martinhouseclr

11 // PROLOGUE & EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Prologue As the Gilded Age came to a close at the end of the 19th Century, becoming displaced by progressive ideals, we see both Wright and his client Darwin Martin at the leading edge of thinking in their roles. Analogous to the outburst of celebrated advances in medicine, women’s suffrage, and education, we see Wright floating above tradition as an architect and Martin believing in him and allowing him to do so. Neither Wright nor Martin were known to hold contempt for advances in technology, science and engineering. Wright took many risks and pushed his own engineering ability to its limits. At the same time however, Wright’s inspiration from nature, and perhaps more notably, his inspiration from the idea that America’s foundations are rooted in the expansiveness of the landscape and the seemingly endless frontier, were a response to the social and economic change that filled a majority of the 19th Century. The intensity of urbanization, migration, new science, new engineering, new art – this is the fertile ground that Wright firmly planted Whitman’s “inhalation” of American spaciousness into and used it to define American architecture. It was Wright’s enormous step forward in creating homes in harmony with nature – not merely biological nature, but in harmony with America’s organic origins across the immense North American landscape – which many say distinguishes him as one of America’s most significant artistic forces. Parallel to these philosophical developments during Wright’s formative Oak Park years were significant changes in the American domestic landscape – the yard. The rise of gardening as wholesome domestic work, eclecticism in the design of domestic landscapes, advances in horticulture, and new appreciation of garden aesthetics and an exit from the Victorian-style – this was the profound shift in gardening at the beginning of the Progressive Era. In fact, when we look at the very use of the word “garden” or “gardening” in literature between the years 1700 and 2000, we clearly see it reaches its zenith between 1900 and 1917. Literature on gardening increased dramatically beginning in 1898 and stayed exceptionally high until supplanted by the worries of the Depression. This is the culture of a cultural landscape – its role in history and the rapid changes seen in our way of life. Darwin and Isabelle Martin’s fondness for gardens and the act of gardening is not only evident in their apparent attention, and sometimes criticism, paid to the design of the Martin House landscape, but is manifest in the historic photos and writings of Mr. and Mrs. Martin within and regarding the garden – the abundance of cut flowers seen in interior photos, the sentimentality toward an early idyllic country childhood, and the 30-year stewardship of the landscape. From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me. I inhale great draughts of space, The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. - Walt Whitman, excerpt from Song of the Open Road