband, Larkin Company executive Darwin D. Martin.

Graycliff served as the Martin summer home from 1927 to the mid-1940s. It is a complex of three buildings that includes the small Heat Hut, the 3,100 square-foot Foster House and the 6,500 square-foot Isabelle R. Martin House, all set amidst eight and a half acres of rolling lawns and gardens also designed by Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright designed Graycliff for Isabelle Martin, and it was she who had the most influence over the design. Isabelle Martin’s failing vision led her to direct Wright to create structures full of sunlight and air. Wright fulfilled her wishes magnificently.

Broadly cantilevered balconies open the buildings to the soft lake air. On the Isabelle R. Martin House, the second floor floats over a terrace and garden below. Another balcony soars, suspended above a sunken garden. Yet a third balcony overlooks the lake itself, and the spray of Niagara Falls in the far distance.

Ribbons of glass windows and doors admit the lake breezes. They also frame views of the lake seen—ingeniously— directly through the house itself. The Isabelle R. Martin House not only captures the warm summer light and the cool lake breezes, but in the depths of winter glows from within.

Frank Lloyd Wright believed that the hearth was the heart of a home, and in the Isabelle R. Martin House, a huge, off-center limestone fireplace dominates the living room and is a presence in the dining room, too.

All the buildings, built in part with Tichenor limestone (retrieved by teams of oxen from the lake’s edge,) also feature boldly molded sand-stucco planes and striking red stained cedar shingle roofs. Wide plank cypress is used for most flooring.

Wright incorporated his ideas of "organic architecture" in the design by blending the house into the natural landscape. As one architectural historian wrote, "The house was made for the enjoyment of natural things."

The long, low, horizontal lines of the Isabelle R. Martin House echo those of the horizon, the surface of the lake and the gray stone of the cliff below. A horizontal stucco garden wall connects the Foster House visually to the Isabelle R. Martin House. Cantilevered balconies and the long stucco walls of the Foster House enhance Wright’s incorporation of the buildings into the landscape.

Here are more details about:

• the ownership of Graycliff by the Piarist Fathers
• Frank Lloyd Wright's last visit in the fall of 1958
• 1997 article for Buffalo Spree by historian John Conlin (excellent introduction to Graycliff)
• An architect's descriptive history of Graycliff
• "Doing the Wright Thing" - Conservancy Past-President Carol Bronnenkant's role in saving Graycliff
• View the Graycliff Timeline
• Seaway Trail Plaque
  

Look here for a modern architectural drawing of the Graycliff property, courtesy of Lauer-Manguso & Associates Architects.