martinhouseclr

91 2 // SITE HISTORY & EVOLUTION were becoming quite mature, establishing the character of the Summit-lawn boundary and realizing the significant landscape-relationships to structures. 216 It was also during these years that the Martin’s valued gardener, Thomas Skinner, left his position and moved to New York City. According to an August 1913 diary entry, Martin notes that Skinner had left him the year prior, on 30 June, 1912. 217 Skinner was primarily responsible for the maintenance of the mature garden to-date, having started work with Martin only a month prior to the hemi-cycle’s replacement with the Floricycle in spring of 1906. Skinner was the first gardener to take up residence in the Gardener’s Cottage, completed in 1909, and he was married in the Martins’ living room in 1907 – perhaps a testament to their valued relationship. 218 Taking the place of Skinner was a gardener named George Fellows, having been hired sometime shortly after Skinner’s departure. Fellows stayed with Martin for three years, but other than his employment dates, no documentation is known to exist of his relationship with the Martins’ or his 216 What we would perceive as “foundation plantings” in a contemporary landscape was only broadly popularized in the post-Victorian period, in part, by the early “prairie style” design work of O.C. Simonds, Walter Burley Griffin, and Jens Jenson, among others – which would, as Wilhelm Miller would write in 1915, link house and ground. See the CLR section on landscape background and context. 217 DDM, Memorandum, 21 August 1913, MFP-UB. The diary entry retroactively notes this event as the day’s activities whilst in NYC included running into Skinner in Mamaroneck while on an auto tour with “Mr. May.” 218 Martin House Restoration Corporation, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House Complex: Docent Manual, 2014 Edition work in the landscape. On 27 November 1916, George Fellows left as gardener and Edwin Helic took his place. 219 It is unclear how long Helic’s tenure lasted as no additional information is noted about his departure or the dates in hiring of subsequent gardeners. Dorothy Martin’s Wedding From 1916 until 1923 very little documentation exists, aside from a small handful of photographs that appear to be dated to the early part of that period based on vegetative growth and none of which reveal any significant changes to the landscape. Indeed, the landscape more or less matured as evidenced by what is one of the most important collections of photographs for the Martin House landscape- -the 14 June 1923 photographs of Dorothy Martin’s wedding to James F. Foster. 220 [Fig. 73 - 77] The photographs both confirm and reveal an assortment of characteristics about the landscape. The photographs also would have presumably shown the June 1923 landscape at its most cared-for and most appreciated state, with Martin directing the gardener to have spent the preceding time performing any and all 219 DDM, Memorandum, 27 November 1916, MFP-UB. 220 The Dorothy Martin wedding photos are important as they are both relatively clear and come at a time sufficiently removed from the initial house and landscape construction, clearly indicating that the significant spatial relationships designed into the landscape continued to exist nearly 20 years after the design was implemented. Fig. 69, bottom Floricycle viewed from church property across street corner, c. 1913. Fig. 68, top Northern terminus of Floricycle from Martin verandah, Barton House in background, c. 1914.