Davidson House
With all the attention that is justifiably paid to Frank Lloyd Wright’s magnificent Darwin Martin Complex, two of his other architectural gems in Buffalo are often overlooked. Houses for William R. Heath (1905) and Walter Davidson (1908) resulted from the admiration these Larkin Company executives had for the Martin House. Each, in its own way, is unique and merits examination. Both are Prairie Style homes, with many of the features of the Martin house, though on a more modest scale.
The Walter V. Davidson house, 57 Tillinghast Place, is secluded on a residential street amid trees and foliage. But even without a guidebook, a visitor knows this is another splendid Wright creation, though it reflects a relatively modest budget. Wright seems to have traded the richness that characterizes the Martin house for space and light.
The two story stucco house carries many prairie-style features, including a broad, flat chimney over a low-pitched, hipped roof, and wide soffits under projecting eaves that shelter clear leaded glass windows. The secluded main entrance at the front of the house was typical Wright, as was the low entry way.
From there, one enters a two-story living room with cathedral ceiling and a wall of diamond-shaped leaded glass windows rising from low cabinets to the ceiling. This is one of Wright’s "Tall Living Room" homes where the art glass windows are 1 1/2 stories high. The effect is spectacular.
The living room was directed to the side of the house, giving a view of the surrounding woods, although when a home was built on the lot next door quite close to the lot line, the view was lost.
To the west of the living room, the house divides into two stories that are in turn divided into multiple floor levels. According to Buffalo Architecture: A Guide, "Spatial grandeur is cleverly played off against intimacy, while even the smallest of spaces is opened up through Wright’s use of banded window sequences."
SOURCES:
"William R. Heath House," and Chuck LaChiusa, "William R. Heath House," at the "Buffalo as an Architectural Museum" Web site.
"Walter V. Davidson House" and Chuck LaChiusa, "Walter V. Davidson House," at the "Buffalo as an Architectural Museum" Web site.
Also see Reyner Banham et al., Buffalo Architecture: A Guide, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), pp. 163-4 (Heath House), and pp. 206-07 (Davidson House).
