Green Means

Preserving Great Architectural Works

By Shannon Scott

Update: The Write House was saved and is no longer in danger

            Frank Lloyd Wright planted the seeds for today’s green building - natural materials, minimalism, and built to last.  Using open floor plans, unadorned exteriors, and connections to the outside world Wright profoundly influenced the way we live and work.  His buildings pay homage to their American landscapes.

            My son, Kevin, argues that we are experiencing a grave cultural decline, symbolic of a failing society.  Given that two guys from Meridian, Idaho planned and to tear down one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces just to make a buck, Kevin may be correct. 

            In Arcadia, an upscale Phoenix, Arizona neighborhood land is gold.  So when developers, John Hoffman and Steve Sells, bought a house on 2.2 acres for $1,000,000 less than the previous owners paid for it, they saw an opportunity to subdivide and profit.  Their plan was to demolish the existing house, then build and sell two contemporary mansions on the open lots.  They immediately applied for and received a demolition permit. 

            Hoffman and Sells learned that Frank Lloyd Wright had design and built the lot’s existing home.  According to a recent New York Times column Hoffman said, “I didn’t know Frank Lloyd Wright from the Wright Brothers.”   

            Wright designed and built the Arcadia neighborhood house, overlooking orange groves, for his son David.  The home, known as The David Wright House, is one of Wright’s masterworks.  The home’s design mirrors the coiling behaviors of southwestern vipers and the curvaceous style of a larger work Wright had on the drawing board, the Guggenheim Museum. 

            Tied to the natural world, Wright’s timeless designs endure with lasting materials like mahogany, teak, and concrete.  Wright built for perpetuity, for humanity, and with the larger natural world at the forefront of his thoughts.  The David Wright House exemplifies this, as a one-of-a-kind icon of American genius.

            Learning about Sells and Hoffman’s plans, preservation groups began campaigning to register the home as a National Landmark.  This would stay demolition for three years.  Then, if no wealthy home buyers or preservationists come along to buy the property Hoffman and Sell will demolish it. 

            The Idaho boys’ may have accidently fallen into owning an architectural work of art, it’s possible that their arts and cultural education genuinely lacked, but their business strategy boasts deliberate hostage taking. 

            Sells and Hoffman’s threatening to destroy something of immeasurable value unless someone pays up illustrates capitalism at its worst, casts darkness on American values, and bolsters a commonly held eastern U.S. perception of westerners, especially rural westerners, as unsophisticated ignorant hicks. 

             If Hoffman and Sells succeed in getting their price for The David Wright house, their act opens the door for further extortionist style marketing.  The Wright masterpiece will be preserved, but greed mongers will recognize that threatening to destroy precious cultural artifacts proves profitable.

            If Hoffman and Sells demolish the Wright home, they will reduce property values in the neighborhood where they hoped to maximize financial gain.  

            Market value of any home in an upscale neighborhood, with a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home amongst its ranks, proves far greater than a neighborhood boasting clustered contemporary boxes.  Open space, low number of units per acre(s), and architecturally meritorious homes sustain values greater and longer than Mc Mansions offering views of scattered or clustered contemporary box homes. 

            Sustainable living and building practices negate destroying anything in fair condition.  Even repurposing buildings necessitates salvaging as much as possible for environmental and economic reasons. 

            Razing a house of any quality, simply to build more structures, degrades land, reduces open space, and defies sound environmental and economic judgment.  Subdividing already small land parcels, such as two acres, erodes neighborhoods, reduces wildlife habitat, minimizes recreation opportunities, and sours residents’ chances of communing with nature. 

             Maybe preservationists ought to look the other way, allow Hoffman and Sells to level the home.  Let them put more money into the site for less return.  This would set a precedent that holding hostage cultural works of genius doesn’t prove profitable.

            The late biologist, Rachel Carson, once wrote, “The human race is challenged more than ever to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature, but ourselves.” 

            While Carson wrote these words in the late 1950’s regarding controlling widespread pesticide use and harmful biochemical advances, at no time do they seem more relevant than now. 

            Green and ethical should be the only way of doing business.  

As of the first week of November 2012, according to Hoffman and Sells’ company website, www.8081meridian.com  (each of the two men graduated from Meridian high school in ’80 and ‘81, respectively) the house has sold for $2.38 million and is currently in escrow.  Hoffman and sells paid $1.8 million for the home in June 2012.