Oct. 22, 2016 The Rosenbaum Home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

We learned that The City of Florence opened the Rosenbaum Home up to the public at 10 am. each day. What we didn’t know was that visitors are part of a very strictly guided tour schedule and those tours begins at 10 am on the dot. Traveling in the marina courtesy car, we arrived at 10:10 and had to scoot to join a tour of a dozen or so already in progress. Oh, well! The Rosenbaum Home was 1 of 26 of Frank Lloyd Wright’s pre-WWII Usonian houses. “Usonian” referred to a collection of home designs that shared a theme of architectural traits... the homes were single level, often L-shaped, flat roofed with an overhang that allowed for natural lighting, featured radiant heating in the concrete floors, were small is scope and usually built on inexpensive or unusual pieces of property. They were meant to be affordable; problem was, his designs were expensive to build. A typical house of the mid-1930’s cost $3,500. The Rosenbaum Home cost $11,000. We also learned about Frank Lloyd Wright’s personality quirks. He not only designed the exterior of his homes, he also had very defined ideas about the interior. He demanded that nothing be altered from the original arrangement of furnishings in the living spaces. He believed that his furniture was artistically perfect for it’s small size, low height and placement in each home. Unfortunately, his pieces were uncomfortable. Mrs. Rosenbaum didn’t dare replace them with more comfortable pieces because FLW was known to make unannounced visits; he would chastise the owner if anything was found to be out of place. The day Wright died, she carried the chairs out to the street for disposal and replaced them. Rumor has it that those chairs became dorm furniture at a nearby college. Just recently, a FLW-designed chair like those sold at auction for $17,000!  Almost 20 years ago in our early RVing days, we visited Falling Waters in Ohiophyle, PA. It is one of FLW’s most renown homes and one of the larger ones. It features a cantilevered living room thrust out over a river...quite fetching! Always interesting, we’ll be on the look-out for yet another Frank Lloyd Wright house and the stories that go with it.

Created By Darcy O Campbell