We pulled out of the RV park at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville and drove to Florence, AL. We are here to see the Rosenbaum House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (FLlW)…
First, another bridge; I think this is the one millionth time we have crossed the Tennessee River…
We arrived in Florence and parked the Villa in the office complex across the street from the house, where the Visitor Center is…
We walked across the street for our tour to begin…
The cantilevered carport roof…
They have the same “sprite” in their front yard that I have in mine…
Rosenbaum House:
Terhorst House:
These Sprites are 1/2 size reproductions of similar Sprites (hundreds of them) originally designed and built for the FLlW-designed Midway Gardens complex in Chicago. Midway Gardens was a restaurant, beer-hall and event venue complex; the business failed after prohibition was voted in, and the complex was demolished; all the ruble, including hundreds of Sprites, was bulldozed into Lake Michigan as land-fill…
We were greeted by our tour guide, and we heard the history of the house…
The owner of this house across the street gifted this lot to his son, along with some of the money to build the house.
The son and his wife had three sons at the time, and this was the perfect place to raise a family; the lot (at that time) had a fine view of the Tennessee River, but the trees have now grown up to obscure it…
Frank Lloyd Wright was hired for $1,100 to design the house. It was 1,500 sq. ft., and it included three bedrooms and two bathrooms, Living Room, Dining area with built-in table for five, Study, and a tiny “Workroom” – what we would call a kitchen, if we could conceive of such a tiny space being a kitchen.
The house is a classic “Usonian”, a concept named by FLlW to designate the houses that were simple in design, and suited to middle class Americans.
Usonian houses were characterized by their lack of attics and basements, radiant heat in the exposed concrete floors, and simple wood detailing that can be beautiful yet economical due to the ability to be made by machine. The houses all had tiny “Workrooms”…
The house was built and the family moved in. They soon found the house a bit cramped, especially when a fourth child arrived. So they hired FLlW to design an 1,100 s.f. addition, containing a guest room and bath, a new, much larger “Workroom”, a Laundry-Service room, and a large Playroom-Dormitory for the four boys. Somehow they still managed to get along with the Dining Room table for five…
FLlW designed many pieces of furniture that are still in the house – simple, beautiful, and elegant, using simple materials like plywood. As usual, the chairs were impractical and uncomfortable, but they are beautiful, and that’s all that matters. (A chair similar to these from another house recently sold at auction for $35,000!)
The house was sold to the City of Florence in the late 1990s for $75,000; the City spent several years and over $600,000 restoring the house, which was opened to the public in 2002.
The walls of the house, inside and out, are board and batten, using cypress wood from Louisiana swamps, and pine battens. (We saw cypress trees growing out of the water on our swamp tour…) Cypress is extremely resistant to wood rot and termites – it is an excellent building material! Unfortunately, the walls also contain battens of pine; when the house was sold to the City it was found to be infested with termites. When the termites had destroyed the pine they settled into all the books… But the cypress wood is still intact!
The board and batten walls; on the interior side all shelving, tables, and doors have horizontal lines that match the battens…
The second cantilevered carport…
This tiny balcony in the center of the photo below is off the Master Bedroom…
The Living Room and Study have these beautiful French doors opening onto the terrace… You can see through the house to the narrow clerestory windows on the opposite side of the room…
We thoroughly enjoyed touring this house. It is beautifully restored and maintained, and we were able to see all the rooms, with all the furniture, as if the family were still living there. Furniture not designed by FLlW is mostly designed by Rae and Charles Eames…
After our tour we walked into downtown Florence and walked the four blocks of Court St. Upon the recommendations of the Rosenbaum staff we had a lovely lunch at Odette…
After lunch we walked back to the Rosenbaum house where we had left the Villa. We drove to Tuscumbia, about five miles away, and parked at Heritage Acres RV Park.
This is a very basic, all gravel place, with no trees – good for satellite TV reception. Full hook-ups including cable are all very good. We wanted to refill one of our propane tanks, but when I went to take it off the Villa I found that it had been locked using a cable and a padlock. Could I find the combination to the lock? After tearing apart the trailer and the truck I finally found it, 1 1/2 hours later.
Well-deserved Happy Hours ensued, and an enjoyable time was had by all…
Adventures in the Villa 