martinhouseclr

16 DARWIN D. MARTIN HOUSE // CULTURAL LANDSCAPE REPORT County Clerk’s Office land records, MHRC authored materials, fact sheets, docent training manuals, internal memos, as well as historic and contemporary published works (books and scholarly journal articles) by others on topics related to Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Burley Griffin, and other associated topics. Of particular value were contemporary scholarly works authored by Jack Quinan and Christopher Vernon, who were both engaged in discourse throughout the research phase. The existing conditions inventory was performed through a combination of site visits, photographs, and the preparation of digital site and topographic survey between February and July 2014. The digital site survey was provided by MHRC and completed by Frandina Engineering and Land Surveying, P.C., Buffalo. Constraints on Research As regrettable to the CLR authors as it is, nearly all of the abundant historical documentation is associated with Darwin D. Martin and Frank Lloyd Wright alone. The correspondence, diaries, and drawings pertain almost exclusively to Darwin Martin’s dealings with Wright’s studio and his own feelings about the landscape. It is strongly recommended that more focused research be performed to determine and authenticate Isabelle Martin’s association with the garden [Fig. 2] – which is almost certainly more than is being conveyed by the examined material. Furthermore, aside from the historic ‘green house’ plans and associated correspondence, the Gardener’s Cottage parcel has relatively few known historic records. No known photographs exist of the Cottage’s front yard during the proposed period of significance and few exist of the rear yard. As the site currently serves (and is spatially favorable for) a variety of MHRC programmatic necessities, a comparatively limited amount of research was able to be performed on the historic landscape character of the parcel. Orientation & Landscape Units The Martin House is located at 125 Jewett Parkway, Buffalo, Erie County, New York. [Fig. 3] The property is located within Parkside, a late 19 th century garden suburb of Buffalo, which is listed within the National Register as the Parkside East Historic District. The property is surrounded by extant residential land uses, as well as a nearby religious institution (The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepard) whose building pre-dates the Martin House by roughly fifteen years. The project boundary includes the 1.5 acre “historic core” of the property, as defined by the parcels historically owned by Darwin D. Martin and as recorded in the 1975 National Register of Historic Places nomination. [Fig. 4] Additional areas outside the historic core of the property have been included in a limited way if they have either some sort of direct influence (visually or Fig. 2 Isabelle Reidpath Martin near the Floricycle, c.1933