[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 129 (Wednesday, September 24, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9903-S9905]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT BUILDING CONSERVANCY ANNUAL CONFERENCE

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, this past weekend I was invited 
to speak at the annual conference of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building 
Conservancy which took place in Buffalo, NY. I promised some of the 
attendees that I would enter my keynote address in the Congressional 
Record. I ask that the full text of my address be printed in the 
Record.
  The text follows:

           Keynote Address by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

       Not long ago I happened to be in Phoenix and took the 
     opportunity to visit Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's 
     desert commune. I was most generously received and shown 
     everywhere, including the atelier where the plans were being 
     drawn for Wright's splendid Monona Terrace Community and 
     Convention Center, just now completed in Milwaukee. At 
     length, I was shown the splendid, terraced dining room where, 
     in the manner of the Englishman in the jungle, all 
     communards, faithful to the Master's edict, dress for dinner 
     on Saturday night.
       We are less formal here in Buffalo, but no less welcoming, 
     and greatly honored to be at the site of this year's Frank 
     Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy Annual Conference.
       Each of us, I cannot doubt, has a personal story of an 
     encounter with the spiritual and physical force of 
     architecture. As Americans, we tend to begin in Europe, but 
     with time, more and more we return to our own.
       I have two tales to tell.
       The first is simple enough. In 1992, I was asked to address 
     the convention of the American Sociological Association then 
     meeting in Pittsburgh. I arrived in a fine new hotel in the 
     Golden Triangle expecting all manner of posters and 
     pronouncements as had been the fashion of a few decades 
     earlier. Instead, I was greeted by a large sign announcing 
     the times of departure for the tour of Fallingwater. American 
     sociologists are finally getting their priorities straight.
       My second tale, more personal and specific to Buffalo, took 
     place some twenty-one years ago. I was then in a five-way 
     primary contest for the Democratic nomination for United 
     States Senator. In the manner of such campaigns, most of 
     one's time is spent in strategy sessions in hotel rooms. One 
     August day, having spent the morning and afternoon at the 
     Statler Hotel in a seemingly endless succession of these 
     consultations, I announced I was going out for a walk. An 
     economist would call it a random walk. I had no direction in 
     mind, save any that would get me away from that hotel room.
       And so I wandered westerly to Church Street and reached 
     Pearl. Glancing south along Church Street, of a sudden I saw 
     something that did not exist. Couldn't exist. Certainly 
     something I for certain had not known to exist. A Sullivan 
     skyscraper. The Guaranty Building. The beginning of an 
     American architecture that would come to be known as the 
     International Style. Sure enough, on the east side of the 
     street there were three tall skyscrapers (an American term, 
     incidentally, the topmost sail of a clippership, save when 
     the moonraker is rigged). One was by an old friend, Minoru 
     Yamasaki. Each was an exact copy, if you would just look at 
     the essentials, of Sullivan's building across the street, 
     built fifty or sixty years earlier. (On closer examination, 
     there had been a fire of sorts, and the building was all but 
     abandoned.)
       I then and there resolved to win the Democratic primary, 
     become a United States Senator and save the Sullivan 
     building.
       My first task was to get the City of Buffalo interested. 
     One day the Mayor agreed to walk over with me from City Hall. 
     He was a fine new Mayor; if he had any weakness, it was that 
     he agreed with you on everything. I mean everything. Well, 
     most things. ``Mr. Mayor,'' I proclaimed, ``if we can save 
     that building, the time will come when people will get on 
     airplanes and fly to Buffalo just to see it.'' ``Bull,'' said 
     His Honor.
       May I say, it was a special pleasure to see in Thursday's 
     Buffalo News a picture of Eugenio De Anzorena of Alexandria, 
     Virginia, one of your conferees, making videotapes of the 
     designs on the wall of the Guaranty Building. ``Appreciating 
     Architecture'' was the caption, although I should have 
     preferred, ``The Mayor Refuted!''
       No matter. The Buffalo ``Evening News,'' as it then was, 
     got the point. I began to learn the history of this great 
     achievement of the Prairie School, the first American 
     architecture, soon to be seen world-wide.
       We begin in middle of the 19th Century, in the village of 
     Stockton in nearby Chautauqua, County. It was in Stockton 
     where one Hascal L. Taylor, a carriage maker, had grown up. 
     Taylor would in time make a great deal of money in the oil 
     fields of western Pennsylvania. His vision was to build a 
     monument, the largest office building in the city, in 
     downtown Buffalo. Taylor immediately sought the 
     prestigious Chicago firm of Dankmar Adler and Louis 
     Sullivan, who had of course built the Wainright Building 
     in St. Louis four years earlier--in 1892.
       Adler, the engineer, and Sullivan, the designer, had 
     created a new form. A form based on function. Taylor got it. 
     He, however, died in 1894. Fortunately the Guaranty Company 
     bought the plans for the building and the site. Note the 
     brevity of the subsequent succession: The Guaranty purchased 
     the land and plans in December of 1894. The constructors 
     began laying the foundation for the new building in February 
     of 1895. By July of 1895, the steel frame was complete, and 
     in March of 1896, barely a year after laying the foundation, 
     the first occupants were moving in. Incredible.
       Using his ``organic'' philosophy, Sullivan, had created a 
     `sister' work to St. Louis's Wainwright Building. The new, 
     taller building, a 13 story, 140,000 square foot structure

[[Page S9904]]

     was called the nation's second skyscraper. An ornate 
     masterpiece, embellished with a warm terra cotta exterior but 
     forceful in its verticality, was the new ``American 
     skyscraper.'' Let me say, that I would rather see Mount 
     Vernon torn down, or even the White House. They are fine 
     buildings, but they are copies. Copies of European buildings, 
     which in turn were copies of Greek and Roman buildings. The 
     skyscraper is ours. Invented by this man of singular American 
     genius, Louis Sullivan. In architecture, as in much else, we 
     had followed the rest of the world. Then came Sullivan, and 
     ever since the world has followed us. Indeed, the Guaranty is 
     our treasure, and yet remarkably it has not always been 
     appreciated as such.
       By the 1940s the building had already changed owners. In 
     the 1950s the owners were concerned about the accumulation of 
     dirt on the facade. They chose an unfortunately destructive 
     solution: they hired sandblasters to clean the terra cotta on 
     the first two stories. Other ``improvements'' included adding 
     suspended acoustical ceilings and tile flooring, thereby 
     altering the perspectives of Sullivan's rooms and hiding some 
     of the exquisite interior decorations.
       Even though it was located downtown, its facilities became 
     ``outmoded'' and its rental space was in very little demand. 
     Even though it was listed on the National Register of 
     Historic Places in 1973 and designated a national historic 
     landmark in 1975, a fire in 1974 forced much of the building 
     to close, and placed the building's future in jeopardy.
       In June of 1977, Progressive Architecture, reported: 
     ``Discreet inquiries have been made by owners of Louis 
     Sullivan's Prudential Building (formerly Guaranty) in 
     Buffalo, NY about steps to demolish a historic landmark.'' 
     Thus by 1977, architects were speaking of the building in 
     terms of how best to demolish it. In April of 1977 the City 
     threatened to destroy the building.
       In September of 1977, the Greater Buffalo Development 
     Foundation established a volunteer task force of business and 
     community leaders to study the possible renovation of the 
     building. After concluding that it should be done, they came 
     up with new financial strategies that included tax exempt 
     financing rates, partial property tax abatement, and private 
     loans. The cost was estimated to be around $12.4 million.
       I wrote to the Secretaries of Housing and Urban 
     Development, Commerce, and Interior seeking funds for the 
     building. In October of 1977, I convinced Vice President 
     Mondale to tour the building whilst visiting here. (He needed 
     no persuading, having the Owatonna Bank back home.) In 
     November of 1978, we got our first grant, small but 
     symbolic--$50,000 from The Department of Interior's Historic 
     Preservation Program. And in April of 1981, we secured a $2.4 
     million Urban Development Action Grant (UDAG) from the US 
     Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 
     addition, as a site on the National Register of Historic 
     Places, the building was qualified to receive a 25 percent 
     tax credit on the entire investment under the Economic 
     Recovery Tax Act of 1981.
       After a majestic renovation by the architectural and 
     engineering firm Canon, the building re-opened in December of 
     1983.
       But there is a lesson to be learned here. Fortunately, 
     throughout the process of renovating the Guaranty building 
     there were those of us, spurred on by the Buffalo News, who 
     began to recover the memory, if you will, of one of the 
     greatest tragedies of architecture in this nation--the 
     demolition of Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin building. An 
     examination of that misguided chain of events tells us a 
     little more about the dangers of neglect, and introduces New 
     York to the mind of Louis Sullivan's greatest pupil.
       As all of you know, Sullivan was Frank Lloyd Wright's 
     ``Lieber meister''. In his book largely on Sullivan, Genius 
     and the Mobocrocy, Wright wrote of his early days with 
     Sullivan:
       `` `Wright,' the young draughtsman nineteen, he would often 
     say to me with undisguised contempt: `Wright! I have no 
     respect at all for a draughtsman!' . . . His haughty 
     disregard had already offended most of the Adler and Sullivan 
     employees. His contempt may have been due to the fact that he 
     was so marvelous a draughtsman himself. But I knew what he 
     really meant . . . He taught me nothing nor did he ever 
     pretend to do so except as he was himself the thing he did 
     and as I could see it for myself. He (`the designing 
     partner') was the educational document in evidence.''
       Wright then clarified Sullivan's genius and its 
     relationship to the `mobocrocy':
       ``Do you realize, that here in his [Sullivan's] own way, is 
     no body of culture evolving through centuries of time but a 
     scheme and `style' of plastic expression which an individual, 
     working away in the poetry crushing environment of a more 
     cruel materialism than any seen since the days of the brutal 
     Roman, has made out of himself? Here was a sentient 
     individual who evoked the goddess whole civilizations strove 
     in vain for centuries to win, and wooed her with this 
     charming interior style--all on his own in one lifetime all 
     too brief . . . [Sullivan's] language of self expression was 
     as complete in itself'' as that ``of any of the great style 
     which time took so many ages to perfect.''
       Yet, I do not want to mislead. They had their 
     disagreements.
       By 1902, Wright had perfected some of his outside 
     commissions in the form of the Prairie house. On September 
     11, 1902, Darwin Martin--Secretary of the successful Larkin 
     Company of Buffalo--visited his brother William in Chicago. 
     William was looking for a site for a new home, and as they 
     toured Oak Park they became intrigued with Wright's designs 
     there. William met with Wright a month later and wrote his 
     brother that he was most favorably impressed. William wrote:
       ``He would be pleased to design your house - & further he 
     is the man to build your office - he has had large experience 
     in the large office buildings with Adler and Sullivan . . . 
     he says it is strange that he is only known as a residence 
     architect - when his best and largest experience was in large 
     buildings.''
       Meryle Secrest in his biography of Wright, A House Divided, 
     wrote that Wright saw the Larkin Project as his chance to 
     ``break into the world of large building commissions,'' but 
     that he ``shamelessly exaggerated the importance of his role 
     at Adler and Sullivan.'' For Martin later told Larkin that: 
     ``the $500,000 Wainwright Building and the Union Trust 
     Building and the Union Trust Building of St. Louis; the 
     Schiller Theater and the Stock Exchange in Chicago; the 
     Seattle and Pueblo Opera Houses, all Adler and Sullivan's 
     work, were, I inferred from Mr. Wright, largely his 
     creations.' ''
       The Larkin Company of Buffalo commissioned him (at Mr. 
     Darwin Martin's recommendation) to design its administrative 
     building across from the soap factory and warehouse. For 
     Wright, it was an opportunity to develop complex spatial 
     ideas. His exterior was an expression of almost pure 
     geometric form, with no ornamentation save for two piers 
     topped by sculptures supporting globes to symbolize the 
     company's international aspirations. Wright intended the 
     reductive form to be a ``genuine and constructive affirmation 
     of the new Order of the Machine Age.''
       The Larkin Building was not at first widely praised in 
     architectural circles. It began to exert a great deal of 
     influence on European architects with the publication of 
     Wright's work by Ernst Wasmuth in Berlin in 1910. By the mid-
     1920s the European appreciation of the Larkin Building had 
     crossed the Atlantic. The building gained prominence in 
     American surveys of modern architecture and does so to this 
     day.
       Yet, the proliferation of chain stores in small towns began 
     to cut into the Larkin Company's mail order business. The 
     Depression caused further problems. Assets were liquidated to 
     pay creditors. By 1943 the Larkin Company had no assets other 
     than the building, on which it owed $85,000 in back taxes.
       In August, 1949 the Western Trading Corporation offered the 
     Common Council $5,000 and promised to raze the Larkin 
     Building and replace it with something that would improve the 
     tax base. Two months later Mayor Dowd accepted the offer. The 
     building was demolished to make way for a truck terminal, but 
     Western Trading then petitioned to move the terminal to a 
     larger lot. A vacant lot exists on the site today.
       So too in downtown Chicago, one of Sullivan's first 
     buildings was replaced by a multi-story parking garage. 
     Wright had warned of the ``poetry crushing environment of a 
     more cruel materialism'' and both his and Sullivan's works 
     were victims of this environment. The burden falls on men and 
     women like you to remind us all of the value of these works.
       It was just such a reminder that opened my eyes to the 
     wonder, and neglect of the Darwin Martin House. It was Saint 
     Patrick's Day, 1991, and Jason Aronoff, the head of the 
     Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier's Martin House Task 
     Force had asked me to look into the condition of the Darwin 
     Martin House. I was not prepared.
       We first visited the splendidly maintained Heath House with 
     its gracious young family. We then went across to see the 
     Darwin Martin House, which was quite simply a ruin. The 
     concrete was running away like sand. Two of the great 
     ornamental urns were missing from the front step and were 
     only later found discarded in the yard. On the front door and 
     side windows thereof there was a printed sign which read:


                                 Notice

       ``New York State's Current fiscal condition has caused the 
     closing of the Darwin D. Martin House to the public until 
     further notice. Queries about future opening date and 
     restoration plans for the House should be Mailed to . . .''
       I immediately wrote to the Buffalo News in an effort to 
     alert all to the horrid state of this wonderful House. What 
     had become of this masterpiece? Who was to blame? How can we 
     avoid such a tragedy in the future?
       In the Martin House, Wright showed what he could do with 
     what became an almost unlimited budget. Construction on the 
     Martin House began in early 1904 and ended in 1906 with 20 
     rooms and 11,000 square feet, at a cost of $160,000.
       Because of, perhaps in spite of, their numerous dialogues 
     over the plans for and the cost of the house, Martin and 
     Wright became fast friends. Martin helped Wright get many 
     other commissions through the years. Late in life Martin 
     offered Wright one last commission, a monument for the family 
     plot in the Forest Lawn Cemetery. Martin wanted a design to 
     cover only the space for one grave. Typically, Wright 
     produced a much larger design with a flight of marble steps 
     climbing the slope of the lot to a single headstone bearing 
     the family names. The stock market crash prevented the 
     commission from being realized. On learning of Martin's death 
     in 1935, Wright referred to him as ``My best friend.''

[[Page S9905]]

       After Darwin Martin died the house stood vacant for the 
     next 17 years. There is no clear explanation for his son's 
     lack of appreciation for the house, no clear answer to why 
     Darwin Jr. began to strip the house of its doors, lighting, 
     wiring, moldings, heating, and plumbing systems and 
     installing them in other buildings he owned. When he finally 
     vacated the house, he left the doors unlocked. Neighborhood 
     children would come in for roller skating, or to smash some 
     windows or some of the remaining mosaic tiles over the 
     fireplace. Eventually part of the roof fell in from the 
     weight of snow.
       In 1946 the City was the sole bidder on the Martin House at 
     the foreclosure sale. In 1954 Buffalo architect Sebastian 
     Tauriello bought the house, the pergola, the conservatory, 
     and the garage for $22,000. He wrote to Wright for the 
     original plans and received the following reply: ``Dear 
     Tauriello: Hope you treat the opus according to its merits. 
     When we return to Wisconsin May first I will look up the 
     plans and send you a set of prints with a bill for the 
     prints. Frank Lloyd Wright.''
       Fearing an exorbitant fee, Tauriello proceeded without 
     them. The doors, heating, and plumbing systems were replaced 
     by August and the Tauriello's moved in. Part of his plan for 
     financing the restoration of the house was the sale of a 
     portion of the property. The pergola, conservatory, and 
     garage were in varying stages of decay. They were demolished 
     and the apartments you see today were built to Mr. 
     Tauriello's design.
       Mr. Tauriello was not wealthy, and was not in a position to 
     restore the house to its 1908 condition. He also wanted to 
     add modern conveniences and some individual touches. As he 
     did not need a 20 room house and did need restoration funds, 
     he created two five-room apartments inside. But regardless of 
     the changes he made, he saved the house. Tauriello died in 
     1965. The next year his wife sold the house to SUNY Buffalo 
     at the request of new president Martin Meyerson, a Wright 
     aficionado. He left Buffalo in 1970. Several university 
     offices were located in the house until 1980, when it again 
     stood unused, as it was on the day of our visit in 1991.
       There was a restoration plan in place, but next to no 
     money. I went to Robert C. Byrd, chairman of the subcommittee 
     that funds Federal historic preservation programs, and asked 
     for his help. While there was no program that provides 
     specific funds to restore specific buildings, he saw to it 
     that the Darwin Martin House got $500,000 that year. In 1995 
     we were able to reprogram another $500,000, this time in 
     funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 
     for the house. Last spring, at the urging of Stan Lipsey, I 
     asked Senator Gorton of Washington State for another $500,000 
     in historic preservation funds, and the Senate bill, HR 2107, 
     which we passed on Thursday night, includes that amount.
       I should warn you not to look at these appropriations and 
     think any deserving preservation project, even a Wright 
     house, can count on Federal funds. None can. The $40 million 
     we provide each year for preservation goes directly to the 
     State Preservation offices. There is no ``Save This 
     Building'' account. Is there support for one? I quote the 
     Senate bill we just passed: ``This will be the final year of 
     appropriations to the National Trust for Historic 
     Preservation.'' That is a battle for next year, but we have 
     all we can do to keep what programs we have.
       Thus on a couple of last notes, I hope you have had a 
     chance to visit Kleinhans Music Hall, another of Buffalo's 
     wonders. It is one of the great later works of Eliel 
     Saarinen. It is also one of the first commissions on which 
     son Eero worked side by side with him. The building's sense 
     of balance is representative of, in Eliel's words, the 
     structure's ``masculine'' and ``feminine'' traits as 
     exhibited by ``strongly indicative line'' in the former and a 
     ``playful pattern of wall space'' in the latter. But function 
     was certainly important to the Saarinens; Kleinhans is a 
     splendid hall in which to hear a concert. It is also one of 
     but three examples of Eliel's work in the East.
       In 1984 I secured a tax provision--a ``sale-leaseback'' 
     provision, that could have been worth millions to the upkeep 
     and restoration of Kleinhans. But one of the investors backed 
     out at the last minute before the legal deadline and the deal 
     fell through. A decade later the need for restoration funds 
     had not diminished. I got $1.5 million for the effort in 
     1994.
       Then, of course, there are the buildings by H. H. 
     Richardson. Wright disclosed that Sullivan had a respect for 
     Richardson, that he (Richardson) had for few others. Again 
     from, Genius and the Mobocrocy: ``Later I [Wright] discovered 
     his [Sullivan's] secret respect, leaning toward envy (I am 
     ashamed to suspect), for H.H. Richardson.''
       Eight of the original eleven buildings designed for the 
     Buffalo State Hospital stand today. The most splendid being 
     the twin towered centerpiece buildings. In 1990, the state 
     spent $4.5 million to restore one of the seven remaining 
     patient pavilions. However, these buildings were vacated in 
     1993 and 1995. Ominously, the state has designated the 
     buildings ``surplus property'' and is looking to sell them on 
     the open market. Thus our battle continues.
       We restored the Guaranty--the soul of this city. We are on 
     our way to restoring Darwin Martin--the treasure of scale, of 
     form and of relationship of interior to exterior. Kleinhans 
     Music Hall and the Roycroft Inn are also to be included in a 
     tablet of success. However, Federal support is waning. As you 
     state in the opening of the conference, Wright wrote that the 
     ``Prairie begins west of Buffalo.'' We must do our best to 
     see that our treasures do not become dust on the prairie. It 
     happened to the Larkin building. It may yet happen to those 
     of Richardson. So again I say the burden is unduly forced on 
     men and women like you to remind us of the symphony that 
     continues to play around us, like this great symphonic 
     interplay we have here in Buffalo. 

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