Blog

By Susan Frost, Class of 2015

I’ve got an alibi for the last 25 third Saturdays in May, and hopefully for the next 25. Should someone need to know where I was and what I was doing, my ready answer would be “I was volunteering for the Wright Plus Housewalk”. This annual fundraiser for the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, the organization that manages and maintains several Chicago area Wright sites, showcases private homes by Wright and his contemporaries. Wright Plus is the OG housewalk – this is our 46^th year. You should go.

Why? If you are reading this, you love architecture, and you care about how you experience it. Wright was primarily a residential designer. Without stepping inside his residential interiors, you know only half the story. I’ve found, and maybe you agree, that it’s impossible to capture these spaces with photographs. You’ve got to go in. It’s also incredibly important to see Wright in context – surrounded by buildings designed by his contemporaries, both in the Prairie style and others. These buildings are all used for their original purpose – they are private homes, not museums, and that adds a layer of meaning, and a way of seeing how people live day to day with our older structures. Add interpretation of the spaces it takes our researchers 8 months to complete, and you’ve got icing on your cake.

But volunteering is my favorite thing. You see everything (my visual “collection” of historic house interiors is enormous at this point). You work toward a common goal with people who come back year after year, people who are all passionate about this stuff. We all know what it’s like to work with other volunteers who love architecture. But the homeowners are in the trenches, fighting to maintain these buildings – they “walk the walk” of preservation. And the guests are groupies, some with Frank Lloyd Wright art glass pattern tattoos, and some in tears (I once overheard a guest warning his companion at the entryway of a house that he would likely weep once their group reached the living room).

It takes a lot to make all this possible. We will start choosing houses for next year before this year’s walk is over. Some of the people who sit on this committee have brains like Google Earth (“no, you mean 548, not 546, that’s the E. E. Roberts house with the more prominent stringcourse”). We will unearth living descendants of original homeowners who will make a pilgrimage to see the houses their families owned, and share family photos. One year we played a 1920s wedding video on a continuous loop, with the bridal party posing on the very steps guests were standing on as they watched the film. We will drive around in the winter looking for the best locations for trolley stops with a shovel, so we can more closely examine a curb hidden under snow. We will crawl around on our hands and knees applying clear, sticky carpet protection. And we will throw a big party at the end of the day and share war stories with homeowners and other volunteers. Think about becoming one of them. I promise you it will be fun, and it’s likely that from now on you too will have a standing date on the third Saturday in May.

PS email me at su***@fr*******.com if you want to join us as a volunteer and I’ll get you the info!