Throughout his long career, architect Frank Lloyd Wright insisted on a holistic approach to building, with silhouettes and materials selected to mirror the landscape. On June 8, the world’s most famous architect will be celebrated on the 157th anniversary of his birth, including at the Gordon House in Silverton, Wright’s only design built in Oregon.
From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., visitors to the Gordon House at 869 W. Main St. can see the interior of the two-story dwelling with decorative geometric fretwork and walls of glass rising 12 feet to the ceiling ($5 for adults, under 18 are free).
They will also hear the fascinating story of the significant structure that was saved from demolition and moved near the Oregon Garden where it was reconstructed and opened to the public in March 2002. Since then, more than 100,000 people have explored Wright’s handsome approach to indoor-outdoor living.
Guided, 45-minute tours of the only Wright residence open to the public in the Pacific Northwest are offered throughout the year ($20, thegordonhouse.org). Private tours and use of the grounds for events are also available.
Also on view: Newly completed landscaping improvements. Wright believed his “organic architecture” could enhance natural features. “Landscape seen through the openings of the building thus placed and proportioned has greater charm than when seen independent of the architecture,” he said.
Dave Pierce, board chairman of the nonprofit Gordon House Conservancy, is a landscape architect who oversaw the latest project that includes a new pathway on the west side of the home to complete an “outdoor room” as Wright envisioned. Improvements also protect the land with retaining walls, drainage and irrigation systems, and a walkway that connects to the 1.3-mile Oregon Garden Loop.
Pierce said relocating the historic landmark 22 years ago to an oak grove was a struggle, physically and financially, but careful positioning of the house preserved “the exact solar orientation as the original location.” The move and ongoing upgrades also achieve Wright’s preference for expansive windows framing native plants and interior floors extending to terraces, “making the inhabitants feel they are living as part of the environment of the home,” Pierce told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
The new landscaping and architecturally appropriate outdoor lighting were made possible by a grant from the Oregon Cultural Trust as well as support from donors, volunteers and the KPFF engineering firm, GreenWorks landscape architecture, DeSantis Landscapes, Fox Pro Landscape, Garden World nursery, Al’s Garden and Home Centers, and Wilco Farm Stores.
Donations, admission and merchandise sales support the nonprofit Gordon House Conservancy’s educational and preservation mission. Conservancy members and volunteers care for the house and grounds.
Moving a masterwork
In 1957, while Wright was still creating the exalted Guggenheim art museum in New York City, he accepted a $25,000 commission to design a modern house for Evelyn and Conrad Gordon on their farmland near Wilsonville.
Wright was almost 90 years old at the time and had spent more than two decades developing suburban housing with high architectural quality at a moderate price. He called his innovative style “Usonian,” which he defined as living in harmony with the land in the United States of North America (USONA), and he said the houses had an organic appearance as if rising “out of the ground and into the light.” His Usonian plans, as seen at the Gordon House, typically had a flat roof with generous, shade-making overhangs.
The cedar-and-concrete-block Gordon House, completed in 1964, five years after Wright died, was positioned on the farm to capture views of the adjacent Willamette River on the northwest side and Mount Hood to the east.
Perforated boards, or fretwork, screens were made to draw in light, ensure privacy and serve as an economical alternative to draperies or stained art glass, according to historians who successfully nominated the Gordon House to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
The open floor plan concept developed by Wright is evident in the great room, which has dining and living areas as well as a concrete-block fireplace and a library with built-in seating.
Evelyn Gordon was a weaver and artist who saw her home as an accommodating sequence of galleries to display her paintings, prints and sculptures.
Original paintings, many by Northwest artists, hung on every wall, including in the kitchen where cinder blocks rose 15 feet to meet a skylight. She displayed Native American weavings, a metal sculpture by James Shull and — sharing Wright’s passion for Japanese art — a Haku Maki woodblock print.
Evelyn Gordon was a widow when she died in 1997 and the property, which had years of deferred maintenance, was sold to new owners who tried to get the Gordon House removed from the Clackamas County List of Historic Structures and then demolished.
Instead, in 2001, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, a Chicago-based organization devoted to preserving Wright’s built legacy, negotiated an agreement with the owners to donate the architecturally significant dwelling.
A stipulation of the agreement required the 2,133-square-foot house be relocated within 105 days. The conservancy accepted a proposal from the Oregon Garden Society, assisted by the City of Silverton, to take charge of moving and reinstalling the house.
The structure was carefully dismantled by preservationists and volunteers, and the four sections were moved 21 miles southeast to the Oregon Garden site over three days, arriving March 11, 2001, four days ahead of the deadline, say historians.
The structure’s siding and roofing were refurbished with grants from the Architectural Foundation of Oregon and the Oregon Cultural Trust, according to the Gordon House Conservancy.
A new foundation replicated the original north-south orientation, and since interior walls, doors, cabinets, wood trim, furniture and shelving are intact, the Gordon House “continues to present an accurate representation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian house design and subsequent construction for Conrad and Evelyn Gordon,” say historians.
Visitors can see every room, including the kitchen — what Wright called the “workspace” — and his ideas of paneled refrigerator doors, under-cabinet lighting and other features for cooking efficiency, comfort and speed that continue to influence kitchen design today.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy maintains a list at savewright.org of Wright-designed homes on the market across the country. Asking prices reflect the escalated value of his work:
- The last house the architect designed before he died in 1959, the circular Norman Lykes House, constructed of colored concrete block to blend with the Phoenix Mountains Preserve, is for sale at $8,950,000.
- The horseshoe-shaped, 1955 Tirranna (“running water”) mansion in New Canaan, Connecticut, with 7,000 square feet of living space sold in January 2024 for $6 million.
- The Richard Lloyd Jones House in Tulsa, Oklahoma, built in 1929 of alternating piers of square glass windows and concrete “textile” blocks, is for sale at $4.5 million.
- The Fawcett House, designed by Wright in 1955 to showcase seamless living indoors and out, sits on 76 acres in California’s Central Valley city of Los Banos, and is listed at $3.7 million.
- The Eppstein House, designed by Wright in 1948 in Galesburg, Michigan’s The Acres, is for sale by owner at $2,450,000 and is also available for overnight stays.
- The 1900 Warren Hickox House in Kankakee, Illinois, is one of Wright’s first Prairie-style designs with flared roof ridges evocative of Japanese architecture. The 0.6-acre property is listed at $799,000.
- The 1949 Ward and Helen McCartney House, a dramatic Usonian design formed by two triangles on a 1.12 acre property at 2662 Taliesin Drive in Kalamazoo, Michigan’s Parkwyn Village, received an offer at the original asking price of $790,000. The property is back on the market at $699,000. The sale includes some original furniture and blueprints.
— Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072
jeastman@oregonian.com | @janeteastman