Home of the Week: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman-Wilson House

BENTONVILLE — Touring the homes of the rich and famous can often make visitors feel insignificant and small, but that won’t be the case when architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s (1867-1959) Bachman-Wilson House opens to the public in three weeks.

Moved piece by piece from New Jersey and carefully reassembled at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, this is an American house, built by Americans for Americans, and most everyone who visits it is likely to feel right at home.

“Everyone says, ‘I want to live here,’” said Niki Stewart, Crystal Bridges chief engagement officer. “It’s not a palace. It was built to be to be middle class and affordable.”

A Usonian house — the name comes from United States of North America — Bachman-Wilson was one of some 120 of these homes constructed in the U.S. While Wright designed many custom homes, his Usonian plans were simple, lower-cost houses designed for the average middle-class American family.

The story of how Crystal Bridges acquired the Bachman-Wilson house is an interesting one. The original owners, Gloria and Abraham Wilson, had Wright design the home in 1954 for a site in Millstone, New Jersey. (Bachman was Gloria’s maiden name, and her brother Marvin was one of Wright’s apprentices.) The couple lived there until 1967, then two more families followed until 1988, when Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino bought the home.

During the 25 years the Tarantinos lived in the Bachman-Wilson House, they restored it, but the land on which it sat had become prone to flooding. Ultimately the couple decided it needed to be moved to preserve it.

“They had taken care of it and wanted Crystal Bridges to be its next caretaker,” Stewart said.

“I saw this house on site,” the museum’s Director of Operations Scott Eccleston said, “and then later I saw it in a million pieces in two J. B. Hunt trucks.” Eccleston said at first it was overwhelming, but it didn’t take long for him and his co-workers to accept and relish the challenge of the house’s reconstruction.

Usonian houses, he added, share three characteristics: dominant horizontal lines, flat roofs with large overhangs and standardized natural materials — in this case, concrete, mahogany and glass. Most were single-story structures, although some, like Bachman-Wilson, are two stories.

Museum personnel have taken great pains to be as true as possible to Wright’s original materials and design. A new slab and new concrete blocks were constructed and some safety glass was added, but the mahogany beams, most of the furnishings and even the setting and landscaping are as close as possible to the original.

When something, such as those concrete blocks, had to be rebuilt, they were built with materials and to specifications true to the 1950s.

“Mr. Wright loved craftsmanship; he loved skilled labor,” Eccleston said. “Arkansas has some of the best. We have had many inquiries from Frank Lloyd Wright owners for advice on preservation.”

The large living room is by far the heart of the house, which visitors flow into through a narrow entrance hallway. Because the stairwell is so small and no one will be allowed to touch anything (including the walls), only the downstairs will be open to the public.

Many of the furnishings, which Wright also designed, are original, and others are taken from Wright’s plans. An example is two origami chairs, which Wright originally created for Taliesin West, his studio and home in Arizona. Wright fashioned each chair so it could be built from a single sheet of plywood.

In addition to the large living room, the ground floor includes a kitchen, bedroom and bath. Two smaller bedrooms are in an upstairs loft.

Pipes distributing radiant heat, which is one of many areas where Wright was an innovator, are embedded in the concrete floor of the house’s downstairs and patio.

Wright was adamant that his structures interact with the nature around them. A long, low couch in the living room sits directly across from a southwestern-facing wall of windows and invites visitors to enjoy the world outside.

“I’d like to have a free architecture,” Wright wrote. “I’d like to have architecture that belonged where you see it standing and was a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace.”

Above the couch directly under the roof, a line of clerestory windows features stylized woodcarvings in a samara, or seed pod, design. “The sun makes the shadows more interesting,” Eccleston said, “and at night, the illumination washes to the outside.”

The grounds outside are planted with native fauna and with an eye towards making the setting look as much like the house’s original New Jersey location as possible, Eccleston said.

Whether you know a little or a lot about Wright, available interpretive materials make the house easy to understand. Visitors will pass through a welcome pavilion with information panels that explain but don’t overwhelm. There’s a new exhibit inside the museum as well that explores the relationship of the museum’s architecture to the legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Wright has connections to both Missouri and Arkansas through generations preceding and following him. His teacher, the Chicago-based Louis Sullivan (1856-1924,) designed the Wainwright Building in St. Louis, and his student Fay Jones (1921-2004) designed many buildings in Arkansas including Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs. The School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas bears Jones’s name.

“Wright loved teaching,” said Curatorial Assistant Dylan Turk. “He never forgot all that Louis Sullivan did for him and wanted to spread it forward.”

Admission to the house is free, but visitors must have a ticket. Both self-guided and guided tours will be available, and only 10 people at a time will be allowed inside.

Wright is known for many outstanding buildings—his Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which largely survived the earthquake of 1923, his spectacular Fallingwater house in southwestern Pennsylvania and his last great work, the Guggenheim Museum on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

His Usonian homes are not so well known, but they deserve to be. Wright said of them, “(They are) a thing loving the ground with the new sense of space, light and freedom.” Bachman-Wilson House more than lives up to the great architect’s claim.

Want to go?

What: Bachman-Wilson House

When: Open to the public beginning Nov. 11, 2015. Hours will be Monday & Thursday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday & Friday: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturday & Sunday: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The museum is closed on Tuesdays.

Where: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, 600 Museum Way, Bentonville, AR

How much: Free, but you must have a ticket to enter the home. Tickets will be made available on November 2.

Information: www.crystalbridges.org or call 479-418-5700