martinhouseclr

79 2 // SITE HISTORY & EVOLUTION hot spell during latter half of month.” 186 187 As the subject has been a point of prior speculation, it shouldn’t be overlooked that within the correspondence on the Summit Avenue wall Wright referred to either (or perhaps both) the Barton House front yard or the Floricycle as a “brush pile”. 188 Wright’s use of the phrase makes it clear that he has some distaste for some feature of the landscape along this frontage. Though the planting scheme for the property, including both the original full property plan and the Floricycle, came from Wright’s office, he may have misjudged the growth or just felt that he was not happy with how Walter Burley Griffin’s horticultural selections had matured. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that the Martin’s had distaste for any of the visual and spatial compositions of the landscape design. As horticulturally-fascinated owners, they would have replaced selected plants (particularly border perennials, shrubs too, though at a lesser extent) in and out often as interests changed, but the 186 DDM, Memorandum, 12 May 1911, MFP-UB 187 It is plausible that Martin already had the Griffin- designed shrub border installed prior to July 1911 Wright correspondence. Being consistent with the woody plant material from prior plantings, it would have been mostly planted bare-root and small, and certainly dense as the plan itself suggests. Also consistent with prior development on the property, Martin would have seemingly had no trouble removing the Griffin-designed shrub border if Wright were to deliver a wall plan that appealed to Martin. 188 FLW-DDM, 31 October 1910, WMP-UB. Wright’s seeming disgust for something in the landscape along Summit Avenue is vague, and in considering the known plant material of the Barton front yard and the outer rings of the Floricycle, the term “brush pile” could have bene used in a pejorative context to refer to either of these features. overall structure of the landscape, how the plants defined space and related to the house, appears to have remained more or less as designed through the Martins’ occupancy. Furthermore, Wright used the hemi-cycle/Floricyce (half circle, unit-based planting) design in at least two other commissions of the era, including the W. E. Martin House and the E. E. Boynton House (1908) in Rochester, New York. 189 In any case, the Griffin-designed shrub border seems a creditable solution to the design dilemma that Wright faced with respect to the non-orthogonal nature of the Summit Avenue walkway. It also complimented the existing plantings of the Barton front yard and the outer rings of the Floricycle by using a similar plant palette, with similar habit and form, while adding subtle variation on the theme with respect to the more focused seasonal interest of the border plant material. Wright’s Wasmuth Re-drawing The period of Wright’s personal discord referred to in his correspondence with Martin regarding the Summit Avenue wall also coincides with the well-known publication of what is now termed his “Wasmuth portfolio.” Published in Berlin, Germany, in 1910, the collection of plans and perspective drawings of his work through 1909 189 See FLWF Archives drawing #0801.071 for landscape design study of hemi-cycle at the Boynton House. The Willits hemi-cycle has been discussed elsewhere in this CLR. Fig. 56 This June 14, 1923 photo is the clearest of the Griffin shrub border, seen in background. Looking east.