martinhouseclr

177 4 // ANALYSIS & EVALUATION the density and range of Wright’s architecturally unique contributions is only exceeded by that of Oak Park, Illinois. In this capacity, Martin’s influence resulted in not only Wright’s design and construction of Martin’s own house, and the compositionally important, but separate Barton House and Gardener’s Cottage, but the Walter Davidson House, the William Heath House, Isabella Martin’s Graycliff, and perhaps most significantly, the now-demolished Larkin Administration Building, which has been extensively celebrated for its many innovations. 35 Both Darwin and Isabelle Martin were owners heavily engaged in horticulture, with Darwin especially fond and attentive of the garden’s design details - a meticulous study of the process and project. Martin shared the transcendentalist and progressive ideals that would not only allow Wright/Griffin to design the unusual house and landscape, but to establish his home among the democratic newness of Parkside, Olmsted’s ‘rural’ garden suburb. Owing perhaps to Wright’s “intoxicating mix of arrogance and charm,” Darwin Martin also spent a great deal of his multi-decade relationship with Wright providing the impulsive architect with both sound advice and money. 36 Martin criticized (often playfully) and corresponded with 35 Two other Wright designed structures located in Buffalo, the Blue Sky Mausoleum and the Fontana Boathouse, are not included in this list as they were never extant during Wright’s life and are contemporary constructions developed off of Wright’s historic plans. 36 Frank Lloyd Wright: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Geoffrey C. Ward writer, DVD, 28 August, 2001. Wright in great detail, sometimes harshly and sometimes timidly, in dealing with his own house, Wright’s business practices, and the disorder and indignity often surrounding Wright’s personal and social life. Wright continually requested financial assistance from Martin, even past the stock market crash of 1929 when Martin began to lose both his fortune and health. Darwin can be credited with being the largest financer of Wright’s effort to rebuild Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, after the tragic fire that also took the life of Wright’s mistress, her children and several others. And in 1922, Martin established Frank Lloyd Wright, Inc., in an attempt to keep the struggling architect solvent. 37 Prior to this (1915), and despite having paid the architect to design a house of unlimited budget, it is recorded that Wright owed Martin a total of $31,000 – the present equivalent of more than $730,000 when adjusted for inflation. 38 Wright wrote an impassioned letter to Isabelle upon hearing of Darwin’s failing health, reading in part: I only wish I had been less taking and more giving where he was concerned but the character is fate and mine got me into heavy going – and no safe harbor in sight. 39 It was Martin’s unique multi-faceted contribution to Wright’s life that helped Wright succeed 37 Jack Quinan, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House: Architecture as Portraiture, 216. 38 Ibid., 212. 39 Ibid., 218. in areas where his artistic genius could not influence, which in many ways, provided a means for Wright to perform the work that transformed both culture and architecture. Similarly, Martin’s impact on his community in terms of commerce and architectural heritage at the height of Buffalo’s prominence as a world-class city was equally substantial. Background: Walter Burley Griffin, the Prairie Spirit, and a ‘Conservation Ethos’ As with most transformations that defined the Progressive Era, the cultural, social and economic events surrounding the end of the 19 th century were fertile ground for a shift in attitudes toward nature and the designed landscape. The shift was marked by the broader recognition and understanding of the philosophies and writings of Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson and was an intense reaction to the impacts of the industrial revolution. This extraordinary shift from agrarian to urban society had resulted in both a sense of anxiety and a newfound sense of social duty, as well as general remorse for the resultant condition of authentic nature in America. By 1890, only 750 American bison were known to remain in North America, the passenger pigeon was extinct by 1900 – both of which populated the landscape by the many-tens-of-millions a hundred years prior. Likewise, the “indigenous, once definitive