I crashed last night before I could do this magnificent house justice so I’ll try to do better today before I write our blog. The scale of the details that Wright specified in the Martin House is overwhelming and for me that makes this house his boldest Prairie house statement. I know from my own experience that one does not often pair with a client who has the temperament and means to give the architect free rein but Darwin Martin seemed to approach that ideal. To have been witness to the meetings between Martin and Wright would have been to watch Wright in full and glorious flight as he described his ideas from all altitudes, from the 30,000 foot view of the entire project down to the 1 foot or lower details. Martin allowed Wright to bring his full genius to bear and introduced him to other Buffalo clients like the Larkin Company where he was able to express his ideas of how a business should be organized and streamlined hierarchically. Sadly the Larkin Building does not exist now except in photos.

One of the concepts that Wright innovated at the Martin house that had no equivalent at the time was exploding the box of the house freeing up an interior space with few walls or divisions between living areas and bringing the supporting structure into the interior allowing the exterior walls to be fenestrated to a degree never seen before. Using leaded glass designs he created rows of multi-colored windows that brought light and color inside this new “exploded box” bringing exterior and interior areas together.

I could go on with my admiration of the Martin House and the level of quality of its restoration but others have studied the house and written more eloquently about it so I encourage you to start with a Google search and include as many images as you can pull up. Here are a few more of ours from yesterday.