The Wright Way: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Northern California

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Marin County Civic Center etches the landscape, and his Maiden Lane Mousetrap has had as many lives as the two white Persian cats who once lounged there. Wright’s Northern Californian residences are equally as evocative. The Wisconsin native, who passed away in 1959 at 91, enjoyed a creative relationship with the Golden State. His Carmel by the Sea project, known as Mrs.Clinton Walker House, designed in 1948, resembles a ship with its bow cutting through the ocean. Della Walker requested a home “as durable as the rocks and as transparent as the waves.”  Constructed of cedar and Carmel stone and on the  National Register of Historic Places, the property recently sold for $22 Million.  

The Hanna–Honeycomb House on the Stanford University Campus, recognized as a  National Historic Landmark, was Wright’s first work in the Bay Area. Started in 1937 and expanded over 25 years; the architect patterned the design after a bee’s honeycomb. The one-story structure clings to the hillside on a one and half acre site. Wright selected native redwood board and batten, wire cut San Jose brick, concrete, and plate glass for the construction, which included a main house, guest house, hobby shop, storage building, double carport, garden house, pools, and water cascade. The Hanna family lived there for 38 years before giving the property to Stanford University in 1974. 

Wright strongly believed in creating dwellings for middle-class Americans he called Usonian homes. One was the mid-century owner-built Berger House in San Anselmo which he designed for Robert Berger, a mechanical engineer, his wife Gloria, and their four children. The stone, glass, wood, and concrete residence, which cost $15,000 to construct plus Wright’s $1,500 fee, was listed for $2.5 Million in 2012. Berger worked building the home for twenty years until he died in 1973. His widow hired a professional carpenter to finish the project, including Wright-designed furnishings. One element did not survive to the present; Edie’s House, a dog shelter that Wright designed for the family’s Labrador Retriever. Unfortunately, Edie preferred the main house, and the canine home was taken to the dump.