Mark Heyman Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

pmblms. The hasic pmblern was that the building wmld not be
pemdtted by New York City cdes.
So, he had this qky lut. It was paved with aqhlt, as I Ite;me;mber,
no par-. There was a mane fence arrxard
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it on Fifth Avenue in
the eighties, So, I assume it was Wright's idea, but it came out in
the publicity that -im irrvited him to have an exhibit there.
well, the exhibit was this: it was a pavilim designed by Wright.
It's ale of these buildings of Wri*tls that telnprary. I
haven't seen arry of it, but he did one in California for
mother exhibit, made of pipes an3 plastic and it was a very
interest- builaing. And umkr this buildkq, it was clpen m the
sides-it was just a yxwilian-was an &it of his work wfiich he had
put together and I qpae it had been in mtrope. It was the met
marvelous exhibit of blownup drawirqs, pksatosraphs of buildings, @
thenthey~booksof~tsofdraw~thatyaucouldleaf
thmqh with stools so that you a d sit at the tables look at
than. It was light ard airy and had models of buildhqs.
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There could
have been abcrut eight or ten mcrdels, rrrarvelous models, very urrusual
models that canre apart. And then in the back off the east side of the
lot-in the back tamds the apartrmk buildirq-he had designed a
-bedrocan brick and Udan hmse, whim the law cost
hcruse whichhe started to build in the 1930s1 a one story ranch house,
a large liv- room with a high mil* and what he called poll-.
A big living roam ard then a lcng tail, which had a hall or gallery
dam me side and a k i w then three bdmam ard a bathman off
of this lcavg hall. It was built c~aplete with electricity. I don't
think it had a heating plant in it. Of mume, that wwldn't have
been visible. I rembr clearly that it didn't have plming in it.
It had all of the fixtures, but ycxl axld turn m the fa- in the
kitchen and laothing caxe &. were just sittirug -. I
mmmkr distinctly the water c l e had- you lifted it up, it
was full of cmcrete. And a sign that said, "Do not use." (laughs)
So, .ulere was no wmrkirq plumbing in the hmse. Elut for all intents
and prposes, it looked like a caplete house. And the mly thing
miss- was the Kaperty because wfien you looked out the living ronm
which faced east, with its glass doors and trellis overfiead, there was
mttmfeetof ~ardthantherewasabanhowallandthat, of
caurse,~tobethelawnthat~dhavehadtog~to~~
Avenue, ten millim dollars worth of real estate. So, it was just
jamwd up there. But that didn't seem to be distracting because the
interior was mamelaw. An3 then later in the fifties, a cmple in
Carrtan, Ohio saw this house or saw a pblicaticm of it, muse this
&it was widely plblished with pbtqmphs and said to Wight,
That's the house ke want." Mr. Wright &an@ it a little and pt it
on their slcphq site ard it was one of the houses I later visited.
So, I saw this hcruse, again, abut six years later in &&on, Ohio.
Tlmre were two other Wright clients in carrtan. rillis -it and the
publicatim of it mgembmd a client in Ohio and it was about a
thirty-thausand-dollar house, a mcdest house for the time. In any
case, this -it and sitting at the drawings and tusning the pages
of xeroxed drawings I cwxld see all of his work. It was by decades.
Then, I reread his autobiography. I dm't think I mned it. I didn't
am a copy of it. Well, I lmught a mpym I joinedm. Wright.
So, anyway, in 1954 that &it sort of made all of at I knew ahh