3 Photos
This photo shows the house on its original site.
View of the living room, which shows perforated wooden cleretory panels that provide a light show of patterns throughout the day.
The story of the Bachman Wilson House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is one of promise, innovation, preservation and perseverance.
Owner/architects Sharon and Lawrence Tarantino of the Millstone, New Jersey firm, Tarantino Studio, have made plans to move the house to the Houses at Sagaponac development in Sagaponack once a buyer is found. How this has come to pass was revealed in a talk given by Ms. Tarantino on March 17 at the Architectural Digest Home Design Show at the Javits Center in Manhattan. The Tarantinos are architects, preservationists and the stewards of the Bachman Wilson House, where they have resided for more than 20 years.
The house, purchased by the couple in 1988, is located in the National Historic District of Millstone, New Jersey. Ms. Tarantino said that at the time of purchase the Bachman Wilson house was in “deplorable condition stemming back to the 1971 Hurricane Doria flood.”
(According to the National Weather Service, Doria was classified as a tropical storm—Ed.)
Over a 10-year period, the architects developed a restoration plan for the house. However, the flooding worsened, not only due to climate change but also to a lack of enforcement of construction regulations related to storm water controls.
Despite the existence of preservation laws, according to Ms. Tarantino, New Jersey “has its own agenda when it comes to development, and protecting historic properties is not its priority.” She added, “Furthermore, federal funds for flood protection are basically non-existent.”
After researching methods for flood mitigation for 20 years without finding a workable solution, the Tarantinos concluded that the only way to save the Bachman Wilson House would be to find a buyer who is a Frank Lloyd Wright enthusiast, and relocate it to another site.
This past July, after reading the “Reviving a Modernist Development in the Hamptons,” article in the New York Times by Fred A. Bernstein, the couple decided that the Houses at Sagaponac development might provide a viable setting for the Bachman Wilson House, Ms. Tarantino said.
The original assemblage of properties, developed by Coco Brown, was part of a north-of-the-highway subdivision running along Wainscott Harbor Road and branching onto East Woods Path and Forest Crossing. Mr. Brown’s vision involved the creation of a group houses that would act as a collective rebuttal to the size and excesses of McMansions, which so dominated the architectural terrain of the Hamptons in the late 1990s.
The architect Richard Meier acted as an advisor to Mr. Brown and recommended a list of 32 progressive, modernist architects to design smaller houses ranging between 2,000 and 5,000 square feet. The star-studded cast included 2004 Pritzker Prize winner Zaha Hadid; late architects Daniel Rowen, Philip Johnson and Sam Mockbee, recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award; along with Steven Holl, Keenan/Riley, Lindy Roy and Stan Allen among others.
Mr. Brown died in 2005 and builders Richard Reinhardt and James O’Brien of Reinhardt & O’Brien, who had already built some of the Sagaponac houses, purchased the development from Mr. Brown’s estate with partners Christopher M. Jeffries of Millennium Partners and real estate investor David T. Hamamoto, board chairman of the Morgans Hotel Group.
After contacting Mr. Reinhardt, the Tarantinos visited the development and selected a site for the Bachman Wilson House, having “determined that Sagaponac provided an ideal sanctuary within a neighborhood of well-designed houses which emulate a similar design philosophy,” Ms. Tarantino said. The inland, wooded site also affords a level of protection to the elements—a critical factor in choosing any site for this house, she acknowledged.
Abraham Wilson and Gloria Bachman commissioned Mr. Wright to design their house in 1954. The connection to the influential architect came from Ms. Bachman’s brother, Marvin, an apprentice at the Frank Lloyd Wright Fellowship, who, at that time, was working on the Shavin House in Chattanooga, Tennessee. When the Wilsons visited the Shavin House, they were so taken with the design that they sent Mr. Wright a letter to see if he would create a house for them.
In response, Mr. Wright, then an octogenarian, answered, “I suppose I am still here to try to do houses for such as you.”
At this point in Mr. Wright’s career, while the Guggenheim Museum was in construction, he was living in New York at the Plaza Hotel where he would meet with the Wilsons regarding the progress of the design and drawings for their home. Simultaneously, the Usonian exhibition house was on display in New York, allowing Mr. Wright to promote his work with high visibility.
It was also in 1954 that “The Natural House,” was published, which outlined Mr. Wright’s philosophy of Organic Architecture, emphasizing principles of sustainability long before that word ever entered the lexicon. Passive solar orientation, the use of radiant floors and minimizing waste in tandem with an economy of design, provided the guiding tenets of his philosophy.
“Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders’ spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to everyone and married to the ground,” Mr. Wright is quoted as saying.
The architect attributed the word “Usonian” to Samuel Butler’s utopian novel “Erewhon.” Although scholars have never been able to identify the term in the novel, Mr. Wright was well aware of the fact that Usonia was supposed to represent the United States of America. And for this architect, the Usonian house represented the creation of a distinctly American genre.
The Bachman Wilson House, which Ms. Tarantino calls “a work of art in simplicity and form,” is an example of the Usonian idiom. The house has an open plan with a two-story living room. Composed of horizontal and vertical planes passing through inside and outside, the house becomes one with nature both physically and symbolically. A clerestory of perforated, geometric wood panels filters beams of light into the room in an ever-changing rhythm throughout the day. From the outside at night, the clerestory provides a lantern through the trees.
During the course of renovation, the Tarantinos rehabilitated the roof, Philippine mahogany board and batten panels, masonry walls and the exterior concrete terrace. Extensive research led to the repair of the Colorundrum concrete mat floor, which incorporates Mr. Wright’s signature Cherokee red in its glaze. Wood finishes along with lighting fixtures were also restored.
In 1999, Hurricane Floyd once again caused flooding in the house, although the building was in far better shape to withstand the damage—except for the kitchen, which needed to be replaced. The Tarantinos took advantage of the opportunity to rebuild the house according to Mr. Wright’s original design, which had not been used in the initial construction.
Subsequently, the Tarantinos received two awards for their renovation work on the house—from AIA New Jersey and, in 2008, the Wright Spirit Award from the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, an organization honoring homeowners who rescue Wright buildings and also demonstrate outstanding stewardship in conservation. The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy supports the relocation of the Bachman Wilson House to the Houses at Sagaponac.
Tarantino Studio has consulted on 10 other Wright restorations in the United States, including the relocation of the Gordon House in Oregon. Here on the East End, Mr. Reinhardt, who said he is thrilled to be a part of this project, noted that the move to Sagaponack would involve dismantling the house and reassembling the components on site.
Since there’s no sheetrock in the house, the board and batten mahogany panels, for example, which have flat head brass screws, will simply be unscrewed, tagged, numbered and then re-screwed together piece by piece. The existing masonry block wall facing the street will remain on the original site. New concrete block units of fly ash will be manufactured to match the custom-designed blocks by Mr. Wright in a replica of the original masonry wall.
On the new site, the house will be situated to the southeast to take advantage of a passive solar orientation. By moving the Bachman Wilson House, the architects will be able to incorporate sustainable features into the design—such as a geothermal mechanical system, solar energy and new radiant floor systems.
Ms. Tarantino said the property would also include a new cabana/guesthouse with a solar pergola adjacent to the swimming pool that will make “a seamless connection between the two structures.” The plan for the cabana/guesthouse is sympathetic in scale and materials to the Bachman Wilson House and appears to be subservient to it. The 3,200-square-foot compound is listed for $5 million with Brown Harris Stevens. Ingrid Brownyard—who, along with Amelia Doggwiler, has the exclusive listing on the house—said that the other properties in the development go for about $2 million less than equivalent properties south of the highway.
For the Tarantinos, the situation with the Bachman Wilson House is distressing. Severing the archeological connection with the original site for which it was designed appears to be the only way to ensure its preservation, so there is really no price to put on the intrinsic valve that this house possesses. If there’s any consolation in the current scenario, it seems fittingly ironic that the Bachman Wilson House, with the values it embodies, may well come to sit alongside houses whose concepts and ideologies were influenced by Mr. Wright.
on Apr 18, 2011