The Boynton House: Tour a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Rochester

hi welcome to my home please come take a look this is the entrance and notice that the front doors to the side of the house not in the middle of the house which is a typical Frank Lloyd Wright designed because he wanted the house to be an architectural experience and he wanted it to be different than all other homes and also please notice when we go through the house the different heights of the ceiling he wanted you to feel a feeling of enclosure and then expansion as you walk through the house so you had an architectural experience before Frank Lloyd Wright homes were always set up the same way basically four walls a door for each room the wind you know one or two windows notice all the windows that he used to bring the light in all the time and he's also the first to put the fireplace in the center of the house and he used a horizontal brick because he wanted you to look at the horizontal lines in the house it was a very Japanese feeling to his Prairie style home he was very influenced by that I believe so we'll come in here you take a look at the bookshelves in the living room these were built-ins Frank was the first to do built-ins he was also the first to do recessed lighting and indirect lighting which you'll see here all these sconces are original to the house but back then in 1908 the highest wattage you could get what for a light bulb was eight watts mr. Boynton the owner of the house he was the salesman for lanterns and we found that lantern over there this is an original point that's how he made his money and back in 1908 the land and the house cost fifty thousand dollars which was a fortune back then of course the land was much bigger when almost all the way to Park Avenue there was a tennis court there was a wading pool there were beautiful gardens 1920s that land was sold off and we what we did when we we did what I mean redo the house but we were able to build a new garage in the back and we put in up a little pond as well to give the feeling of what Frank who really had done originally with the house what's really nice about this is that we can sit out here we could see people walking by but they really can't see us we have our privacy maybe they see the top of our heads when we're sitting down no they can't use it Rochester we bought the house we wanted to bring it back to its original beauty so how's this important this is oh they can't believe it Ruth is supported by two huge metal beams that go back 60 feet holding it up and one and I know we this has been an ongoing theme but like you look at this and like you just don't see anything else like this I mean this still feels fresh and forward-thinking and the fact that it has built more than a hundred years ago sometimes we'll have a delivery and the down will say Oh was this a new house it's so modern I'll go would you believe it was the second house built on this street and it was built in 1908 because people would say they don't know about Frank Lloyd Wright and they see it they think it's a new house still and that was a hundred eleven years ago originally when they closed the porch they put those lights and but they're so beautiful I didn't want to but they were not there originally this was just all salad and it totally fit mean it fits it's not like it doesn't feel like these were added on at all all the windows that they have used to enclose this they use the same cup and it was it was done beautifully but it wasn't original and it was really important to me to bring it back to its original and like I had mentioned when I give a tour I do tell people that it was really important to get it back to its original because to me when they enclosed it would be like putting a crown on Mona Lisa's space than her painting it's not what was meant to be the most famous room in the house there's a book written about Frank Lloyd Wright's most favorite rooms and this room is in that book there are over 3,000 pieces of our class in this room alone and everything you see other than the accessories accessories he designed I mean it's you don't think of an architect as always is someone who takes so much time and detail to like design Windows of course you take a look here stand right here where I'm standing you'll see the two windows to the left narrow ones to the left look outside the two to the right look into the house then if you step over here you'll see the same thing on those windows over again right here right here take a look Wow and that's something I didn't realize until I have lived here for a little while right how ingenious the reason there are two tables in the dining room is that mr. Boynton when he built the house he was a widower and he and his daughter lived here they had help so this was their breakfast room in there that's where they ate all their meals so is just the two of them when they had company they used the larger table which even opens up bigger leaves for it as well and Frank believed not to put flowers in the center of the table he believed flowers should go in the corner so that it doesn't take away from the communication so in here there are little metal boxes where you can put the flowers and water and then these light up originally they were electrified but now we have them on LED light so that we preserve the wood so and we design this thing Frank did everything in this room Frank designed okay even these cabinets as well everything everybody's other than the candles it's any less sculptures and what's inside of them every every detail he designed in this room and the carpet he did not the carpet was new but it's in the same style as would have been back there in the Arts and Crafts style so when you say arts and crafts tile can you elaborate on that just all the floors well that was a style the way I can started the late eighteen very late 18-hundreds early 1900s and they used the woods this way it was very contemporary for that time sure this is the pantry it's just it's just the most ludicrously gorgeous pantry I've ever seen everything in here is original except for the line there and this is interesting too back in 1908 first of all the help would come in from the kitchen into the pantry and then into the dining room from this point on Frank did oak because he knew to match the rest of the house the public rooms and the reason he did oak was because he knew when they help opened up this door to serve that the guests could see this and he didn't want them to see the cheap pine that was in the kitchen but back then you had help you didn't put the spend money in the kitchen you you you you know it was the least beautiful room today it's just the opposite so we you had permission to redo the kitchen and we did it as if Frank were alive today and we matched it to the other rooms including the wood and all and you'll see that in a minute but this here is original too and this was a plate warmer it was a gas plate warmer and when we wasn't working of course and we've when we will doing what the gas company here to check it out and said can we get it to work again and they said you do not want that to work he said it's a miracle it has to burn down so now we use it for a different warmer exactly a company warm as original thing the original everything in here is original I know I know we like keep out I just we keep asking it but it's still it's still somehow so some mind blowing down the cabinets or new but they're in the same style that was here what we did is we added the upper cabinets there were no upper cabinets we use some of the windows that were out on the porch for lighting in here and we did the same indirect lighting that Frank did in the living room we did that here however there is something very original that's an original icebox it was even before it was electrified it was an icebox The Iceman would come and put the ice in the back and it was made in Buffalo oh my goodness and it's so it how does this work today it does work it's not too cold however I just I just keep drinks in there so we didn't want all the contemporary modern things showing so we also use this additional I should to how clever you would have no idea yeah that it was bad it's originally this over here was actually two bedrooms in a bathroom for this for the housekeeper and the cook and we were able to redesign it so we added a bathroom over here and we added a breakfast room in here we raise the ceiling because there was nothing above it and we did the same type of ceiling that upstairs in the bedrooms because as I said this was done on a pine and expensively and we redo the news if Frank were alive today and what he would have done today and this is our breakfast room this is where we eat our meals because we want to preserve all the Frank Lloyd Wright furniture this was mr. point this office this is the only room in the house that was done in mahogany hmm and the furniture is new but it's in the same style that would have been here originally and another thing I just want to show you a pocket door this is original pocket door he did this side of the pocket door in mahogany but the other side he did in the oak to match this side of the house so every detail he was involved he made sure was exactly the way he wanted and this almost goes with the theme like what the windows were like half of the windows looking to one part and the other what you do something that's so cool that you can I see the difference in the grain this one's on the house this is in the hospital from Hoth on looking toward East Boulevard you can see the old-fashioned car there and about two years after Beulah who's the name of the daughter mr. Boynton's daughter viola lived in the house she got married to a gentleman and they lived here in the house only for ten years but she had this little girl when she was living in the house that was her daughter and there's a picture of the daughter in the garden area here's a picture of the pond that they had on the other side of the house now now if that land belongs to somebody else picture beulas bedroom mm-hmm and here's a picture of the house when it was in close for the 76 years that's the porch and being enclosed yeah it doesn't it does not look nearly there no nearly as well Franklin nearly as good right and just doesn't thank you he was very upset when he saw it in the 1930s came back to Rochester okay so this is our archival room and our architect John page set this up for us there are pictures of the house the way it used to be some the way it is today this over here is a picture of mr. Boynton Wow the original owner of the house and this is his son-in-law and his grandchild and here's Beulah his daughter and you can see them right by the front door in front of the house and the old-fashioned clothes and we have all the original drawings there were like 79 original drawings we have copies of every one that we got from Taliesin West but we had some of them enlarged our architect did this for us of the original drawings that he did there copies of them and oh my goodness and then this is there my favorite things are architected this for us this is a timeline right here it tells you who owned the house what years they owned it what was done to the house and who the president was in the United States at the time so I think if you took a picture was in this house was it like termite damage there my carpenter ants now that was that was typical of what the beings look like they were all check nine months just to changing yeah here's a this is a good picture I met with the after we did that took it away and that's a big difference no and it's I mean I know like there's like some landscaping difference to but it's so one this is how Frank would have done it he wanted the house you don't look at the house like it came out of the earth so he was more minimal the landscaping there's something over here I think this is a picture of Frank Lloyd Wright when he was his early 40s and that's how old he was when he designed this house over there is a picture of Frank Lloyd Wright right before he passed away at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City that he designed and over here is our list of all the people who worked on the house and then to the right of it the boss [Music] I think the only two people who forgot to sign it about the two most important people with the architect John Wright our landscape architect and our regular origin is John Barrow and Mark Baer by now thanks for coming

Channel: News 8 WROC

Views: 542,889

Keywords: video, Rochester, RochesterNY, WROC, News8, Frank Lloyd Wright

Id: LUSsFEj64lM

Length: 17min 22sec (1042 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 02 2019