Graycliff restoration takes another big step
Structural repairs set on two estate buildings
Once the summer home of the Darwin D. Martin family, Graycliff is rarely mentioned in the same breath as Western New York's other Frank Lloyd Wright icons: the Darwin Martin House and the extinct Larkin Administration Building.
Yet anyone who believes the Derby estate is a lesser work should take another gander at this "powerful work by the Michelangelo of modernism," architectural historian John H. Conlin suggested Monday as public officials and volunteers gathered to mark an important step forward in Graycliff's ongoing restoration.
Phase III will include structural repairs to both the main building, the Isabelle R. Martin House - she was the owner's wife - and the adjacent Foster House.
The 1926 commission to design a cottage on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie for the Martins marked both the "conclusion and culmination" of the long relationship with the mail-order millionaire that allowed Wright's career to survive and blossom, Conlin said.
It was Martin who had brought Wright to Buffalo more than two decades earlier and had remained the architect's steadfast patron, friend and financial adviser through thick and thin.
And this was the thinnest of times for the architect. Yet Wright was 60, "a mature architect" ready to take his genius to new heights, Conlin said.
What emerged from the drawing board, he said, was the realization of a Wright ideal, "a natural house totally integrated into its landscape."
The landmark at 6472 Old Lake Shore Road stands as "the greatest teaching tool for understanding Frank Lloyd Wright" as he left behind the "prairie house" phase that yielded Buffalo's Martin House, among many others, and entered the era in which he designed Pennsylvania's famous Fallingwater.
"This building takes in the whole sweep of Wright's career," Conlin said. "We're lucky it's not a prairie house."
The ambitious new phase of the more than $3 million restoration will include drainage improvements, interior framing and electrical and plumbing work on the Foster House and the restoration of the Isabelle Martin House's massive stone chimney, windows and doors. The roofs and cantilevered balconies of both structures also will be restored.
Tom Buckham, Buffalo News Staff Reporter