Stanford’s damaged treasure: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hanna House

[Music] good afternoon ladies and gentlemen I'm surely delighted to see you here in such large numbers when I became Provost of the University of Chicago it fell to me to worry about one of the country's most famous buildings frank lloyd wright's robie house Robie house was in need of much attention and the university did not have the resources to attend to those needs aggressively given its and rights importance in American architectural history I thought it should not be too difficult to get donors interested was I ever wrong lip service to Wright's stature was by no means matched by support for the right heritage by the time I left Chicago for Stanford I was quite discouraged though I had obtained funding for a study of the state of Robie house and what it would take to restore this greatest example of prairie architecture I was so ignorant about Stanford that with admittedly some sense of relief I indulged the thought that I would never again have the privilege to worry about a Frank Lloyd Wright house little did I know I was not only privileged to succeed to 150 million dollars worth of earthquake damage to the Olmstead Coolidge and Paykel brown quadrangles but to a hexagonal Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece indeed for all practical purposes a hole right campus quaintly dubbed a house Hannah house and tall Turner soon made it clear to me that Hannah house was as important to California and the West as Robie house is to Illinois and the Midwest this is the reason we are gathered together tonight Stanford architecture has greatness and in the post-world War two period much mundaneness Hannah house is greatness that we must restore and preserve and then we may celebrate as you know all too well when I came from Chicago many people were worried that I would introduce the radical Chicago concepts to Stanford such as doing without division one football perish the thought what I have brought from Chicago is design competitions for new buildings so far these competitions have led to the engagement of antoine predock of jim paul check of jim freed of ricardo LaGuerta and most recently of Sir Norman Foster for important Stanford projects I appreciate the knowledge and support that David Newman the University architect has contributed to this endeavor in 1937 the Hanna's retained one of the centuries and the world's greatest architects for their home that later they donated to the University I hope we will honor their sense for great architecture at Stanford by making the restoration of Hana house possible our speaker tonight will be Paul Turner Paul is the Paul and Phyllis waters professor of art Paul has been a member of our faculty since 1971 I have personally been an avid student of two of his books one about the design of Stanford University the other on campus designs more generally his book on Luca Brasi has been translated into French and his forthcoming book is on Joseph Tommy we are very much indebted that is Stanford is very much indebted to Paul for his dedication to Hannah house Thank You Gerhard on October 17th 1989 the earthquake now called the Loma Prieta struck the San Francisco Bay Area causing damage here at Stanford that the university is still repairing the most seriously damaged structures were Memorial Church seen here on the right in restoration the older section of green library on the left the museum a little hard to see in this dark slide but the cracks there it's the repairing of which is currently being planned and undertaken and one other building whose fate has received less attention at least here at Stanford the Hana house on Frenchman's Road shown here after the quake and in better days here the same view of the living room before the earthquake designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1936 and built by Professor Paul Hanna and his wife Jean who lived in the house until they gave it to the University in 1975 after which it was used as the residence of the Provost until the earthquake when it had to be closed the relative neglect of the Hana house by the university since the earthquake is perhaps understandable in view of its more peripheral place at Stanford peripheral both physically and programmatically but the Hana house and its preservation deserve our attention mainly because if it's great architectural significance in this talk I will try to explain the significance as I see it and I'll survey the history of the house then toward the end I'll describe the damage it suffered in the earth and summarize the plans for its restoration and future use well why is the Hana house important enough to warrant our efforts to save it and to justify the claims which are often made that it's one of the masterpieces of American architecture to attempt to answer this I have to start with Frank Lloyd Wright himself and his contributions to modern architecture we see him here in his studio in Wisconsin with some of his apprentices and assistants at just the time the Hana house was being constructed and I can actually point out a couple of the apprentices who who worked on the project with Wright John how here and William Wesley Peters here who was also right son-in-law another apprentice who we know assisted in the Hana house design was Cornelia Brierley though she doesn't happen to appear in this photograph well Frank Lloyd Wright has become a kind of mythic figure universally universally acknowledged as America's greatest architect perhaps the greatest architect of the modern period anywhere in the world and the creator of powerful works which themselves have become icons in the public mind such as the Robie house to which president Kasper referred in Chicago built in nineteen nine Fallingwater the Kauffman house in western Pennsylvania of about the same time as the Hana house and the Guggenheim Museum in New York of the 1950's just before Wright's death but let me try to go beyond the myth and to define the importance of Wright's work especially those aspects of it that are relevant to the Hana house and this takes us back to the prairie house the type of building that Wright created starting about 1900 in the Chicago area and which had a transforming effect on much of American architecture here we see one of these Prairie houses the Willetts house of nineteen two right at this time was experimenting with lots of ideas having to do with new architectural forms the natural use of building materials the extension of architecture into the surrounding landscape and other innovations which he collectively called organic architecture but I want to focus on one central aspect of this revolution of Rights a new attitude towards space in architecture which has been described as breaking open the box or destroying the box of conventional architecture right did this by means of various devices such as opening up large areas of external wall with groups of doors or windows banked together windows that often went right up to the underside of the overhanging roof as we see on the left in this detail of the Willetts house so that space seems to flow between the interior and exterior of the house right also devised new ways of ray of relating the interior spaces to each other more complex and dynamic than traditional rooms and let me try to illustrate this in a rudimentary way by comparing two floor plans one by right on the left for a small house also of 19-2 and the other by a fashionable East Coast architect of a few years earlier at first they look almost the same but we can see that right has done something unusual if we trace the the boundaries of two of the rooms the living room and the dining room well what room does this space belong to here both rooms neither there's an ambiguity or tension here and a suggestion of transition or movement also a diagonal axis is implied a kind of hint of rights later interest in non rectangular design as we'll see in the Hana house well this is just a very simple example of a new approach that right was soon developing in much more complex ways and not just two dimensionally in the floor plan but three dimensionally with ceilings of different heights and shapes and light that comes in from different angles from below or above all traits later found in the Hana house as we'll see here on the right we see the coonley house outside Chicago of nineteen seven and Wright's own house Taliesin in Wisconsin begun in the teens right seems to have had several different motives for these innovations first on an aesthetic level a desire simply to create dynamic interpenetrating forms and spaces a kind of parallel maybe to the Cubist experiments of about the same time in Europe but also ideological or social motives the desire to invent a new American architecture appropriate to the vitality of the American experience and a response to new patterns of middle-class life especially the new suburban life for which Wright was creating domestic spaces that reflected and perhaps encouraged less formal relationships between family members between spheres of living and between indoor and outdoor activity all of these things contributed to the great success of Wright's architectural revolution a success seen not only in the buildings he designed but in his influence on other architects and on ordinary building of all kinds as his ideas gradually filtered down especially when in the 1920s and 30s Wright purposely adapted his principles for more modest types of domestic architecture here one of these Usonian houses as Wright called them this one the Jacobs house in Madison Wisconsin and these works helped shape much American suburban architecture even including the so-called ranch-style architecture or certainly the Eichler houses here in the Bay Area all of this would have been enough to establish rights primacy in modern American architecture but he went on to other important innovations in the course of his amazingly long career he continued to work until his death in 1959 at the age of 92 probably the most significant of these new directions was Wright's application of his spatial concepts to a new realm that of non rectangular geometry as a further development of that desire to destroy the box and create dynamic space beginning in the 1920s Wright explored this idea in many projects using geometries based on triangles circles and other non rectangular forms here we see a design for a kindergarten in Los Angeles of 1923 but none of these projects was built as a permanent structure until the Hana house designed in 1936 and built the following year the Hana house was Wright's first constructed design with a totally non rectangular plan in this case based on the hexagon and in the in the floor plan on the left we see this hexagonal grid I hope this is clear enough for you to see we'll see some other plans where it's perhaps more evident and all of the the parts of the plan the walls and other elements such as the main and maybe the fireplace in the center are all controlled by this hexagonal geometry as you can see the Hana house thus inaugurated a new period of Wright's career of buildings using unconventional geometries and taking his spatial principles to their logical extremes a period which produced many of Wright's most famous and striking works such as Taliesin West in Arizona the buildings at Florida Southern College the price tower in Oklahoma and the Guggenheim Museum the Hana house therefore while perhaps not one of Wright's most spectacular works and certainly not one of his largest houses is recognized by architects and historians as one of his most important buildings for example the American Institute of Architects has included the Hana house on its list of Wright's buildings most worthy of preservation it's a list of 17 buildings which is actually a very elite group considering the hundreds of works that Wright built over his career also when the Society of architectural historians held its annual meeting in San Francisco several years ago and I led one of the tours which featured the Hana house this was the most popular and oversubscribed tour and not because of my abilities as a tour leader my fellow architectural historians simply wanted to visit the Hana house more than any other Northern California building well now let's just look at this house its floor plan and some views of it for a kind of spatial orientation before a proceeding in this plan the the house itself is is here it shows more of the the property than that previous plan showed and it's also of course rotated 30 30 degrees the other plan went up this way as you remember but we still see this the hexagonal grid and the view on the right is the house from the road I should point out that the that it basically it's a small house although as often with Wright's works it tends to seem bigger than it is partly because of the way it extends into its surroundings you may have noticed if you remember that other plan that there's some differences between the rooms in this plan and that previous plan I showed that's because the house was changed in its during its history all the explaining a little later this is the plan we're seeing here is the present plan the way it's been in recent years the other plan was the the plan at the beginning of the of its history but as I say I'll get back to that and explain that the view of the house from the road on the right is taken from down here the road is is below in this plan and as we approach the house walking up the hill to the left of the house we're taken first to the side up up here along the side we're looking at the house from over here now and then to the back of the house where the entrance is this is typical of right one does not usually enter directly in a straight line but is taken around to experience the architecture from different angles and to move through different spaces even before entering the house we pass under a roof connected to the carport and the entrance to the house is almost hidden it's actually in here this is an old photograph by the way taken shortly after the house was constructed once inside we find ourselves in a space that's quite small but very high and lit mainly by windows at the top I should point out that the the entrance to the house is here and this is this foyer or entrance area that we're seeing on the on the right to relate it to the plan then to move into the living room we have to pass through a very different kind of space with a low ceiling and that's this this space here the ceiling is dropped down and we walk through here this is actually this is very low maybe six feet nine inches or something like that six four and very lower than I even remembered and let me just show another view of this you can get a little better sense of this space there it is with that low ceiling that one passes under to get into the living room sometimes when I've been in the house with students some of them have said that they feel a bit uncomfortable here in this rather a constricted space but I think this was intentional by right he wanted us to experience in a very physical bodily way different kinds of spaces even if some of them make us feel pressed in or confined because then we can experience a sense of liberation when we move into the next space here the living room where the ceiling soars up at an angle and the space moves out and through the glass walls to the landscape beyond but at the same time our attention is drawn in a circle around the central fireplace this is the fireplace and on the plan here it is the the hearth so we're in this this space so we're drawn around the central fireplace which acts as a kind of hub for this spatial movement or choreography and here in the view of the fireplace unfortunately like most complex architecture these spaces cannot be appreciated fully in photographs even in movies really they have to be experienced in person but we can try with these slides and I think you can perhaps sense how the hexagonal geometry of the floor plan with no right angled corners anywhere in the house contributes to this spatial fluidity and movement then we continue around toward the dining room and here the architecture changes again this is another early photograph we're seeing the floor rises a couple of steps right there and that's here here's those steps actually more three or four steps in the plan and the space gets rather dark as you can see right constantly manipulates the level and quality of light in his buildings just as he manipulates the spaces themselves then the dining room itself where things open out again I must admit here that personally I've never cared much the fact that carpeting covered most of the floor for many years I personally prefer seeing the hexagonal grid of the concrete slab itself released much of this grid and maybe if I go back we see in this very early photograph before there was carpeting in the in the house that one sees this this hexagonal grid in the that's in the concrete slab of the floor in any case continuing this circular movement through the house the bedroom and the study are beyond here in the in the plan and we'll see and then the and we'll see them later and in the center is the kitchen with its own distinctive spatial character narrow and high and lit from above and I'll have more to say about the kitchen you're having a typical response to this kitchen which I'll talk about later while we're still on this tour of the house I should point out that the design as with most of Wright's works is not just the building itself but the whole environment for example the hexagonal geometry in this case extends out from the house controlling such elements as retaining walls subsidiary structures and landscape forms and the house is intimately tied into its natural surroundings by its relationship to the topography its views and its accommodation even of specific features of the site such as the old oaks and other trees which right carefully-designed the house around here a view of on the left of view of the bedroom end of the house and there's actually a notch that right created in this roof for that oak tree to fit into well how was ortant and unprecedented work of Frank Lloyd Wright was constructed here at Stanford this brings us to the Hannah's Paul and Jean Hannah who were among Wright's most perceptive and sympathetic clients here we see them with their children at the house just as it was completed in late 1937 and I thank the Hannah family for providing me with this photograph they came to Stanford in 1935 when Paul Hannah was hired as an associate professor in the School of Education in the field of childhood education and they immediately asked Wright to design a house for them here but their relationship with the architect went back several years earlier when as a young couple beginning their careers at Columbia University in New York they had been thinking about the house they hoped someday to build had done a lot of reading about contemporary architecture had been captivated by the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright had written to him and then in 1931 had actually visited him at Taliesin his home and studio in Wisconsin to discuss his principles of domestic architecture their relationship with Wright had developed in the following years and he had actually visited them in their small apartment in New York during two of his business trips there so Wright knew the Hana's well when they finally asked him to design a house for them at Stanford and I think that Wright's decision to use them as guinea pigs we might say in an experiment to build a revolutionary design was due to his knowledge of these two young people their enthusiasm their idealism their willingness to innovate and more specifically their ideas about education and the importance of environment in the life of a family and I should note that this idea has been examined in an article on the Hana house to which I'm indebted by one of my former graduate students richard jacques also i think that right probably saw the hand as as an especially modern couple both of them well educated and working together as a team they collaborated for example on publications something which would have appealed to rights progressive outlook especially at this time in his career but to get back to the story right began producing various plans for the Hana's in late 1935 and came to visit them here at stanford in early 36 to examine the building sites that they were trying to acquire on university land in July of 1936 they secured their preferred site shown here the hilly property on what's now Frenchman's Road and right adapted for it the hexagonal plan that he had already been proposing to them and which they had been struggling over first being puzzled by it completely but then becoming increasingly enthusiastic here we see one of the site plans and a perspective drawing by right that he did a little later when the plan was finally settled well the next several months were a period of intense communication between right and the Hana's both in person and through correspondents as the plans for the house were refined and throughout this process the Hana's were extremely active participants in the design constantly asking questions making suggestions and sometimes insisting on certain points here let me just show one more plan this the final plan that they came up with and another drawing by right on the right-hand side probably the most important element of the design that resulted from this interaction between architect and client was the idea of creating a house that would change as the needs of the family changed this notion of flexibility over time was put into effect more fully here than in any of Wright's previous works and it was due mainly to the Hanna's themselves they later recalled quote we asked for a house that would be comfortably livable for a family of five father mother and three children but also a house that could be altered to suit us when the children flew off to their own nests to our Wonder and delight mr. Wright was able to achieve this I'll describe these alterations a little more in more detail a bit later but let me just point out the main ones while we have this original floor plan on the screen the children's playroom was turned into the dining room afterwards when it was altered after the children left the family and you remember that's where the the the dining room is now and in those pictures that we saw earlier the also the children's bedrooms were transformed into a large master bedroom and the old master bedroom and study were turned into a large library and we'll see these later I should point out that the original dining area was was down here by the way I should also mention that the that the ham is documented probably more than probably more than any other of Wright's clients the entire history of the project every communication of theirs with the architect all phases of the construction of a house its subsequent changes and later dealings with Wright himself and when they eventually gave the house to the university they also gave this archive of documentation correspondence drawings photographs and other records which are now in the special collections department of the library and this of course only increases the historical value of the some of this documentation is also recorded in the book that the Hanna's later wrote about the house published in 1981 which is fascinating and sometimes amusing reading with its detailed and honest account of both the ecstasy and the agony of working with a great architect and of executing of revolutionary design including the day-to-day crises financial conflicts and other problems and speaking of the financial side of the story I should point out that this was essentially a low-budget project the Hanna's original budget for the house was the amazing sum for us today of only $15,000 and although although they ended up spending or rather borrowing more than this to get the house they wanted they were still clients of quite modest resources certainly in comparison with most of the other clients of Wright's famous houses and I mention this partly to point out that the unusual amount of attention that Wright himself devoted to this job including numerous visits to Stanford before during and after construction of the house was clearly motivated not by the prospect of a large Commission or the prestige of creating a lavish house but simply by the challenge of experimentation and of working with stimulating clients well construction of the house took nearly the entire year of 1937 here are some of the photographs that the Hana's took themselves and are now in the archives here at Stanford the construction involved so many unconventional procedures that no contractor could be found to take on the job so the Hana's themselves assumed part of this role hiring the various craftsmen and supervising the work with the assistance of a local builder who be came interested in the job a man named Harold Turner no relation of mine and that the Hanna's even pitched in with the work themselves the physical work which naturally just increased rights admiration for these adventurous young clients the most unusual aspect of the construction was of course the hexagonal module on which everything was built the puzzled workmen were told to put away their carpenters squares and were given specially constructed 120 degree angle irons with which to lay out the grid pattern of the concrete floor slab on this hexagonal grid the walls were then erected rather like folding Japanese screens which in turn supported the outer parts of the roof supported inside by the central brick chimney mass here we see this screen like effect in the finished house in one of the walls of glass also unconventional was the design of the solid wooden walls of the house composed of a thin sandwich of three boards here we see a cross-section drawing may be a little hard to see through this typical wall redwood on both sides the whole thing only 2 and 3/4 inches thick and exactly the same inside and outside the house one of the local newspaper stories that announced this talk last week said that the reported that the Hana house is unusual because its walls are very thick it's amazing how many mistakes are said about the about the house you don't know where people get these ideas perhaps partly because of the unfamiliarity and strangeness of the house to people that it's more mistaken facts are said about the house than than most not surprisingly the building began to attract attention while still under construction here we see a brief article that appeared in the magazine architect and engineer in August 1937 which by the way also got some facts wrong about the house but I won't bother to point those out but once the the building was completed the media attention really began much of the information provided by Wright himself who now considered this to be one of his most innovative works in January of 1938 the magazine architectural forum devoted several pages to the house including commentary by Wright he called it a new venture into space concepts and he wrote I am convinced that a cross-section of honeycomb has more fertility and flexibility where human movement is concerned than the square he liked this honeycomb analogy and later often referring to referred to the building as honeycomb house the obtuse angle is more suited to human to-and-fro than the right angle he wrote and it would lead to livelier domesticity and we see here that connection that Wright made between architectural form and social patterns he also said appreciative clients not afraid that they were going to be made ridiculous were essential to this experiment without the help of Paul and Jean Hannah nothing could have happened in July of 1938 a more substantial article in the house appeared in architectural record in a supplementary issue devoted to right on the cover of which was a photograph showing the architect sitting at the fireplace of the newly completed house and here we see a just a blown up detail of that and I think this must have been the visit that Wright made in April of 1938 when in fact he brought a large group of his apprentices to see the house he was obviously extremely proud of it additional commentary by Wright is printed in this article and architectural record but much of the text was written by the Hana's themselves and they're quoted for example they wrote and I'll show some images from this article as I'm quoting them they said we are learning to live by new patterns the most noticeable change is the lessening of tension the increased sense of repose traffic flows naturally from one part of the house to another on the terraces we eat too and often three meals daily the living room they wrote is a part of everything else it seems to flow on in rhythmic beauty they described how the children spaces worked for example how the playroom and its outside Terrace become one huge play area when the dividing wall of glass is rolled back as we see in the the upper part of this slide here and Jeanne Hannah described the unusual kitchen or laboratory as Wright had named it on the original plans on the original floor plans this was apparently the first time that Wright used this term laboratory for a kitchen and I think it must reflect his notion of this house as a kind of social experiment and of the Hanna's as social scientists Jean Hannah wrote in this article swinging doors admit us to the laboratory precisely in the centre of the house here I am NOT isolated from the family I can look through fins into the dining room through other Finn's into the playroom and on through the glass walls to the hills I'll match the view from my laboratory with anyone's and she noted that the extra high ceiling keeps the laboratory cool and odorless and here we see a later section drawing cut through the this part of the house showing the system that Wright devised for ventilating this interior space I myself recall that when the Hannah's would show the house to visitors the most common doubts people expressed were about this kitchen but Jean always defended it vigorously I want to mention one other early article that discussed the house because it was written by an architectural historian and critic Talbot Hamlin who could be expected perhaps to be more objective about a building than the architect or the clients and in fact Hamlin did make some criticisms of the Hannah house which are worth noting I think he wrote the question is what has been gained by a plan of sixty and a hundred and twenty degree angles he discussed this and said the result is complicated instead of simple and clear and he continued the matter of furniture is even more serious there are chairs which look awkward and uncomfortable and Wright had in fact designed of several different types of chairs for the house designed especially for the Hannah house based on hexagons we see one of these types of chairs that he produced these at the dining table that original dining table that was in between the living room and what's now the dining room and in fact the Hannah's later replaced some of these chairs which were attractive I think but had the unfortunate tendency to tip over also Hamelin added in this article of his he said the making of a hexagonal bed it offers difficulties and the Hanna's later altered these beds also but then Hamlin wrote yet the house is beautiful and poetic there is a character of variety of change of invitation around corners that is endlessly fascinating and above all there is an extraordinary rhythm the whole house sings one merely wonders he concluded whether it has been gained at too great a sacrifice now one could challenge the criticisms made by Hamlin but his observations help explain I think why the Hannah house despite its tremendous appeal its beauty and the great publicity it achieved has not had much practical influence on architecture in general after all there aren't many other houses using the hexagonal module the design perhaps is such an extreme expression of rights principles especially the destruction of the box and of a dynamic flowing space that it may be unsuited as a prototype for building as many of Wright's other designs were suited what makes the Hannah house great may also limit it as an architectural model in this sense it might be seen as more of a work of art than as a completely practical design but the haniss themselves probably would not have agreed with this view of mine - then the house was perfect in all ways and their love of it only increased with time 25 years after the house was built an entire issue of the magazine house beautiful was devoted to it with articles on aspects of the building including an article on the Hanna's themselves and again Paul and gene contributed much of the text to for the magazine for the other articles not the article in themselves they loved writing about the house just as they loved showing it to people students and the many others who came from all over the world to see it when I began teaching at Stanford and the Hanna's still lived in the house I was a beneficiary of this generosity of theirs I and the students in my architectural history classes whom I often took to the house and the Hanna's always found time for us also I should mention that over the years large numbers of Stanford students have been inspired by experience of the Hana house some inspired to study architecture others to enrich their work and lives in various ways through the experience and it really amazes me how many former Stanford students tell me that the house strongly affected them in this way in these ways by the way if any of you have had similar reactions or experiences to the Hana house I'd be grateful to hear from you well by the time of the house beautiful issue in 1963 the building had undergone the main changes that had been planned from the beginning and these were described in the magazine the transformation of the children's playroom scene again on the left here into a large dining room scene on the right the three small children's bedrooms at the top in this slide turned into a master bedroom suite and the old master bedroom and study turned into a large study or library scene on the bottom in that slide on the right and I think I have another view of this library the new library by the way these transformations were carried out by Aaron green a former Taliesin apprentice and rights west coast representative who was recommended by Wright himself for this job for the Hanna's also another transformation or addition to the house that had happened actually a little earlier by Wright himself was construction of the separate structure originally intended as a guest house and which Wright redesigned around 1950 to include guest quarters and also a studio for crafts activities which the hand is called the hobby house and other miscellaneous additions made over the years such as the waterfall found or cascade here flowing down toward the house and here we see it from the from the other direction this cascade in the garden which besides being attractive the hand is put to an ingenious use quote we are awakened at 6:30 every morning by the sound of this waterfall which an electric clock has activated and they added this cascade was mr. Wright's answer to our wistful expressions of admiration for falling water by this time the Hanna's were already thinking about what would happen to their house after they were gone and they discussed this briefly in the house beautiful issue they mentioned that the president of Stanford andrade Lyman Wilbur at that time had jokingly threatened to turn the house into the Faculty Club but but they were hoping that the building could be used quote as a teaching facility and research center for the arts dedicated to education in the arts and architecture and also as a memorial to Frank Lloyd Wright and his principles here we just see two more views drawing rights drawing and a view of the house later however when the Hanna's discussed their plans with the university authorities they were told that the house should remain a residence and then they conceived the idea that it would be that it be used to house a visiting distinguished professor each year in the late 1960s the Hanna's began the legal transference of the house to the University and in 1975 they moved out in their typical careful planning they wanted to do all of this while they were still in charge and could see the plan through though it surely must have been painful for them to leave the house they loved so dearly I later visited them several times in their new apartment in the Pierce Mitchell housing complex down the street but I could never bring myself to ask them how they felt about the move and they always were were you aware I saw them the Hanna's were upset however when the university decided to use the house as the Provost's residence instead of carrying out their visiting professor idea and they were rather vocal about it at one point Paul Hanna asked me for my opinion about this and I responded very frankly to him this was in an exchange of letters which I still have I told Paul that I thought there were potential problems with anyone living in the house other than themselves if the main goal was to preserve it and make it accessible to the public and I saw thought that and I said that I thought the idea of visiting professors living there was actually more problematic than the Provost living there since visiting professors would be constantly changing might have no interest in the house or sense of responsibility toward the university and even one disastrous visitor could do grave harm to the building after all it's rather fragile in certain ways and has to be handled with care for example it's natural redwood surfaces which can easily be stained or damaged also since it's essentially a small house it's some really suitable for only some kinds of families now all of this of course has some relevance to the question of how to use the house now once it's restored which I'll return to in a bit but on a different note I also suggested to Paul Hanna and to Stanford administrators at various times that perhaps the only really appropriate residence for the resident for the house would be the aside from the Hanna's themselves would be the Stanford faculty member who teaches architectural history unfortunately this proposal never seemed to generate a great deal of support from from 1977 until the earthquake for Stanford Provost's occupied the house the building was frequently used for university functions and it was open periodically for public tours though naturally on a more limited basis than when the Hana's had lived there in 1987 Jean Hanna died and the next year Paul so they were spared with witnessing the effects of the earthquake on the house before describing these effects I might just mention that when the earthquake occurred in the late afternoon of October 17th 1989 the house was occupied by two members of the family of the provost and the longtime housekeeper this lady has told me that first there was a loud noise like a bomb exploding then the house began shaking objects falling and doors opening by themselves and she exited fast she told me well what damage did the house suffer the main visible effects were the following the collapse of part of one of the retaining walls which supported a terrace not the house itself the settling of parts of the floor slab especially in the living room and we can see here the the edges of some of these hexagonal blocks which rose and fell various cracks and shifts and probably most serious movement of the central brick fireplace mass a twisting movement which crushed and displaced some of the bricks down here at especially at this part and I have a detailed view of that part of the fireplace mass in addition and not visible some of the members of the roof structure shifted a bit especially where they're supported at the top of the fireplace mass then there's the question what were the causes of the damage always a more difficult question in dealing with earthquakes I should first say that the damage was evidently not caused by the presence of a minor fault line that crosses part of the property a fact that's been played up in some of the journalistic stories on the house since the quake nor apparently was the damage due to any problem in the overall basic form of the house that is its underlying concept of design but certain details of the design and of the construction of the house did contribute to the damage for example when the hillside was graded that is cut and filled to create a level surface for the floor slab the soil in the part that was filled was apparently not compacted as well as it should have been and that in the looking at the plan of the house that's that's this area here especially in the so it's mainly the living room where the where there was this problem having to do underlying soil conditions also the brick fireplace was built of unreinforced masonry that is with no steel reinforcing or reinforced concrete and there was insufficient connection between the roof structure and the fireplace mass these were pretty standard building practices construction practices when the house was built in the 1930s though now we know better so what needs to be done to correct the damage to the house this has been the subject of careful analysis since the earthquake by both experts within the University and consultants brought in from outside and the story of this process which I can only summarize briefly here demonstrates that seismic engineering and building repair are not as straightforward as one may assume especially when dealing with unusual or historic structures here let me just show some more views of the house to look at while I'm talking about this one basic question is the degree to which a building should be strengthened against future earthquakes we might imagine that a building should be made to withstand any conceivable earthquake with no damage but this is an unrealistic standard for any building and especially for an historic building like the Hana house since since very high standards of strength may require the total rebuilding of much of the structure you might end up with a very strong building but it would not be the original building it would be a new structure so restoration of this sort nearly always involves the weighing of conflicting factors some of them rather subjective and compromises the first engineering solution that was devised for the Hana house about four years ago used a high standard of structural strength as a given and entailed quite a lot of demolition and rebuilding for example the central fireplace mass would have been removed completely and rebuilt in reinforced concrete with a brick veneer a later alternative scheme involved somewhat less demolition but provided strength with new steel members at various places in the house some of which would have had to be visible clearly not an ideal solution the final plan developed by the engineering firm of Rutherford and Shaheen makes certain compromises and employ some ingenious methods to provide the necessary strengthening for example the central fireplace mass will be preserved but vertical cores will be drilled in it then filled with concrete and steel reinforcing and connected with the roof structure above and the wooden walls of the house will be strengthened from within despite their extreme thinness and really the only major part of the house to be replaced is the buckled floor slab in the living room which will be recreated after correcting the soil conditions underneath it and adding what are called grade beams under the slab to tie the exterior retaining walls to the fireplace mass the basic principle of this plan is to preserve intact as much of the original fabric of the building as possible by finding ways to get behind it or under it to strengthen the structure FEMA the Federal Emergency Management Agency which has been contributing to the repair of the earthquake damaged buildings at Stanford has endorsed this plan for that for the Hana house and has made an initial verbal commitment to provide $600,000 toward its repair the total cost of the project to restore the house and ensure its future preservation and maintenance is estimated to be about two million dollars nearly half of this has already been obtained or committed mainly the FEMA grant and an endowment from the Nissan Corporation so a fundraising campaign for about 1 million dollars has recently begun the overall restoration effort has been planned by the Hana House Board of Governors which I've been chairing and finally let me say something about this board and about the plans for the future use of the building when the Hana house was originally given to the University the Board of Governors was established by the President to oversee the use and maintenance of the house after the earthquake the board was not convened for some time and finally David Newman and I asked president Kasper to reconstitute it which he did with a new membership representing the kinds of experience and input we felt were needed to plan the restoration besides the university architect David Newman and architectural historian myself the board includes representatives of the Stanford Historical Society the University Archives the Hana house docents the volunteers who led the guided tours of the house for many years until it was closed the university facilities office development office and Committee on land and building development in addition we've brought in numerous experts from outside structural engineers architectural preservation ist's and others and we've called on a member of the Hana family who has attended nearly all of our meetings besides the structural repair of the house the main issue we've had to deal with is its future use and this has involved lots of discussion consultation with experts and study of the ways that other historic houses are used especially those owned by universities although some details of the future use have not yet been decided the basic principles have been determined and approved by a president Kasper these are that the house should not be used as a permanent residence that it should be made as accessible as possible to students and the public and used for educational purposes classes and seminars as well as guided tours of the house and for various kinds of other university functions as long as these activities do not endanger the preservation of the building foremost in our minds has been our responsibility as custodians of this uniquely important architectural work to preserve it for continuing generations of students and others to enjoy and be inspired by the Hana house in my view is indeed one of the masterpieces of American architecture not only because of its great beauty but because of its central importance in the work of frank lloyd wright first as the pioneering project that inaugurated Wright's non-rectangular buildings and also as perhaps the best example of Wright's creative working relationship with sympathetic clients as a result the Hana house is the classic expression of many of Wright's design principles such as the creation of dynamic space the destruction of the box of conventional architecture and the integration of architecture and nature in these ways it epitomizes the creative power of America's most innovative architect thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Stanford University Libraries

Views: 66,786

Keywords: Frank Lloyd Wright, Hanna House, Paul V. Turner, Architecture

Id: hBeOWaOFnBU

Length: 93min 6sec (5586 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2017