Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Spider Mid-Century Modern House - Modern Photo of the Week

Name: "Spider House"
Architect: Unknown
Year Designed: Unknown
Builder: Unknown
Year Built: Unknown
Size: Unknown
Location: Belinder Street, Mission Hills, Kansas
Type: Residential
Style: Modern
Status: Demolished
Photographer: Robert McLaughlin

We do not know a lot about this house except about its untimely demise. Sorry for the uninspiring photo of this cool design, but I always thought that I would get back on a better day to shoot it. Before I knew it, this one was gone. If anyone has some better photos of this house that was somewhat famous in the community, please let us know.

This butterfly roof design was amazing with a big exposed exoskeleton, big south facing windows and redwood throughout. The original owner actually sold this house to the person who demolished it. Reportedly she could not bear the thought of someone else living there. It did have deferred maintenance issues, but I would have loved to have seen this one brought back.

Unfortunately the value of the land in this Belinder Street neighborhood has made smaller Modern Houses easy targets to be scraped for more Mission Hills McMansions. Architect, John "Jack" Morley's house next door fell to the bulldozer not long after this one. In the 1990s, Don Drummond's personal home diagonally across the street, designed by Architect, David B. Runnells was demolished to give the adjacent house a golf course view. Across the street to the south a Modern Drummond Castilian was remodeled into a hacienda. All of this makes us very worried about the future of the Marcel Breuer designed home just down the street.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Frank Lloyd Wright Book, "The Women" by T.C. Boyle, Reviewed by Ward Sutton in "Daddy Frank and the Curse of Sex"

There seems to be a rush of Frank Lloyd Wright books lately. And then there is the rumor of an option to produce a feature length movie. Who should we hire to play Mr. Wright himself?

The latest book is The Women by T.C. Boyle. Barnes and Noble chose to promote the book with an interview, review and hiring cartoonist and illustrator, Ward Sutton to give his take on the book with a graphic novelette, "Daddy Frank and the Curse of Sex".
Click Here for the Slide Show.

Ward Sutton’s cartoons and illustrations have appeared in the Village Voice, TV Guide, Rolling Stone, Time, Esquire, The New Yorker, and on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times.