Decided to go ahead and reactivate a post that I created back in July (as part of the Mighty Mo Road Show) and then quickly relegated to draft form. At the time I thought it was a cop out, and too shallow a treatment of the Frank Lloyd Wright house that we visited outside of St. Louis. Maybe it is. It's simply a letter that I wrote to my grandmother around that time, knowing how much she loves Wright's lines, and knowing how much it reminds her of my Bompa and his love of Wright's architecture.
I never did get around to doing it right, but something about persimmon season made me think about that place again and regret that I didn't at least mention it here. The Kraus House is available by appointment only and I suspect it deserves more attention than it gets. It's a gem, nestled in a persimmon grove, strung together with piano hinges and framed out in a series parallelograms.
The true marvels reside inside. The interior retains all of Wright's original furnishings -- down even to the bedspreads -- much like the Dana Thomas house but on a smaller scale. (And DON'T get me started about the gal from Southern California who compulsively flipped over and started fingering the bedspread, to our collective horror, as if she were in a J.C. Penney's showroom and deliberating whether she might buy it. The docent showed remarkable restraint in telling her "PLEASE. you mustn't. do. that.")
But of course they won't allow photographs of the interior. So here's a brief Flickr slideshow of the exterior of the home »
And here's a link to the original post: Kraus Haus »
The Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth Park
120 North Ballas Road
Kirkwood, Missouri 63122
To schedule a tour call 314-822-8359
2 comments:
i'm glad you reactivated this. we will have to visit this place, we're in st. louis all the time.
so cool -- you'll have to let me know what you think. it's really a treasure -- although I don't know, if I lived there, if I would ever manage to *relax*.
the couple never had kids -- deciding explicitly that they could have either kids or a FLW house, but not both. it'd be a nightmare to try to raise kids in a national treasure.
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