Frank Lloyd Wright's Gordon House: talk & tour

Normally on Saturday if I'm awake by 10AM, it's a bit of an anomaly, especially if it has nothing to do with watching college football or eating lots of greasy bacon, eggs & hash browns.

But as it happens, this Saturday I'll be giving a talk at the Architectural Heritage Center (701 SE Grand Ave.) called "Frank Lloyd Wright: Great Grandfather of Green". Despite the lecture title's emphasis on sustainability, however, the focus will really be on Wright's Gordon House, the only house in Oregon that the great master designed.

The talk will be followed by a chartered bus trip to the Oregon Garden in Silverton for a tour of the Gordon House itself.

Here's a passage from my 2001 Architecture Week article on the Gordon House, which at the time was being moved to the Oregon Garden from its original location in suburban Charbonneau:

"The Conrad and Evelyn Gordon House (S.419) is based on Wright's 'House for a Family of $5-6,000 Income' plan, originally published in a 1938 issue of Life magazine. (That wage translates into $65,000-$75,000 today in 2001 income.) 

Wright designed a lot of big buildings in his career, but this minister's son was also faithfully committed to dwellings for the middle class, which he christened "Usonian." Designed in 1956, the 2,100-square-foot (190-square-meter) Gordon House is Lilliputian by today's building standards, but it radiates beauty and craftsmanship in a way that most cavernous houses in Portland's 'upscale' West Hills never approach. In other words, Wright knew it's not size that matters but what you do with it."

If you go on the tour, you may find it surprising how small the house really is. The kitchen is particularly tiny, and so are the bedrooms. But there is an exquisite clarity to the design and its details, as well as the focus on public spaces such as the living area, where a vast expanse of glass looks out at the garden. The house was originally oriented towards views of Mt. Hood and the Willamette River at its original site, and unfortunately that can't be replicated. But if one were to count on one hand the most significant works of architecture in Oregon, the Gordon House would arguably be one of them.

What's more, the house still serves as a model for good design that a lot of suburban subdivision home builders would be well served to study. It's not about having some giant foyer when people walk in the door and stepping down in space and material quality everywhere else. Wright did just the opposite.

"You enter this house through a small, constricted opening with a low ceiling and transition into a dramatic high-ceiling area," architect and historian Al Staehli told me for a Willamette Week article on the Gordon House. You always have a sense of moving through a sequence of different-scaled spaces. Wright's Usonian houses are of a scale that you can live in. I'm not the kind of architect who could design, say, a 600-square-foot bathroom, so I relate to these designs."

Even though the Gordon House is among the smaller of the legendary architect's designs, this principle of moving through a sequence of spaces is quintessential Wright. I think of the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, for example, where Wright made the unusual decision of having the sanctuary elevated a few feet above the rest of the space (many sanctuaries are descended into like sunken living rooms). It had to be accessed by a small series of stairs, which was very much intentional: you were moving upward to a communion with God. In that same sense, the procession through a small sequence of entry and private quarters into the double-height, glass ensconced family gathering area.

I'm not sure if the bus trip will allow for it, but Wright's Gordon House is also located less than a mile or two from another of Oregon's biggest architectural treasures, the Mt. Angel Abbey Library, designed by the great Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. The interior of this library is absolutely breathtaking (see my snapshot below). Even if the bus doesn't stop there this Saturday, make sure you do sometime.

Comments

[Matt Davis]

What time will the bus tour be back in PDX, do you think? We've got a gd babyshower to go to at 3pm but I wouldn't miss this for the world.

[Greg]

I visited the house on the original site and where it is today several times. It's amazing how much the new location with its slope and surrounding trees replicates the feeling the original site had.

[John T]

I lived in a 200 square foot studio apartment for two years, so when I see the word "Lilliputian" to describe a 2,100 square foot house it's a bit jarring.