Famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed iconic buildings like the Fallingwater house in Pennsylvania and the Guggenheim Museum in New York — and he also designed a doghouse for a 12-year-old boy who sent him a letter.
Jim Berger grew up in a house in San Anselmo, California, which his parents commissioned Wright to design, according to Marin County. In 1956, when Berger was 12 years old, he sent a letter to Wright asking for plans for a doghouse for his Labrador, Eddie.
“I would appreciate it if you would design me a doghouse that is easy to build but matches our home,” Berger wrote in the letter. “The reason I would like this dog house is mainly for the winters.”
He offered Eddie’s age, “four years or 28 years in the canine life,” and size, “60 centimeters tall and three feet long.”
He offered to pay the architect for the project with money from his paper route.
“A home for Eddie is an opportunity,” Wright wrote in his reply, dated June 28, 1956. “Someday I will, but right now I’m too busy to focus on that. Write to me in November, to Phoenix, Arizona, and I may have something then.”
It was not until the following year that the architect sent Berger the plans for the triangular doghouse, written on the back of an envelope and provided free of charge. The design features signatures of both Wright’s work in general and the Bergers’ home, such as the low-sloping roof and exaggerated overhang.
Architecture fans can see the doghouse at the Marin County Civic Center, where it was put on permanent display May 26, according to the county. The civic center itself is the largest building ever designed by Wright.
The doghouse on display, however, is not the actual doghouse used by Eddie. Berger’s father, Robert, and his brother, Eric, built the doghouse in 1963, when Berger joined the Army, six years after receiving the plans from Wright. But the family’s Labrador didn’t use the doghouse, and in 1970, Berger’s mother, Gloria, sent her to the dump, according to the county.
In 2010, Berger and Eric built another version of the doghouse from Wright’s plans as part of a documentary, “Romanza”, about Wright’s life. And in 2016 Berger donated the unique structure to Marin County.
The doghouse is the smallest structure Wright has ever designed, the county says. The architect died in 1959, just two years after he sent Berger the design for his canine companion.
Source: CNN Brasil
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