APPRECIATING AN ICON
Palmer House in Ann Arbor, Mich., will allow guests the chance to enjoy a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home,
ANN ARBOR, MICH.— We’ve long been able to tour Frank Lloyd Wright’s best-known homes, such as Fallingwater near Pittsburgh and Robie House in Chicago, but crossing their velvet ropes was never an option.
To really experience the architecture and artistry of this American icon, go beyond the guided tour and stay in a Frank Lloyd Wright house.
For a weekend or longer, you can install yourself in one of his residential works of art: Palmer House in Ann Arbor, Mich.
On an introductory tour, I realized I forgot to bring something: a geometry textbook, to refresh my memory on parallelograms, trapezoids and rhomboids.
All loom large in one of his last commissions.
“Welcome to the Palmer House,” said Gary Cox, who manages the property for his son Jeffrey Schox, who bought the home in 2009 after admiring it during runs through the neighbourhood.
While Cox led us through the 2,000-square-foot brick-and-cypress house, he revealed as much about the Palmers as he did the house that carries their name, and their story adds an emotional foundation to the bones of the place.
Bill Palmer was a professor of economics at the nearby University of Michigan. Mary Palmer was a student of music, a philanthropist, host and insistent suitor of Frank Lloyd Wright; at least, Wright the designer.
“She once drove all the way to New Mexico — in the 1950s, mind you, before interstates and by herself — to convince him to take this commission,” recounted Cox.
Wright had resisted earlier entreaties, but Mary eventually convinced him to accept the commission. And thus, in his early 80s, he set out to design the house the Palmers would live in for five decades.
“Mary was as eccentric as Frank to put up with all this,” said Cox, as he stooped over to open a bottom drawer in the kitchen. He had to grab below the lowest drawer, as there were — and are — no handles. The architect decried them as gauche, visual clutter. So to get a spoon from the top drawer, you had to start at the bottom, opening each drawer enough to grab the one above it.
The place reveals itself slowly, so a weekend stay, at least, is recommended.
Late in the afternoon, for example, as the sun starts to drop, guests can watch how the birds come alive; and no, not the cardinals and robins in the surrounding glade. One outside wall features polygonal cutouts re- sembling birds in flight. In abstract form, they resemble the Piasa, an avian emblem used by ancient Native Americans of the northern Mississippi River. The light is projected on an inside wall, creating an almost animation effect of these birds in flight.
To be honest, the house is not practical, in the modern sense.
Even in the 1950s and ’60s, said Cox, the Palmer children would do their homework using a miner’s lamp, since it was so dark inside.
Hallways are narrow and angled. This helps prevent noise from travelling, but also means negotiating the spaces is a lot different than your condo or bungalow. The Palmers were not large people, so doorways were sized accordingly.
But that does not detract from the pleasures of the house’s shapes, surfaces, design and overall esthetic.
And there are recent concessions to modernity. The fridge is decidedly not a 1950s appliance, but rather a stainless-steel machine. There is a microwave and Wi-Fi. But the stove is original, electric and, if not efficient, then certainly workmanlike.
Oh, and the beds are hexagonal. I looked it up in an old geometry textbook.