Bay Area homes on Wright tour
Approaching the front door of the Maynard Buehler house in Orinda, you immediately see signatures of the architect who built the estate. The narrow pathway along the oldgrowth redwood siding of the main house is dotted with light shining through cutouts in the overhang; the windows seem to be etched into the building in a distinctly laterUsonian pattern.
Once inside, a lowceilinged hallway leads to a majestic living room. The space opens onto a windowed expanse that recalls the prow of a cruise ship while also seeming to look ahead to some future space capsule.
“I remember seeing the Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Oak Park (Ill.) as a kid and having them make a huge impression on me,” says Gerald Shmavonian, who has owned Wright’s 1948 Buehler house for six years. “He was the first famous person I knew of.” Even 60 years after the American architect’s death, he remains as renowned as ever, and is perhaps even more iconic now in the Bay Area than he was in his lifetime.
This summer, eight buildings by Wright (18671959) were added to the UNESCO world heritage sites list. While none of the buildings are in the Bay Area, the region is home to nine works by the architect, including the famed Marin Civic Center, the San Rafael Post Office (his only commission for the federal government) and the V.C. Morris Gift Shop on Maiden Lane
in San Francisco (now an Isaia menswear boutique), whose spiral design is seen by many as an early draft for the later Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, one of the UNESCO landmarks. This weekend, two of the six Wrightdesigned private homes in the Bay Area will be open for tours organized by the Frank Lloyd Wright Revival Initiative, a group committed to not only protecting existing Wright structures but also rebuilding lost works by the architect. On Saturday, July 27, the Buehler house will be open, followed by the Robert Berger house in San Anselmo on Sunday, July 28. There will also be a screening of the film “Masterpieces” by filmmaker and Revival Initiative founder Michael Miner on Sunday in San Rafael.
Part of the group’s emphasis with this set of California tours (there was a leg of home tours in Southern California earlier this month) is to show some of the more approachable and quirky aspects of Wright’s work in the Bay Area, including the doghouse he designed in San Anselmo (at the Berger house) and the children’s playhouse in Orinda (at the Buehler house).
“We want to show the architecture is nothing to be scared of,” says Miner. “It’s not just accessible to an elite group of people.”
Of Wright’s legacy in the Bay Area, Miner points out that the architect’s work in the region stretched over three decades, from the Hanna house on the Stanford University campus in 1936 to his last major work, the Marin Civic Center, designed before his death at age 91. As such, says Miner, “he was always evolving and experimenting. He had principles but didn’t repeat himself, and his work in the Bay Area has great diversity.”
In a 2012 story marking the Marin Civic Center’s 50th anniversary, Chronicle architecture critic John King called Wright “the most celebrated and problematic architect the United States has produced.” Wright’s influence continues to be felt in popular design culture: The American foundation for much of the midcentury modern design now trending again was partially laid by Wright in the 20th century.
Orinda’s Buehler house is one of the grander private homes Wright designed in the Bay Area. Sitting on 4 acres of Japanese gardens designed by Henry Matsutani, the property includes the main house, playhouse, a workshop, a studio, a Japanese teahouse and several bridges. The Buehler family lived in the house for 47 years, and Shmavonian has retained not only much of the original Wrightdesigned furniture, but also personal items from the Buehler family, including Mrs. Buehler’s fur coats still hanging in the dressing room. The koi fish in the central courtyard pond are the same ones the family chose in Japan in the 1940s. In addition to the sweeping architectural views inside and out, the estate also houses Shmavonian’s many collections, including fine Asian antiques, children’s tin toys and books.
Shmavonian says he enjoys having the house open for tours and special events (there’s a neighborhood controversy over the house holding weddings in a residential area) because he feels the architecture shouldn’t be hoarded, but seen by people “beyond the architectural system.”
“A Chinese architect who came here once said you could start a whole new religion here,” Shmavonian says. “I feel like the groundskeeper, not the owner. It’s a labor of love keeping a place like this, but it’s still a labor, one I feel blessed to present to people.”
For Miner, the story of Wright the man is intertwined with what makes the architecture so compelling.
“He lived to be almost 92 and never stopped working. There’s a lot to talk about,” Miner says. “I’ll continue to discover things in his work because there’s such an expanse of it. He’s a creative genius whose work should be protected.”