enduring as rock
charming as waves delicate
as seashore – I wish …
“I own a rocky point of land in Carmel, Calif. extending into the Pacific Ocean… I am a woman living alone ‒ I wish protection from the wind and privacy from the road and a house as enduring as the rocks but as transparent and charming as the waves and as delicate as a seashore. You are the only man who can do this – will you help me?”
So wrote Della Brooks Walker to Frank Lloyd Wright.
Mr. Wright took up the challenge and the result is known as the The Walker House, the Mrs. Clinton Walker house and the Cabin on the Rocks.
Mr. Wright took up the challenge in a way consistent with his stated view that: No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.
How can you not be attracted by that statement?
Easy to understand why Mr. Wright has such a devoted following.
As an aside, one my many nephews (I have over 100 or so counting nephews in law) posted photos recently of a visit to Taliesin West, Wright’s place in Arizona.
I asked this nephew if the folks at Taliesin West told them the story of driving to Taliesin East in the middle of the night to dig up Wright’s body and bring it back to Arizona.
I mentioned that while creepy, it wasn’t as creepy as the Taliesin East butler story.
My Nephew responded that the Taliesin West folks DID not talk about the body snatch and that he had to google the Taliesin East butler story.
And nope, I am not going to relay the stories here as you will enjoy doing the google yourself.
BUT I DIGRESS.
So Mr. Wright designed a house that was part of the beach.
The house, the only Wright house on an ocean, was built in 1952,
The house, located in California’s Carmel-by-the-Sea, is in the news and it is for sale for the low low price of $22 million.
I was intrigued to note that along with all of the Wright intended attributes, as explained by wikipedia, that “The house, an example of Wright’s organic architecture, is built on granite boulders, uses the local Carmel-stone, and has a roof the color of the sea that is shaped to resemble the bow of a ship.” but also it is a house you can hear.
I don’t mean that you can hold the house to your ear and hear the sea as if it was a sea shell.
Nor do I mean that just to look at the house, you can hear the waves.
What I mean is that the house has a sound.
The house has the sound of my childhood.
You see, the house was used in the movie.
A movie maybe more famous for its sound track theme than the movie itself.
That movie was titled, The Summer Place.
For me, and for many folks who grew when I grew up, to hear the song, Theme to a Summer Place, will transport them back to a time where that song was heard everywhere, any where all the time.
Click on the video and listen and I know what you will say.
You will say, OH THAT SONG.
I hear it and I am about 8 years old and I am at home, after school and my Mom is making dinner and the radio in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I grew up, is tuned to WOOD-AM.
I can hear it and I can see it.
And now I will see this house.
The house that you can hear.
As Mr. Wright would have said, “There you are …”
No Haiku For You 