Graycliff
Encyclopedia
The Graycliff estate was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
(1867–1959) and was built between 1926 and 1931. It is located about 20 minutes south of downtown Buffalo, New York
, at 6472 Old Lake Shore Road in Derby, New York
. Sometimes called "The Jewel on the Lake", Graycliff is sited on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie with sweeping views of downtown Buffalo and the Canadian shore.
Graycliff is one of the most ambitious and extensive summer estates Wright ever designed.
(1865–1935). Graycliff was the second of two complexes Frank Lloyd Wright designed for the couple, the first being the Martin House Complex
, their city residence. By the time of Graycliff’s commission, Wright and the Martins had been personal friends as well as clients for over twenty years. Between the time of the completion of the Martin House Complex and the construction of Graycliff grew a great long-term friendship, to the extent that the Martins provided financial assistance and other support to Wright as his career unfolded.
In the early years of their long relationship, Darwin Martin was actively involved with the selection of Frank Lloyd Wright as the architect for the Larkin Administration Building
, Wright's first major commercial project. Martin was an executive with the Larkin Company, and Wright also designed houses in Buffalo for fellow Larkin Company executives William R. Heath
and Walter V. Davidson
.
Isabelle R. Martin was the client of record for Graycliff, and it was designed by Wright for her pleasure.
Graycliff is one of only five of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs that were built between 1925 and 1935, and the only Wright designed structure built between Taliesin
(1914) and Fallingwater
(1936) using stone. Wright believed stone to be the only true building material and may be why he insisted the Martins incorporate it at Graycliff. Graycliff is considered to be one of Wright's most important mid-career works in his Organic Style.
across to Ontario
. The buildings, in Wright’s Organic Architecture
style, are set amidst extensive grounds and gardens also designed by Wright.
The largest building, the Isabelle R. Martin House, features spacious cantilever
ed balconies, expansive terraces, and “ribbons” of windows that allow the experience of nature from within and through the house. On especially clear days the spray of Niagara Falls
is visible through the framed opening created by the cantilevered upper bridge and the stone veneered massing at each end of the home. The lower section with its glass walls becomes a transparent pavilion-like center, allowing visitors to actually see through the building itself to the lake beyond.
The Foster House was originally designed as a garage with an apartment above for the chauffeur and his family. In 1929 the Martins owned a Pierce-Arrow
touring car as well as a Detroit Electric
car. After their first summer in residence, the Martins asked Wright to alter and expand the building. Once complete, the Martin’s daughter Dorothy, together with her husband James Foster and their children Margaret and Darwin Martin Foster, spent many happy summers in residence. Like the Martin House, the Foster House has strong horizontal lines echoing the lake beyond, cantilevered balconies, and numerous windows.
The smallest building of the complex is known as the Heat Hut. Like the other two buildings, it is constructed of stone found at the lake’s edge, ochre stucco, and a red cedar shingle roof.
Garden walls, composed of the same stone and stucco as the Foster and Martin Houses, enhance the horizontal planes of the architecture. The gardens and grounds feature water elements designed by Wright, including a porte cochere
that extends from Martin House, cantilevering beyond its stone pier supports over a stone basin from which water flows into a large irregularly shaped pool. This was intended to create an illusion of the lake flowing through the house. On the west side, a broad esplanade connects the terrace to the cliff and lake. The esplanade was designed to carry water, pumped from Lake Erie, down its length and over the bluffs, completing the illusion of water flowing through. Deemed financially extravagant this feature was halted after only the esplanade itself was completed. Other architectural features of the landscape include a sunken garden, a hidden garden, and stone walls in a “waterfall” pattern. Not surprisingly, it was Darwin Martin who first introduced Wright to Niagara Falls, less than forty miles to the north.
The extensive 8.4 acres (33,993.6 m²) of grounds and gardens were also designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, with one of the few, if not only, landscape designs in his own hand. These include a tennis court designed by Wright, as well as trees and shrubs designed to complement the architecture. Additional significant design-work was done by Ellen Biddle Shipman
, one of the early and renowned women landscape architects, and one of the creators of the Arts & Crafts
and American Craftsman
style landscape design, supplemented those of Wright with colorful flowers and a picking garden.
and was forced to abandon the city house in 1937, they kept Graycliff, and returned annually until 1943.
The property was purchased from the Martin family by the Piarists
, a Roman Catholic teaching order, in 1951. The Piarist Fathers, from Hungary, established a boarding school on the grounds, as well as Calasanctius, a private high school for gifted children in Buffalo, named after the order's founder. Although they added two structures to Wright’s original design, all Wright-designed buildings were left intact. Eventually enrollment dwindled and the schools closed; the number of priests in residence also declined dramatically. Finally in late 1997, the Piarists decided they could no longer afford to maintain the property, and put it up for sale.
Soon after, a grassroots
group of individuals purchased the property, which was threatened with destruction due to its prime lakeside location and attractiveness to private developers. The group formed the non-profit Graycliff Conservancy in order to buy the property, restore it to its original condition, and open it to the public. This effort, aided by volunteers from throughout the community, has undertaken extensive restoration, both to remove the non-Wright additions and to restore the now eighty year old buildings, and has created a schedule of public tours.
The Graycliff Conservancy is the recipient of a Save America’s Treasures grant from the US Department of the Interior, and has received many awards for its work. Graycliff is now a New York State Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
(1867–1959) and was built between 1926 and 1931. It is located about 20 minutes south of downtown Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
, at 6472 Old Lake Shore Road in Derby, New York
Derby, New York
Derby, New York is a hamlet in Erie County, New York, USA. It is the Postal Address for much of the Town of Evans, within which Derby is fully contained. The Derby zip code is 14047. Derby is also home to the North Evans fire District which includes Highland Hose Volunteer Fire Company and the...
. Sometimes called "The Jewel on the Lake", Graycliff is sited on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie with sweeping views of downtown Buffalo and the Canadian shore.
Graycliff is one of the most ambitious and extensive summer estates Wright ever designed.
History
The Graycliff estate was the summer home of Isabelle R. Martin (1869–1945) and her husband, Buffalo entrepreneur Darwin D. MartinDarwin D. Martin
Darwin D. Martin was an early 20th Century New York State businessman best known for the house he commissioned from Frank Lloyd Wright.-Early life:...
(1865–1935). Graycliff was the second of two complexes Frank Lloyd Wright designed for the couple, the first being the Martin House Complex
Darwin D. Martin House
The Darwin D. Martin House Complex, also known as the Darwin Martin House State Historic Site, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built between 1903 and 1905...
, their city residence. By the time of Graycliff’s commission, Wright and the Martins had been personal friends as well as clients for over twenty years. Between the time of the completion of the Martin House Complex and the construction of Graycliff grew a great long-term friendship, to the extent that the Martins provided financial assistance and other support to Wright as his career unfolded.
In the early years of their long relationship, Darwin Martin was actively involved with the selection of Frank Lloyd Wright as the architect for the Larkin Administration Building
Larkin Administration Building
The Larkin Building was designed in 1904 by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1906 for the Larkin Soap Company of Buffalo, New York. The five story dark red brick building used pink tinted mortar and utilized steel frame construction. It was noted for many innovations, including air conditioning,...
, Wright's first major commercial project. Martin was an executive with the Larkin Company, and Wright also designed houses in Buffalo for fellow Larkin Company executives William R. Heath
William R. Heath House
The William R. Heath House, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, built between 1904 & 1905, and is located at 76 Soldiers Place in Buffalo, New York. It is built in the Prairie School architectural style....
and Walter V. Davidson
Walter V. Davidson House
The Walter V. Davidson House, located at 57 Tillinghast Place in Buffalo, New York, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1908. It is an example of Wright's Prairie School architectural style...
.
Isabelle R. Martin was the client of record for Graycliff, and it was designed by Wright for her pleasure.
Graycliff is one of only five of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs that were built between 1925 and 1935, and the only Wright designed structure built between Taliesin
Taliesin
Taliesin was an early British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...
(1914) and Fallingwater
Fallingwater
Fallingwater or Kaufmann Residence is a house designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh...
(1936) using stone. Wright believed stone to be the only true building material and may be why he insisted the Martins incorporate it at Graycliff. Graycliff is considered to be one of Wright's most important mid-career works in his Organic Style.
Design
Graycliff is a complex of three buildings integrated within an 8.4 acres (33,993.6 m²) landscape. It is sited high on a bluff with views of Lake ErieLake Erie
Lake Erie is the fourth largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the tenth largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has the shortest average water residence time. It is bounded on the north by the...
across to Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
. The buildings, in Wright’s Organic Architecture
Organic architecture
Organic architecture is a philosophy of architecture which promotes harmony between human habitation and the natural world through design approaches so sympathetic and well integrated with its site that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated...
style, are set amidst extensive grounds and gardens also designed by Wright.
The largest building, the Isabelle R. Martin House, features spacious cantilever
Cantilever
A cantilever is a beam anchored at only one end. The beam carries the load to the support where it is resisted by moment and shear stress. Cantilever construction allows for overhanging structures without external bracing. Cantilevers can also be constructed with trusses or slabs.This is in...
ed balconies, expansive terraces, and “ribbons” of windows that allow the experience of nature from within and through the house. On especially clear days the spray of Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls
The Niagara Falls, located on the Niagara River draining Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, is the collective name for the Horseshoe Falls and the adjacent American Falls along with the comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls, which combined form the highest flow rate of any waterfalls in the world and has...
is visible through the framed opening created by the cantilevered upper bridge and the stone veneered massing at each end of the home. The lower section with its glass walls becomes a transparent pavilion-like center, allowing visitors to actually see through the building itself to the lake beyond.
The Foster House was originally designed as a garage with an apartment above for the chauffeur and his family. In 1929 the Martins owned a Pierce-Arrow
Pierce-Arrow
Pierce-Arrow was an American automobile manufacturer based in Buffalo, New York, which was active from 1901-1938. Although best known for its expensive luxury cars, Pierce-Arrow also manufactured commercial trucks, fire trucks, camp trailers, motorcycles, and bicycles.-Early history:The forerunner...
touring car as well as a Detroit Electric
Detroit Electric
Detroit Electric was an automobile brand produced by the Anderson Electric Car Company in Detroit, Michigan. Nowadays, a Chinese British entrepreneur is leading Detroit Electric to develop affordable and high quality pure electric vehicles in mainland Europe...
car. After their first summer in residence, the Martins asked Wright to alter and expand the building. Once complete, the Martin’s daughter Dorothy, together with her husband James Foster and their children Margaret and Darwin Martin Foster, spent many happy summers in residence. Like the Martin House, the Foster House has strong horizontal lines echoing the lake beyond, cantilevered balconies, and numerous windows.
The smallest building of the complex is known as the Heat Hut. Like the other two buildings, it is constructed of stone found at the lake’s edge, ochre stucco, and a red cedar shingle roof.
Garden walls, composed of the same stone and stucco as the Foster and Martin Houses, enhance the horizontal planes of the architecture. The gardens and grounds feature water elements designed by Wright, including a porte cochere
Porte-cochere
A porte-cochère is the architectural term for a porch- or portico-like structure at a main or secondary entrance to a building through which a horse and carriage can pass in order for the occupants to alight under cover, protected from the weather.The porte-cochère was a feature of many late 18th...
that extends from Martin House, cantilevering beyond its stone pier supports over a stone basin from which water flows into a large irregularly shaped pool. This was intended to create an illusion of the lake flowing through the house. On the west side, a broad esplanade connects the terrace to the cliff and lake. The esplanade was designed to carry water, pumped from Lake Erie, down its length and over the bluffs, completing the illusion of water flowing through. Deemed financially extravagant this feature was halted after only the esplanade itself was completed. Other architectural features of the landscape include a sunken garden, a hidden garden, and stone walls in a “waterfall” pattern. Not surprisingly, it was Darwin Martin who first introduced Wright to Niagara Falls, less than forty miles to the north.
The extensive 8.4 acres (33,993.6 m²) of grounds and gardens were also designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, with one of the few, if not only, landscape designs in his own hand. These include a tennis court designed by Wright, as well as trees and shrubs designed to complement the architecture. Additional significant design-work was done by Ellen Biddle Shipman
Ellen Biddle Shipman
Ellen Biddle Shipman was an American landscape architect known for her formal gardens and lush planting style.Born in Philadelphia, she spent her childhood in Texas and the Arizona territory. Her father, Colonel James Biddle, was a career Army officer, stationed on the western frontier...
, one of the early and renowned women landscape architects, and one of the creators of the Arts & Crafts
Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
and American Craftsman
American Craftsman
The American Craftsman Style, or the American Arts and Crafts Movement, is an American domestic architectural, interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts style and lifestyle philosophy that began in the last years of the 19th century. As a comprehensive design and art...
style landscape design, supplemented those of Wright with colorful flowers and a picking garden.
Restoration
Although the family lost much of its fortune due to the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
and was forced to abandon the city house in 1937, they kept Graycliff, and returned annually until 1943.
The property was purchased from the Martin family by the Piarists
Piarists
The Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools or, in short, Piarists , is the name of the oldest Catholic educational order also known as the Scolopi, Escolapios or Poor Clerics of the Mother of God...
, a Roman Catholic teaching order, in 1951. The Piarist Fathers, from Hungary, established a boarding school on the grounds, as well as Calasanctius, a private high school for gifted children in Buffalo, named after the order's founder. Although they added two structures to Wright’s original design, all Wright-designed buildings were left intact. Eventually enrollment dwindled and the schools closed; the number of priests in residence also declined dramatically. Finally in late 1997, the Piarists decided they could no longer afford to maintain the property, and put it up for sale.
Soon after, a grassroots
Grassroots
A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...
group of individuals purchased the property, which was threatened with destruction due to its prime lakeside location and attractiveness to private developers. The group formed the non-profit Graycliff Conservancy in order to buy the property, restore it to its original condition, and open it to the public. This effort, aided by volunteers from throughout the community, has undertaken extensive restoration, both to remove the non-Wright additions and to restore the now eighty year old buildings, and has created a schedule of public tours.
The Graycliff Conservancy is the recipient of a Save America’s Treasures grant from the US Department of the Interior, and has received many awards for its work. Graycliff is now a New York State Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
.