Legal Commentary

The E. Clarke and Julie Arnold House and the Richard C. and Berenice Smith House ? by Frank Lloyd Wright.

That's the E. Clarke and Julie Arnold House in Columbus, Wisconsin, visited at around 11 a.m., when it was a nice, sunny day. This house is composed with lots of diamond shapes.

Later in the day, after spending 2 hours as a docent at the Dr. Maurice and Mrs. Margaret Greenberg House, I hurried down the wooded path as a thunderstorm was about to hit. Secure from electrocution in my car, I enjoyed the fireworks over the rolling Wisconsin farmland. I did wonder about the strength of the wind, which seemed intent on running me off the road. And when I switched from satellite to land radio, after I got out of the really windy area, I was scared retrospectively by the reports of tornadoes. I got a little lost ? finding myself on Country Road Z ? which was not in my print-out directions from Google, and decided I'd better just try to keep my bearings and head for home. But then I found a road that was on the print-out and the route started to make sense, so I got to the Richard C. and Berenice Smith House in Jefferson, Wisconsin:

It's more interesting from the other side, because it's built around a really large oak tree ? a 300-year sort of thing. The red concrete floors ? which look just like the driveway seen in my photo ? extend throughout the house. After all the rain, those floors were quite wet inside, a classic Frank Lloyd Wright feature (leakiness). It was, to my eye, an unpleasant design. Too many angles. Zig-zags everywhere. But maybe I could settle in and get used to it. The interior walls were all stone, and they zig-zagged around that noble tree. The whole house honored a tree. And the tree deserved it.

Full post as published by Althouse on June 09, 2008 (boomark / email).