The Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center | |
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Former names | The Spring Green Restaurant, the Riverview Terrace Restaurant |
General information | |
Type | Restaurant |
Architectural style | Usonian |
Location | south of Spring Green, in Iowa County, Wisconsin |
Coordinates | 43°08′38″N90°03′34″W / 43.1439°N 90.0595°W |
Construction started | 1953 |
Completed | 1967, 1969 |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | Frank Lloyd Wright |
The Riverview Terrace Restaurant, also known as The Spring Green Restaurant, is a building designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1953 near his Taliesin estate in Wisconsin. [1] He purchased the land on which to build the restaurant as, "a wayside for tourists with a balcony over the river." [2] Construction began the next year, with the roof being added by 1957. [3] The building was incomplete when he died in 1959, but was purchased in 1966 by the Wisconsin River Development Corporation and completed the next year as The Spring Green restaurant. [3] The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2024. [4]
In 1968, Food Service Magazine had an article about the newly opened restaurant:
... [W]hen a restaurant is designed by such a giant in his profession as the late architect Frank Lloyd Wright, it's important to find out what makes it a thing of beauty—to analyze in detail the elements of its design and appointments in search of principles that can be applied to food service facilities elsewhere.
No one in the past century has influenced architecture as an art and science more profoundly than Frank Lloyd Wright. Basic to his philosophy of "organic" architecture was the tenet that a building and its environment should be as one—that the structure, through proper blending of native materials and creation of appropriate linear features, should be in perfect harmony with its surroundings.
"Organic architecture comes out of nature," Wright said in a Food Service Magazine interview shortly before he died. He believed that each detail of the architecture and interior should be related to the building's overall concept. Each design element should reflect the whole environment, as opposed to having each design component reflect a separate idea all its own. ...
The Spring Green is a very subtle structure. It does not impose brash neon signs or harsh vertical lines upon an essentially horizontal rolling countryside. The structure is built, for the most part, only of those materials that come from the vital riverscape which is the site of the restaurant.
Wright's disciple, William Wesley Peters ... observes, "The building and its forms arise from the use of natural materials to their specific properties. For example, the rich, buff-colored limestone was quarried only a few miles away. It was laid in great horizontal courses with long, thin, projecting ledges that symbolically represent the character and quality of the stone at the quarry." [5]
Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer [6] (first director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives and director emeritus until his death in 2017) wrote that, "In 1993 the building converted to use as the Visitor Center for the Taliesin Buildings." [7] As stated by Pfeiffer, the building has functioned as the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center since 1994. It is owned and operated under the direction of Taliesin Preservation, [8] the non-profit organization in Wisconsin that restores and preserves the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings on the Taliesin estate. As a visitor center, the building is the starting point for tours of the Taliesin estate and houses a giftshop, restaurant (known as "The Riverview Terrace Cafe") and offices for Taliesin Preservation. The building is open during tourist season.
Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing architects worldwide through his works and mentoring hundreds of apprentices in his Taliesin Fellowship. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture".
Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, United States, was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1956, and completed in 1961. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The church is one of Wright's last works; construction was completed after his death. The design is informed by traditional Byzantine architectural forms, reinterpreted by Wright to suit the modern context. The church's shallow scalloped dome echoes his Marin County Civic Center.
Edwin H. Cheney House (1903) located in Oak Park, Illinois, United States, was Frank Lloyd Wright's design of this residence for electrical engineer Edwin Cheney. The house is part of the Frank Lloyd Wright–Prairie School of Architecture Historic District. A brick house with the living and sleeping rooms all on one floor under a single hipped roof, the Cheney House has a less monumental and more intimate quality than the design for the Arthur Heurtley House. The intimacy of the Cheney house is due to the building not being a full story off the ground and being sequestered from the main street by a walled terrace. In addition, its windows are nestled between the wide eaves of the roof and the substantial stone sill that girdles the house.
The Quintin Blair House in Cody, Wyoming, United States, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built 1952–1953. The house is an example of Wright's "natural house" theme, emphasizing close integration of house and landscape. It is the only Wright building in Wyoming.
The Charles L. and Dorothy Manson home is a single-family house located at 1224 Highland Park Boulevard in Wausau, Wisconsin. Designated a National Historic Landmark, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 5, 2016, reference Number, 16000149.
Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1953 and completed in 1954, the John and Syd Dobkins House is one of three Wright-designed Usonian houses in Canton, Ohio, United States. Located farther east than the Nathan Rubin Residence and the Ellis A. Feiman House, it is set back from the road. It's a modest sized home with two bedrooms, and one and a half baths. Its distinctive geometric design module is based upon an equilateral triangle. The mortar in the deep red bricks was deeply raked to emphasize the horizontal.
The Frederick C. Bogk House is a single-family residential project in Milwaukee, Wisconsin designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Bogk was an alderman and secretary-treasurer of the Ricketson Paint Works. This house embodies Wright's prairie style elements into a solid-looking structure that appears impregnable.
Duey and Julia Wright House is a Frank Lloyd Wright designed Usonian home that was constructed on a bluff above the Wisconsin River in Wausau, Wisconsin in 1958. Viewed from the sky, the house resembles a musical note. The client owned a Wausau music store, and later founded the broadcasting company Midwest Communications through his ownership of WRIG radio. The home also has perforated boards on the clerestories "represent the rhythm of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony Allegro con brio first theme." A photograph showing the perforated panels is in the web page on the National Register application.
The John D. Haynes House is a house in Fort Wayne, Indiana, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The house is a small and modest Usonian design in glass, red tidewater cypress, and Chicago Common Brick on a red concrete slab.
The A. D. German Warehouse is a Frank Lloyd Wright designed Mayan Revival warehouse that was constructed in Richland Center, Wisconsin in 1921. Wright was born in Richland Center in 1867. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Tan-y-Deri, is also known as the Andrew T. Porter Home and the Jane and Andrew Porter Home. Jane Porter (1869–1953) was the sister of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The home was commissioned from Wright in 1907, with Jane and Andrew Porter (1858–1948) moving in with their children James (1901–1912) and Anna (1905–1934) by late January 1908. The home stands in a valley in the town of Wyoming, Wisconsin. This valley was originally settled by the Lloyd Joneses, who were the family of Wright and his sister's mother. The Lloyd Joneses were originally from Wales and, as a result of this heritage, Wright chose a Welsh name for the Porter home: "tan-y-deri" is Welsh for "under the oaks".
The Unity Chapel is located in town of Wyoming in Iowa County, Wisconsin United States. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
The Hillside Home School II was originally designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1901 for his aunts Jane and Ellen C. Lloyd Jones in the town of Wyoming, Wisconsin. The Lloyd Jones sisters commissioned the building to provide classrooms for their school, also known as the Hillside Home School. The Hillside Home School structure is on the Taliesin estate, which was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976. There are four other Wright-designed buildings on the estate : the Romeo and Juliet Windmill tower, Tan-y-Deri, Midway Barn, and Wright's home, Taliesin.
Hillside Home School I, also known as the Hillside Home Building, was a Shingle Style building that architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed in 1887 for his aunts, Ellen and Jane Lloyd Jones for their Hillside Home School in the town of Wyoming, Wisconsin. The building functioned as a dormitory and library. Wright had the building demolished in 1950.
The Romeo and Juliet Windmill is a wooden structure designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the town of Wyoming, Wisconsin. The building is on the Taliesin estate and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976.
Midway Barn was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright for farming on his Taliesin estate in the town of Wyoming, Wisconsin. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.
The Wyoming Valley School is a historic school building designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the town of Wyoming in Iowa County, Wisconsin, United States. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
William G. Fricke House is a home by American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, in Oak Park, Illinois, United States. Fricke commissioned the home in 1901 and it was finished the next year. Wright used elements in the building that would appear in his Prairie style homes: a high water table, horizontal banding, overhanging eaves, shallow hipped roofs, and an exterior with an expansive amount of stucco. Wright usually emphasized the horizontal in his house designs, but the Fricke house is different by having a three-story tower.
The John C. Pew House, also known as the Ruth and John C. Pew House, is located at 3650 Lake Mendota Drive, Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin. It was designed by American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright in 1938 for research chemist John Pew and his wife, Ruth. Built on a narrow lot, the two-story home steps down the sloping hill to the shore of Madison's Lake Mendota. A home in Wright's Usonian style, the building was meant to be economical: its cost was US$8,750. Construction was supervised by a member of Wright's Taliesin Fellowship, William Wesley "Wes" Peters. Peters said to Wright about the building that, "I guess you can call the Pew house a poor man's Fallingwater." To which Wright was to have replied, "No, Fallingwater is the rich man's Pew House."
The Sidney Bazett House, also known as the Bazett-Frank House, is a Usonian-style home on 101 Reservoir Road in Hillsborough, California, United States, designed in 1939 by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Sidney Bazett wrote to the architect that, "With even our meager artistic knowledge,... it was apparent that it would be a shame to have anyone other than Frank Lloyd Wright design our home."