The Darwin D. Martin House is a historic house museum in the Parkside East Historic District of Buffalo, New York, United States. Built for businessman Darwin D. Martin and his wife Isabelle, it is the main house of a six-building estate designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The main house is located at 125 Jewett Parkway, at the south end of the estate, and was built between 1903 and 1907. The complex also includes a pergola, a conservatory, a carriage house, a gardener's cottage, and the smaller George Barton House, along with a newer visitor center by Toshiko Mori and landscaping by Walter Burley Griffin. The complex is operated by the Martin House Restoration Corporation (MHRC).
At the recommendation of his older brother William, Darwin Martin hired Wright to design a house in 1902. Following financial turmoil and Darwin Martin's death in 1935, the family abandoned the house in 1937, after which it was vacant for nearly two decades. The city seized the property in 1946, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo purchased it in 1951, but it remained empty until architect Sebastian Tauriello bought it in the mid-1950s, divided the main house into apartments, and demolished the carriage house, conservatory, and pergola. In 1967 the estate was purchased by the University at Buffalo (UB), which resold the Barton House and gardener's cottage, keeping only the main house. Restoration efforts began in the 1990s under UB, the New York state government, and the MRHC. The project included renovating the main house, reacquiring the Barton and gardener's residences, rebuilding the three demolished structures, and constructing a visitor center. The renovations were completed in 2019, having cost $50 million over three decades.
The buildings are designed in the Prairie style, with decorations such as Roman brick, concrete trim, and red roof tiles, and are arranged along two perpendicular axes. The main house has a cruciform layout with a porte-cochère to the west, a veranda to the east, and intersecting one- and two-story wings. Its exterior has "tree of life" art glass windows, a well as overlapping roofs on several levels. The house's interior spans about across two levels and a basement, with furniture designed by Wright. The Barton House, to the northeast, is also two stories tall and uses similar materials. There is also a gardener's cottage to the west, along with the rebuilt pergola, conservatory, and gardener's cottage at the center of the estate. Mori's visitor center, the Eleanor and Wilson Greatbatch Pavilion, is west of the main house and has a glass-walled design.
Wright was especially fond of the Martin House design, referring to it for some 50 years as his "opus". Over the years, the Martin House has received extensive architectural commentary. Retrospective reviewers described the Martin House as one of Wright's major Prairie-style works. The house and its architectural details have been depicted in many media works, and its art glass has been featured in exhibitions. The house is designated as a National Historic Landmark, and the complex is a New York State Historic Site.
Site The Darwin D. Martin House is located in Buffalo, New York, United States. It is part of the Parkside East Historic District, a neighborhood laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The Martin House is the main building of a six-building estate designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright.; The estate spans , covering five or six lots on the northern sidewalk of Jewett Parkway. The estate runs between Woodward Avenue to the west and Summit Avenue to the east; it has a frontage of on Jewett Parkway and on Summit Avenue. Just outside the house is a Reddy bikeshare station.
The streets surrounding the Martin estate have an irregular pattern, curving around the streets of the Delaware Park System. The estate was once part of the landholdings of Elam Jewett, who in the mid-19th century purchased a section of Daniel Chapin's farm. After Olmsted and Vaux laid out the Delaware Park System in the 1870s, they devised a street grid for the area east of the park, intending to construct a suburb there. Jewett Parkway, named for Jewett, was laid out as a curving east–west street and transferred to city ownership in 1884. After a period of slow development, Summit and Woodward avenues were constructed in the late 1880s and early 1890s.
Landscape design Wright's associate Walter Burley Griffin landscaped the grounds, which were intended as an integral part of the architectural design. A 2015 report subdivides the grounds into seven sections (excluding the house's conservatory; see ). Five of these sections have frontages on the street, while two flank the pergola at the center of the estate. Low brick walls, similar to those in the main house, cross the grounds. Plantings are placed on the boundaries between the various zones. As planned, there were to be a series of terraces surrounding the house.
Flowers on the grounds included columbine, delphinium, hollyhock, lupine, and phlox. The floricycle consists of a semi-circular garden with a variety of plant species, chosen for their offset flowering cycles to ensure blooms throughout the growing season. The modern-day floricycle includes 20,000 plantings in concentric rows surrounding the main house. Other plantings included flower gardens flanking the estate's pergola, as well as rectangular beds flanking some of the walls in the estate. Wright preserved some of the existing trees. The garden also included two sculptures by Wright collaborator Richard Bock. One of them, Spring, has since been relocated to the Bock Museum at Greenville College; a replica of Spring was made for the house in 2008.
History
Development The Martin House was designed for businessman Darwin D. Martin and his wife Isabelle ( Reidpath). Martin, who joined the Larkin Company as a soap slinger at age 13, eventually became a senior executive at the company. He moved to Summit Avenue in Parkside East in 1888 and married Isabelle the next year. He also purchased additional land in the early 1890s, which he quickly resold. Darwin's sister Delta Barton and her husband George moved to Buffalo in 1895 after George began working at the Larkin Company. By the beginning of the 20th century, Martin's net worth had reached $2.5 million. He was typical of Frank Lloyd Wright's early clients, who tended to be wealthy and who were open-minded enough to accept Wright's then-unconventional designs despite the ridicule targeted at them. Isabelle was encouraging Darwin to build a house befitting his wealth, but, while recognizing that the existing Summit Avenue site was too small, did not want Darwin to move to the countryside.
Commission and design
Darwin went to Illinois in September 1902 to visit his brother William; the pair went to Oak Park, Illinois, where they saw some houses designed by Wright and, in Wright's absence, met with his assistant Walter Burley Griffin. The next month, William wrote to Darwin, praising Wright as "one of Nature's noblemen"; and recommending that the architect design both Darwin's house and a new Larkin Company building.Letter from William E. Martin to Darwin D. Martin, undated [Oct 22, 1902], Darwin D. Martin Papers, circa 1878–1935, University Archives, State University of New York at Buffalo. Darwin's brother and colleagues were enthusiastic about having Wright design their respective buildings, which may have influenced his decision to select Wright to design his house. Darwin thus wrote back to Wright, who traveled to Buffalo that November. The Darwin Martin and Larkin commissions were Wright's first in Buffalo; at the time, Wright had designed dozens of buildings, albeit mostly in the Midwestern US. In December 1902, Darwin paid $14,000 for at the intersection of Summit Avenue and Jewett Parkway, just south of his existing house. This site occupied a visually prominent corner, and Wright preferred it to another, narrower site that Martin owned at Oakland Place.
In January 1903, Wright sent a preliminary design to William Martin; Isabelle said the plan "does not show care and appreciation of the needs of the house", and Darwin was critical of the interior despite liking the exterior design. Wright drew a primitive sketch of the Martin estate that May, which included the Martin House, as well as the Barton House for Darwin's sister and brother-in-law. This initial plan was based on an incorrect perception of where the surrounding streets were, as the Martin House faced the driveway at the western end of the site. Wright drew a second plan that December, repositioning the houses and sketching out a pergola, porch, porte-cochère, and floor plans; the revised design was based on a design published in the Ladies' Home Journal. Darwin expressed concerns that the revised design was too large for the family, and in early 1904, Wright devised a more compact first-floor plan. Darwin sent Wright several questions over the next few months, with little written response. Wright's team finished plans for the conservatory and stable in May 1904. To Darwin's consternation, the revised plan for the rest of the estate, including the main house, was delayed.
Construction
The estate was envisioned as a family compound, with houses for Darwin and his sister Delta, as well as space where their siblings could potentially build extra houses if they wanted. Darwin wanted Wright to complete the Barton House first. The outcome determined whether Wright would receive the Martin House commission; writers retrospectively characterized the decision as a test of Darwin and Wright's relationship. The Barton House plan was based on Wright's earlier J. J. Walser Jr. House in Chicago, with several revisions that influenced the Martin estate's architecture. For example, Wright added a porch facing the Martins' future house, and he substituted the Walser House's woodwork and shingles for brick walls and tiled roofs. Work on the Barton House began in late 1903, and that house was ultimately completed a year later; its $12,000 final cost was thrice the original budget. Delta and George Barton leased their house from Martin.
Work on the stable began in May 1904, and construction of the main house began on June 20, 1904. The construction process was overseen by general contractor Oscar S. Lang, and over 60 subcontractors also provided material and labor. The project generally employed 50 or 65 laborers; they toiled 60 hours a week for $2 daily. To alleviate Darwin's concerns over the delayed final plans, his brothers William sent him some of Wright's preliminary sketches in mid-1904. Wright completed a revised plan for the complex in August, and the conservatory was nearing completion the next month. It had taken Wright 15 months to revise the plans for the main house's first floor. The Martins hired their first gardener, Thomas Skinner, the same year. By the end of 1904, the house was under roof, and the interiors were being plastered.
Darwin generally gave Wright free rein over the architecture, furnishings, and landscape design, though Darwin involved himself extensively in the logistics of construction. Wright and Darwin sent each other hundreds of letters; they sent multiple letters on some days, discussing details as small as the placement of light fixtures. During the house's development, disagreements arose between Wright and Isabelle, especially since Wright's design largely neglected to account for Isabelle's needs. Lang and contractors sent hundreds more letters to each other, and Lang and Wright also discussed the design extensively. Lang also handled Darwin's demands, which were sometimes onerous. During the house's construction, Wright traveled to Japan in early 1905, leaving Griffin in charge of his projects. As such, some of Darwin's later correspondence was with Wright's associates, including Griffin, who traveled to Buffalo several times.
Completion