Frank Herbert's Windmill (1977)

In March 1977, the Associated Press reported that Dune author Frank Herbert (1920-1986) had chosen to live a self-reliant life of "techno-peasantry." From his six-acre homestead on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, Herbert occupied a solar-paneled residence with his family. They grew their own vegetables in a lean-to greenhouse that supplied radiant heat to their adjacent home. They raised chickens and gathered droppings to fertilize their garden.

Herbert also collaborated with Taliesin-trained architect John Underhill Ottenheimer to design a panemone windmill. The duo patented their turbine and sought to market it for Sears or Wards company catalog sales.

Drawings and research notes pertaining to their windmill are housed with the author's manuscripts at California State University, Fullerton University Archives and Special Collections.

Like Albert Ledner, John Ottenheimer continues to practice architecture. He is assisting with the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

Read more:  "Writers sees self-reliance as key to survival." The Manhattan Mercury 25 March 1977.

New Orleans 360˚

Fifty years ago, The Times-Picayune reported on an important shipment from Stamford, CT to New Orleans. The Macton Machinery Company had completed the fabrication and assembly of the enormous turntable to be installed on the roof of Edward Durell Stone's International Trade Mart (ITM, now World Trade Center). Created with 180 low supporting wheels and 45 horizontal stabilizing wheels, the turntable resembled an enormous lazy susan measuring 97'11" in diameter.(1) Macton's team reassembled the turntable in New Orleans, and the ITM's rotating restaurant and cocktail lounge, the Top of the Mart, celebrated its grand opening on 2 January 1967.

Macton devoted its operations to the manufacture of such steel turntables. They initially undertook much smaller platforms, first for tailors and then for portable entertainment. Popular Mechanics reported on their products during the 1950s-60s. Frank Lloyd Wright utilized Macton turntables in his Park Avenue Jaguar (later Mercedes-Benz) showroom (1955) and the Kalita Humphreys Theatre (Dallas, 1959).

In 1911, millionaire Mary (Mrs. Levi Z.)  Leiter designed and built a revolving glass summer house in Beverly, Massachusetts:

"It stands at the end of some small gardens on a terrace overlooking the beach and sea. Its roof is constructed of small poles and is supported by rustic posts covered with rough bark. Around three sides of the structure heavy plates of glass are set. Curtains within are so arranged that the occupants can protect themselves from the hottest glare of the sun's rays. The structure is balanced upon ball bearings as nicely as the carriage of an expensive telescope."(2)

While Leiter's invention was meant to provide a healthy recreational experience, it was an Alsatian-born waiter turned restaurateur who patented revolving dining room floors in order to reduce the wear and tear on service workers. Antonie Martzolf filed his revolving dining room floor scheme in 1914 while managing the Gustony Restaurant at West 32nd Street in New York. He also developed a patent for a combination electric match stand and waiter-signal device so that customers could signal staff without noise.

The New Orleans Monteleone Hotel's Carousel Lounge operates on a similar principle to Martzolf's revolving dining room floor, only with bar staff situated at the center while customers make their 15-minute rotation. The Carousel opened in early September 1949, with bartenders serving a trademark cocktail, the Carousel. Glenn Flanders (1913-98), a University of Missouri-Columbia fine arts graduate based in St. Louis, designed the original Carousel interiors.

In 1958, a father-son team from New Orleans patented a rotating circular bed with an attached headboard-shelving unit-chairs. But that's another story.


(1)"Ship Unit to N.O. for ITM Tower." The Times-Picayune 20 December 1964.

(2)"Revolving House for Mrs. Leiter Nicely Balanced on Ball Bearings." The Times-Picayune 29 May 1911.

Images above:  Popular Mechanics: January 1951 & July 1964.

NEW! Spangenberg Finding Aid

The Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA) recently finalized the processing of the Leonard Reese Spangenberg, Jr. Office Records.

Leonard Reese Spangenberg, Jr. (1925-2007) was a New Orleans native who served in the U.S. Navy (1943-46) prior to obtaining his professional education. After the war, Spangenberg apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright as a fellow at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin (1946-47). This led to his appointment as the supervising apprentice on the construction of Wright’s Welbie L. Fuller residence in Pass Christian, Mississippi in 1951 (destroyed, Hurricane Camille). During this period, the young architect pursued a bachelor’s degree at Tulane University (B.Arch. 1952).


Image above: Leonard R. Spangenberg, Jr. & Associates, Architects. The Plaza Tower. Circa 1964. Promotional Brochure.Biographical Files, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

The Snowflake Motel

In 1963, the Southern Pine Association's public relations department corresponded with the New Orleans architectural firm of Nolan, Norman and Nolan to see if it would develop a series of instructional pamphlets related to home improvements such as enclosing a carport, adding a porch or building a game room. Each pamphlet would highlight the use of the company's products. The series would be marketed as a package to local lumber dealers. As an example of its promotional materials, Southern Pine sent architect Tom Holcombe its brochure, "New Dimensions of Design" that featured photographs of the wood's use in contemporary architecture. The publication included images of Taliesin Associated Architects' [William Wesley Peters] Snowflake Motel (1962, above); William J. Mouton's Harahan residence (1963; below); and Henry G. Grimball's Orleans Marina (1962; below).

Images above: Southern Pine Association. New Dimensions of Design. New Orleans, LA. Circa 1963. Project No. 1064. William T. Nolan Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

NEW COLLECTION: Albert C. Ledner Office Records

The Southeastern Architectural Archive has recently finalized the processing of New Orleans modernist architect Albert Ledner's office records. The documents span his education and professional career from c. 1943-2011.  The collection includes project drawings, correspondence, articles, patents, photographs, color transparencies and diapositives.


Ledner typically served as both architect and construction manager for his owner-built projects. He designed numerous structures for the National Maritime Union of America, and completed projects in eight states. At times he worked with his contemporaries, Philip Roach, Albert Saputo, and Leonard Reese Spangenberg.

From 1944-1955 Ledner travelled extensively to study modernist architecture, and his office records include images of structures he visited.  These photographic images record buildings primarily by Frank Lloyd Wright, but also by Bruce Goff, John Lautner and Eero Saarinen.  Notable amongst the color transparencies are those that document the construction of Florida Southern University in Lakeland, Florida.

Access the finding aid here.

View the SEAA's online exhibit, Modernism in New Orleans here.

Image above: Albert Ledner at Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona, c. 1943-44. Albert C. Ledner Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Wrightian Letterhead

The Southeastern Architectural Archive recently opened its new exhibition, Following Wright, which acknowledges Frank Lloyd Wright's influence in southeastern Louisiana.  While the exhibit highlights architectural drawings by Edward Sporl, Albert C. Ledner, Philip Roach, Jr., and Leonard Reese Spangenberg, we are posting some Wright-inspired letterhead designs by other local architects. Gordon Illes Kuhne († 1979) and A. George Ducorbier, Jr. both adopted Wright's saturated red as part of their graphic layouts in the 1960s.

Images above:  Correspondence Files, 1965-1966, Guy Seghers Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Exhibit Highlights Wright's Influence

Tulane University’s Southeastern Architectural Archive has announced a new exhibit:


Following Wright
Co-curated by Keli Rylance and Kevin Williams
17 January  -- 7 December 2012

From Frank Lloyd Wright’s earliest appearances in American and German architectural publications to his mid-century speaking engagement at the New Orleans International House,  this exhibit traces his influence on architects working in southeastern Louisiana.

Wright’s relationship with the state was dualistic: he disparaged its “decadent” architectural traditions and regaled its native red cypress. While there are no definitive Wright buildings in Louisiana, his impact was nonetheless significant.   Younger generations of New Orleans architects passionately adopted his design principles.  Some absorbed Wright-ian elements from popular magazines such as Ladies’ Home Journal and The House Beautiful; others studied Wright directly, by entering the Taliesin Fellowship and traveling coast to coast documenting his buildings. 

This exhibit acknowledges Frank Lloyd Wright’s regional impact using the rich holdings of the Southeastern Architectural Archive, and includes architectural drawings by local architects Edward Sporl, Albert C. Ledner, Philip Roach, Jr., and Leonard Reese Spangenberg.

Image above:  Leonard Reese Spangenberg and Albert C. Ledner at Florida Southern University.  Lakeland, FL. Undated color transparency.  Albert C. Ledner Collection, Southastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Wright's New Orleans Mission

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) visited Tulane University in 1950. He had been invited to address New Orleans business leaders by Buford L. Pickens, then director of the School of Architecture.

Years later, Pickens recounted the event:

"Well, about Frank Lloyd Wright's visit--Ken Landry drove Wright from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. During this two hour ride down, Wright had 'confessed' to him that he had done the design of the old Illinois Central railroad station, that Sullivan was busy doing something more important at the time and Wright had actually done that building. I think Wright was the chief draftsman. At the time it would have been difficult to satisfy the needs of the railway people and to keep that building. What could have been done, however, would have been to have Wright design the building to replace it. That was the whole purpose of this visit, to come down and have him present his pitch to the Chamber of Commerce or its equivalent with its big wheelers and dealers, prime movers in New Orleans. People coming down from Chicago would get off the train and walk through a palm tree garden and have a very botanical kind of setting. Prominent alumni architects in this school helped to sponsor that meeting because they were influential in agreeing with me that if we got Wright personally to confront these people, that maybe he could pull it off and get the job."

Buford L. Pickens, interview with Bernard Lemann, recorded April 1988. As transcribed in Bernard Lemann, et al. Talk about Architecture: A Century of Architectural Education at Tulane. New Orleans: Tulane University School of Architecture, 1993, p. 112.

Image above: Unknown photographer. Frank Lloyd Wright at Tulane University. 1950. Color diapositive. Frank Lloyd Wright Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Following Wright

As the Southeastern Architectural Archive prepares to install its new exhibit that focuses on Frank Lloyd Wright's influence in the southeastern Gulf Region, we have pulled out some travel slides.

During the 1950s, New Orleans architect Philip Roach, Jr. visited many of Wright's then-newly constructed buildings, taking photographs along the way. Roach's admiration for Wright took him to Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Slides above, from top to bottom:

Welbie L. Fuller Residence, Pass Christian, MS (1951; destroyed by Hurricane Camille, 1969)

Auldbrass Plantation [C. Leigh Stevens Residence], Yemassee, SC (1940-51)

Anderton Court Shops, Beverly Hills, CA (1952)

All images taken by Philip Roach, Jr. Courtesy of Philip Roach, Jr. Office Records, Southeastern Architetural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Wright the 'Love Philosopher'

As reported in Southern Architect and Building News 36:3 (January 1916):

Frank Lloyd Wright, noted architect and social anarchist, has been tied again to the 'provincial whipping post.'

The lash of public criticism that fell so heavily upon Mamah Bothwick Cheney, his first 'spiritual affinity,' strikes this time at Mrs. Maude Miriam Noel, an artist of note, who has won honors abroad and in this country and was fellow-worker in Paris with Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney.

Mrs. Noel is very beautiful, and a woman of rare intellectual charm, but as she is the mother of married daughters, it was beauty and brains, not youth, that lured the love philosopher of Taliesin from the shadow of grief into the light of new love, and establishes her in the love bungalow in the woodland retreat in Wisconsin where Wright and his first 'soulmate,' Mamah Bothwick Cheney, sought seclusion when they defied the world, and he forsook his wife and she her husband, six years ago.

The tragic death of Mamah Cheney and her two children -- Cheney's children, not Wright's -- in a fire that destroyed the bungalow about a year ago, was said to be the final chapter in Wright's romance. Love died for the architect when his soulmate died, so his friends said. But they reckoned without his capacity for romance.

As he reared again the destroyed love bungalow and renamed it Taliesin, love was resurrected from his soul-mate's grave. Less than a year after she perished he met Miriam Noel. Love bloomed again in the death-blighted soul; the bungalow in the forest became a 'love castle' once more.

But the Mann act, invoked upon them by a discharged housekeeper, Mrs. Nellie Breen, intruded its slimy suggestiveness into the paradise of love and polluted it with a federal investigation, which brought Wright, his 'soul's affinity,' his strange love philosophy, his unsanctioned moral code to the 'whipping post of public opinion' again.

The investigation has been abandoned, the housekeeper may be prosecuted for slander, but Frank Wright and Miriam Noel have learned that conventionality rules the world, and the world is cruelly unkind to those who place 'personal liberty' above social convention and the moral code.

Wright's wife, whom he abandoned for Mamah Bothwick Cheney six years ago, has steadfastly refused to give him a divorce; she lives with her children at Oak Park, Ill.

Field Trip: Cloquet, Minnesota

Frank Lloyd Wright designed only one automobile service station (1956-1957), a commission for a Phillips 66 station. The structure is located at the intersection of Highway 33 and Cloquet Avenue in Cloquet, Minnesota. The cantilevered roof shelters a glass-enclosed visitors' waiting/observation room that overlooks the Cloquet River bridge, railroad tracks, and busy intersection. As with many of Wright's buildings, it employs the use of Louisiana cypress. In 1984, the building was listed on the National Register; in 2008, it celebrated its 50th anniversary.

Image above: Frank Lloyd Wright, architect. R.W. Lindholm Service Station (1956-1957; opened October 1958), Cloquet, MN. Fujifilm. K. Rylance 1992.

Wright's Building Blocks

Jori Finkel of the Los Angeles Times has recently reported on the uncertain future of Frank Lloyd Wright's textile-block homes. The 1923 Millard House (AKA La Miniatura, shown left) has been on the market for years, and its listing price has dropped from $7.7 M to $4.99 M. The 1924 Ennis House (lower two images) went on the market last year at $15 M but is now being offered for $7.49 M, not including the $6 M the buyer must keep on reserve for future preservation efforts. The Millard House may be sold only to be dismantled and reassembled in Japan.

Wright designed his four textile block system homes in southern California after returning from Japan, where he had used cast brick on the Imperial Hotel (1912-1923). Although the latter was razed in 1968, its entrance lobby was preserved, reconstructed at the Meiji Mura Architecture Museum in Nagoya.

The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains a drawing of a full-sized detail of the Imperial Hotel's cast brick, which was once exhibited in the Max Protech Gallery in New York, and was the gift of New Orleans architect James Lamantia.

A number of New Orleans architects visited Frank Lloyd Wright structures in their youth, and brought back photographs and kodachrome slides of their destinations. Tulane School of Architecture graduate Philip H. Roach, Jr. documented La Miniatura and the Ennis House during a long architectural road trip that he took during the 1950s.

Images: Philip H. Roach, Jr., photographer. Frank Lloyd Wright, architect. Circa 1950s. Philip H. Roach, Jr. Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Wright in the Bayou?

As the Southeastern Architectural Archive begins its advance planning for a new exhibition, The Wright Stuff: Frank Lloyd Wright's Influence in New Orleans, we came across Saunders Architecture's Guggenheim fantasia (image above). Since the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is celebrating its 50th Anniversary, on February 12th it launched its own self-focused exhibition, Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum. You can read Roberta Smith's NY Times review here.

Image above: Saunders Architecture (Bergen, Norway), FLW in His Element, digital print (2009) as it appears in the NY Times 18 February 2010 and in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's online exhibition. BTW, I've mentioned Wright's preference for Louisiana cypress in an earlier post. And for redwoods too?

Images in Glass

The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains several collections that contain fragile glass media: glass transparencies, glass lantern slides, and glass negatives. These range chronologically from the mid-nineteeenth to the mid-twentieth century and in scale from 2 1/4" x 3 1/4" to 11 x 14".

The item reproduced above formerly resided in the Tulane School of Architecture's Slide Library, part of a large collection of glass lantern slides that were used by faculty for teaching purposes. Photographer/musician Guy F. Bernard (1906-1982) took the photograph of the E. Lacroix Tomb Gate in St. Lous Cemetery No. III. The gate's ornamental cast iron with weeping willow, lambs and doves once evidenced the white polychromy shown here.

New Orleans modernist architect Albert C. Ledner took the second image while visiting Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin in 1948. What you see above is a digital reproduction of a 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 color transparency sandwiched into a Jiffy Mount. The New York city-based Diamant Products Company trademarked the Jiffy Mount, envisioning it as a means of preserving color transparencies and negatives indefinitely.

This last digital reproduction has been taken from an 8 x 10" glass plate negative by photographer George Francois Mugnier (1855-1936) and depicts a Bird's Eye View of the New Orleans levee. Its source is a gelatin dry plate negative, a process that was invented in 1871 by Richard Leach Maddox. The gelatin dry plates were commercially produced and became quite popular by 1880, only to be superceded by gelatin silver paper negatives and gelatin silver celluloid negatives in the 1920s.

First Image: Guy F. Bernard, photographer. Cast Iron Gate, undated lantern slide. Tulane School of Architecture Lantern Slides Collection.

Second Image: Albert C. Ledner, photographer. Taliesin Entrance, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1948. Albert C. Ledner Office Records Collection.

Third Image: George Francois Mugnier, photographer. Bird's Eye View of the Levee. undated gelatin dry plate negative.

All three items reside in the Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.