Lloyd Wright’s Western NY Legacy
Part I of a two-part story about the Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, NY

The façade of the Darwin D. Martin House, a magnificent example of Frank Lloyd Wright’s brilliance that survives in Buffalo, NY.

By Carlos Torres
Treasure hunters take note: you may not associate Buffalo New York with great wealth or hidden treasure, but that’s only because you probably don’t know where to look.
Nestled comfortably in Buffalo’s unassuming Parkside East Historic District lies a great treasure. No, not the type you dig out of the ground, or even the type you can fold up and put in your pocket. This find is the Darwin D. Martin Complex, commissioned by its namesake and built by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright between 1903 and 1907.
Constructed during Wright’s prairie house period, the complex actually consisted of six structures, including: the Darwin Martin House, the George Barton House, the conservatory, a pergola connecting the conservatory to the Martin house, the carriage house and the gardener’s cottage. This breathtaking marvel of modern architecture is currently being restored by the Martin House Restoration Corporation (MHRC). Founded in 1992, the MHRC has a clear mandate; to restore the complex to its 1907 state and to open the home to the world as a museum.
Unlike the Victorian style homes common at the time, these prairie style structures expanded horizontally not vertically. With relatively flat roofs, large overhanging eaves, and a floor plan based on intersecting planes, prairie style homes were meant to fit in comfortably with their surrounding landscape. A year after the completion of the Martin House Complex, Wright, who was a Unitarian and avid nature lover, wrote in his 1908 essay In the Cause of Architecture, “The prairie has a beauty of its own and we should accentuate this natural beauty, its quiet level. Hence, gently sloping roofs, low proportions, quiet skylines, suppressed heavy-set chimneys and sheltering overhangs, low terraces and out-reaching walls sequestering private gardens.”
Having once stated that, “There should be as many kinds of houses as there are kinds of people and as many differentiations as there are different individuals. A man who has individuality has a right to its expression in his own environment,” Wright believed in forging an understanding of his clients and shaping his homes around that understanding.
Martin, who worked for the Buffalo-based Larkin Soap Company, had started as a street vendor in New York City where his drive and initiative had gotten him noticed. Having relocated his family to Buffalo after being offered a clerk position, he quickly moved up the ranks, becoming the company Secretary, and the highest ranking non-family member in the
family owned business. Martin devised the first modern filing system in his spare time and moved the company’s records out of the ledger books and into the file cabinets. This system was patented by the Larkin Company, and Martin and the Larkins made a lot of money selling this ‘modern technology’ to businesses worldwide. Having grown up in poverty and having lost his parents at a young age, Martin was simultaneously a modern man and a great lover of his family.
Wright shared Martin’s love and appreciation of family life and designed the complex around a keen understanding of this ideal and an understanding of the tenacity and bravery that Martin’s success embodied. Determined to build what Professor Jack Quinan, curator of the restoration, calls, “a modern building for a modern man of his times,” Wright was given a two-acre lot on the corner of Summit Avenue and Jewett Parkway, of which the Barton house became the cornerstone and reference point.
In his mid-30s when contacted by Darwin Martin, Wright was a relative unknown outside of Chicago. The Martin House Complex was Wright’s first major commission outside of the Windy City, where he had mainly been given long narrow lots with which to work.
Executive Director of the MHRC John Courtin explains that, “In many ways Buffalo and Martin made Wright a nationally recognized architect.”
He goes on to explain that one of the reasons that this site is so significant is because Martin offered Wright three key things.
“The client gave Wright a very large lot, because he listened to the client and changed locations from a long narrow lot closer to downtown,” Courtin said. “He also gave him a nearly unlimited budget; he was a millionaire, which is like being a billionaire by today’s standards. He understood Wright’s genius and supported his ideas.”
Since the Barton house was created first, as a sort of test project of Wright’s abilities, Wright made the decision to square everything on the property with it, creating a series of right angles — called rectilinear design — and intersecting planes. Wright also built both of the main houses on a cruciform floor plan. This was a floor plan common in gothic churches where the intersecting planes of the home were placed in a cross-like pattern. All of the structures on the complex were built using a reddish golden brick and the roofs are an autumn red terra cotta, so as to blend more perfectly with the dominant fall colors of Buffalo. Close up, the textures of both the brick and the tiles are rough, grainy and altogether imperfect, completely rejecting the idea of the clean refined woodwork of the Victorian house common at the time.
Professor Quinan, having actually lived in the Barton house for a year as a means to maintain it during the early stages of the restoration project, describes it as having, “ a sense of generosity.”
The doors leading outside and to the veranda are much wider than normal, the receiving area as you first enter is spacious and the first floor consists of basically open space with only a lowered frieze rail to mark the borders of the three intended rooms. The veranda is about a third of the size of the entire first floor and, as is common in Wrightian architecture, the molding and woodwork from the interior are continued outside, blurring the lines of demarcation between interior and exterior.
Wright also subtly gave a sense of harmony to the first floor by doing everything in threes. There are three rooms, the ribbon windows are in sets of three, the built in wall lamps have three sections, even the built in cabinetry in the living room contains three sections of three.
A tiered, turning staircase leads you progressively to the second floor where the space is broken up into normal-door rooms running off of a main hallway. These rooms are intended to be private, intimate spaces. The hall runs along the east-west axis with wood molding, separating it into three sections eastward and three sections westward. Each section has a slightly higher ceiling as you head towards the outer walls, naturally drawing you closer to nature. There are also a set of ribbon windows along both east and west, facing walls with windows at the corners of the north and south facing walls so as to “break the box” as Wright strived to do throughout his career.
The large overhanging eaves give the house a sense of privacy. The second floor also corresponds with the surrounding tree level and Professor Quinan explains, “You’re in the canopy here. It’s almost like living in a tree house… On a hot summer night all of the windows swing open entirely and the cool night air and sounds are all free to come in.”
The Martin house, which, other than the gardeners cottage that was built slightly later and is currently unavailable for viewing, is the only other original structure still on the property. It is the centerpiece of the complex and at more than 15,000 square feet it is impressive in both its size and ambitiousness. Like the Barton house, the woodwork and moldings from the inside are continued on the large overhanging eaves and the roof of the veranda. Unlike the Barton house, which was built using load bearing walls, the Martin house is held up with a series of pier clusters, giving the inner floor plan much more freedom.
The Darwin D. Martin House is located at 125 Jewett Parkway in Buffalo.
For more information, or to schedule a visit, call (716) 856-3858.
www.darwinmartinhouse.org
Editor’s Note: In the October 2005 issue of Northeast, we continue with Part II of Carlos Torres’ in-depth look at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo, NY legacy, with a tour through the physical and philosophical center of the Darwin D. Martin House complex.

To subscribe.. mail your check in the amount of $25 (12 issues mailed first class) to Northeast Inc., PO Box 37, Hudson, NY 12534, or call (518)-828-9327.