Polishing an architectural treasure
By Benjamin Kline
Dayton Daily News
SPRINGFIELD | Primeval man crawled into a cave and huddled near a fire, which gave him warmth and light and a sense of security. The forest embraced him in its velvety dark greens and shaggy rich browns, a cloak of natural hues with speckles of golden sunlight filtering down through timeless shadows.
Thousands of years later, in 1908-1910, architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed a 4,435-square-foot house for a Springfield industralist, Burton Westcott, his wife Orpha and their two children, and achieved much the same ambiance.
The Westcott House, Ohio’s principal example of Wright’s famed Prairie Style of “organic architecture,” opens to the public Saturday after a painstaking, 5-year restoration. Beautifully brought back, complete with the enormous cast-concrete urns, cantilevered roofline and sheltering pergolas that are Wright standbys, the house is simply wonderful. It is a reminder that of all the fine arts, architecture is the only one that can be experienced from the inside.
Wright, a dapper little man from Wisconsin whose talent may have been surpassed only by his gigantic self-esteem, would be delighted that the craftsmen devoted to this restoration have spent $5 million, and most of their patience, doing it just so. Following the deaths of Westcott and his wife in the 1920s, the house had been hammered into seven apartments, its sleeping porches boarded up and its location on Springfield’s one-time “Millionaires Row” had seen better days. Rescued and restored, now under the auspices of the Westcott House Foundation, it opens to the public as a museum.
In a Wright house, project manager D. Shawn Beckwith said, “You’re sheltered from the outside but you experience it being brought inside.”
Wright was known for (but did not invent) the concept that form follows function. In his view, “Form and function are one.”
Though hardly casual, his interior spaces flow into each other, eliminating the boxy rooms of older dwellings. For instance, the Westcott’s south-facing reception-library (22-by-15 feet), fireplace (20-by-18) and dining areas (22-by-15) melt into each other with no partitions or doorways. Before Wright there were discrete parlours, sitting rooms and other specially named rooms; after Wright, America did everything in the living room. (Today’s so-called great rooms are merely living rooms with pretentious ceiling heights.)
For the Westcott restoration, craftsmen made lovely oak tables, chairs and built-in bureaus to match the originals in the Arts & Crafts style. Stucco, glass and metal fixtures also were recreated. Old-fashioned clearglass lightbulbs glare nakedly, but correctly, on some sconces.
“If we did not know what the orginal looked like, they are interpretations,” said Lin Erickson, director/CEO of the Westcott House Foundation.
Beckwith said more than 90 percent of the original glass, sashes and doors were intact, though some pieces had been removed to a local art museum. (Authentic Wright artifacts sell for thousands of dollars. The e-Bay Web site lists more than 500 Wright-related books and objects.) The hardware, such as the old nickelplate or brass hinges, was carefully copied. The 20-by-13 kitchen is bare, its built-in icebox concealed behind cabinet doors, but there are plans to install a circa-1910 stove.
Westcott’s garage, with horse stalls and a turntable to reverse the direction of his cars, signifies the period when horses were still in use but automobiles, such as the luxury sedan bearing the Westcott name, were coming on strongly. It will become a gift shop and conference area.
Wright houses were notorious for their exploding budgets, protracted construction and leaky roofs. So far, the roof here does not leak.
Erickson, who recently moved to Springfield from the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, said she wants the Westcott House to become a center for learning, not just about Wright but “to inspire creativity and promote understanding of architectural principles and the design process.”
HOW TO GO
What: The house museum opens to the public.
Where: 1340 E. High St., in the east end of Springfield at East High and Greenmount intersection.
When: Beginning Saturday. Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday 1 to 5 p.m.
Admission: $8.50 adults; $7 seniors 65 and older; $6 students and groups of eight or more; $4 school groups.
More info: Call (937) 327-9291 or visit: www.westcotthouse.org