Frank Lloyd Wright:
Architect Extraordinaire
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) is widely considered to be the greatest architect of the 20th century and is hailed as the “father of modern architecture.” He designed more than 1,100 houses, museums, churches, schools, office towers, hotels, and even a gas station.
Wright rejected conventional European influences and freed Americans from the Victorian “boxes” of the 19th century. His “Prairie Houses” echoed the flat Midwestern landscape with strong horizontal profiles and open floor plans, where complex partitions replaced traditional walls. His houses blended with the natural surroundings and were designed with comfort and convenience in mind. His innovative architecture changed the way Americans lived.
Throughout his seven-decade career, Wright believed that a building should integrate form and function into an organic whole, blending with the site. His early designs were the earth-hugging Prairie Houses exemplified by the 1919 Robie House in Illinois and the 1911 Taliesin in Wisconsin.
With its cascading cantilevers, the 1936 Fallingwater in Pennsylvania is described as “the most famous house ever designed for non-royalty.” The 1936 Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin, features a sky-lighted “forest” of mushroom-shaped, concrete columns. In 1937, Wright designed Taliesin West outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, which served as his architectural and design laboratory for more than 20 years. Wright’s final masterpieces included the spiraling 1959 Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Marin County Civic Center, which bridges facing hills in San Rafael, California.
Left to right: Guggenheim Museum in New York City; Fallingwater home in Mill Run, Pennsylvania; Furniture designs from the Henry J. Allen House in Wichita, Kansas.
Wright’s creative mind was not confined to architecture. He also designed furniture, fabrics, art glass, lamps, dinnerware, silver, linens, graphic arts, and landscapes. He authored more than a dozen books and countless articles and lectured throughout the U.S. and Europe. Nearly one-third of Wright’s work was created during the last decade of his life. Several of his important innovations in building design and construction can be seen in the Gordon House, which he designed in 1957 at the age of 89. At the time of his death in 1959, Frank Lloyd Wright had completed 460 projects with over 600 designs waiting to be completed.
The Usonian House:
The Way Families Live
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian House style was introduced to America on the pages of the September 26, 1938 issue of Life magazine. During the midst of hard economic times, the Life editors commissioned eight of the country’s leading architects to “design affordable houses for a representative family with an income in the middle range.”
Wright’s Usonian design, which he described as a “Little Private Club,” was meant for a 1938 family earning $5,000 to $6,000 and responded to America’s need for good, moderately priced housing.
Wright used the term USONIAN, an acronym for United States of North America. His Usonian house design included such innovations as an open floor plan, where spaces flowed easily from room to room; comfortable and efficient radiant hot-water floor heat; cantilevered roofs with broad protective overhangs; economical carports; and floor-to-ceiling windows and doors that linked the inside with the outside terrain. Local building materials were left their natural color and texture to age and mature gracefully with time.
“So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal.”
Left to right: The Gordon House in its original location in Wilsonville, Evelyn Gordon enjoying her patio with friends, The Gordon Family posing in front of the home.
Wright was convinced that a low-cost residence should reflect contemporary needs rather than a small imitation of a grand house, and his innovations changed the course of small house construction. His emphasis on perceived spaciousness rather than real space altered the face of suburbia in America as one-story horizontal house plans, open kitchens, expansive window walls and terraces became mainstream.
His plans were strongly connected to the automobile, so the carport was located near the entry. These houses retained similar principles, but each was a custom design for the site and the family it housed.
Frank Lloyd Wright continued designing Usonian-style houses until his death in 1959. The Gordon House includes all the important elements of the Life magazine design.
A Home for a Farm in Oregon
In 1956, while vacationing in Arizona, Conrad and Evelyn Gordon visited Taliesin West, the winter home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Gordons met with Wright, who accepted the commission to design a house for their farm on the south bank of the Willamette River, in what is now the Charbonneau residential area of Wilsonville, Oregon.
Wright was in his late 80s at the time but still very active in the design of houses and other buildings. He presented his designs to the Gordons in the fall of 1957, but construction didn’t begin until the spring of 1963, four years after Wright’s death. Burton Goodrich, a Taliesin associate who had opened an architectural business in Lake Oswego, oversaw the construction and corresponded regularly with Taliesin Architects, Wright’s successor firm. As Frank Lloyd Wright’s apprentice, Goodrich had worked on several Usonian projects.
The 2,133 square foot house created quite a stir when it was completed in 1964 at a cost of $56,000. The Gordons graciously opened their new home for public tours that drew 1,500 visitors over a five-day period.
Conrad and Evelyn lived in the house for the rest of their lives. Conrad died in 1979, and Evelyn continued to live in her house until shortly before her death in 1997. The Gordon House includes many characteristics of the idealized Usonian-style house.
Gordon House Relocation and Reassembly
A descendant of the Gordons sold the Wilsonville property in 2000 and the new owners did not plan to preserve the house. The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, a charitable organization whose mission is to preserve Wright’s legacy, stepped forward and struck an agreement with the new owners to save the house on the condition that it be moved from the site.
In January 2001, The Conservancy signed an agreement with the Oregon Garden Foundation to move the Gordon House a 40-mile drive south to the Oregon Garden in Silverton.
Within nine weeks, The Relocation Team documented, dismantled, packaged and carefully labeled all of the building components, including the wood paneling, built-in furniture, doors, cabinets, windows, and stairways for transport. The building was cut into four large sections and trucked to Silverton. The largest section, the entire second floor, including the concrete block walls, remained intact and proved to be the biggest challenge to move.
The concrete block columns, fireplace, red-pigmented radiant concrete floor and terraces could not be saved so were reconstructed on-site.
The house was sited in an oak grove on The Garden grounds to match the Wilsonville site as closely as possible. The house retains the true north compass orientation to meet Frank Lloyd Wright’s design specifications for natural light and ventilation. The painstaking reassembly of the Gordon House took nine months. The view of the Willamette River has been replaced with a serene rural vista, evocative of the original farm setting.
The Gordon House moves from Wilsonville to Silverton.
How the Gordon House was reconstructed
All building components were dismantled, packaged, carefully labeled and moved to the new site.
The small basement that houses the heating, plumbing, and electrical systems was constructed first.
The footings were built.
The building sections were rolled in and placed above the new foundation supported with cribbing.
The concrete block walls were built up from the foundation to align with the building sections above.
The roof sections and second floor were lowered onto the concrete block walls.
The hot water radiant heating system was installed.
The concrete floors were poured using crystallizing pigment in Wright’s favorite color, known as Cherokee or Taliesin red, to create Wright’s signature color.
Finally, the original woodwork and cabinetry were carefully fitted into place. Upon completion, all original and reconstructed parts of the house were within 1/16 inch tolerance.
The house’s signature fretwork is reinstalled at the new Silverton site.
Field Trips &
Educational Resources
The Gordon House welcomes students 3rd grade through post-grad for field trips. We also offer activity sheets and online resources.
Learn More
Gordon House Shop
Take a bit of the Gordon House home with one of our custom Gordon House fretwork-inspired items.