Frank Lloyd Wright
designed a home so radical it helped rejuvenate both his
career and domestic architecture.
The quiet neighborhood of fine homes and
old oaks not far from the heart of Stanford's campus [Palo Alto,
California] gives no hint that it harbors a revolutionary. But
climb the curving driveway at 737 Frenchman's Road and you'll
find the unlikely culprit --- a low, spreading house of redwood,
glass, and earth-orange brick that hugs the contours of its
hilly site.
Stanford's Hanna House,
also known as the Honeycomb House, isn't just another Frank
Lloyd Wright design. Built in 1937, it occupies a pivotal place
in the career of a man whose roughly 450 buildings define
architecture as we know it. It is on of 17 Wright works selected
by the American Institute of Architects as his most treasured
gems.
In 1936, when Stanford
professor Paul Hanna and his wife, Jean, had Wright design a
house for them and their three youngsters, the architect was
enjoying a career comeback. Behind him were triumphs like
Tokyo's Imperial hotel, which had survived a cataclysmic
earthquake, and important future projects like the Johnson Wax
Building and Fallingwater were already on his drafting board.
In the Hannas, Wright
found the clients he needed. "For quite a while Wright had been
interested in the use of unconventional geometry," says Stanford
architectural historian Paul Turner. "He wanted to break out of
the rectangular box that dominated architecture, and he needed
clients who would let him do that."
At Hanna House, Wright
turned to the hexagon, the shape of honeycombs, which he found
more conductive to human movement than the square. He designed
an open floor plan of interlocking hexagons --- there are no
90-degree walls in the entire house --- and the pattern appeared
in floors, tiles, and furnishings. According to Turner, the
house was Wright's first nonrectangular design that actually got
built and "it inaugurated the last phase of his career, when
shapes like circles, hexagons, and triangles dominate his work."
That phase, many argue, culminated in New York's spiral wonder,
the Guggenheim Museum. which was complete in 1959 after Wright's
death.
For today's visitors, used
to the open interior space of modern homes, it's hard to imagine
how radical Hanna House was in 1937, but vintage photos give
some idea. In one, Professor Hanna's mother --- resembling the
kindly See's Candies grandma --- looks like a ghost from
the past in her son's modern galley kitchen, with its 16-foot
ceiling and walls that opened like louvers.
For the Hannas, who shared
Wright's belief that architecture can change people, the
collaboration brought both promise and challenge. They would be
able to rear their children in the open interior space they felt
encouraged family interaction and creativity.
But as the Hannas later
reported in a book about their relationship with Wright, they
also battled the architect over many design details. In one
memorable episode, the worried couple telegraphed Wright after
learning that a fault ran through the property. Back came the
terse reply: "I built the Imperial Hotel."
Cost also became a
concern, because the $15,000 estimate ballooned to $37,000, a
frightening sum given Paul Hanna's $4,400 annual salary.
Even so, their
collaboration proved fruitful and the Hannas ended up with both
an enduring friendship with Wright, who visited in later years,
and the 3,570-square-foot house of simple, straightforward
materials and original design. "The deep satisfaction of feeling
that our dream had come true," wrote the Hannas, "Far exceeded
the remembered difficulties and disappointments."
After the Hannas gave the
house to Stanford in 1975, it was used as the provost's
residence until its closure following the 7.1 earthquake in 1989
that severely compromised the foundation and nearly collapsed
the central fireplace and roof.
"We were very lucky not to
lose the house, given the length and magnitude of the quake,"
says Naomi Miroglio of Architectural Resources Group, the
company that headed up a structural restoration costing $2.2
million. Hanna House reopened in 1999 and now hosts university
dinners, seminars, and tours, which can be booked up several
months in advance. And there are plans for future restoration.
"We think of ourselves as two-thirds done," says campus
archaeologist and Hanna House board member Laura Jones, "but the
last third may take five to 10 years."
The house is not intended
to be a museum furnished with period pieces, Jones says; because
of this, it may have a slightly bare look. For those who visit,
however, that doesn't matter. Wright's fantastic geometry is
still there, as are the sounds of water from a cascading
fountain, which must have lulled the Hannas to sleep, and the
twisting limbs of oak and pine trees that certainly shaded them
during hot summer days.
For all that's been
written about Hanna House, perhaps Jean Hanna --- the woman who
reared her children in its rooms and watched them play on its
terraces --- best summed up the spirit of the house. To live
here, she reportedly said after 25 years in its honeycombed
space, is to live imaginatively.
__________
Hall,
Christopher. "The Wright Angle." VIA. Volume
122/Number 5
(September/October 2001) pp. 52-55.