Happy Presidents Day, Florida!

Brass band awaiting Grover Cleveland's arrival in Lakeland, Florida, 1894 (Florida State Archives)


Today, a U.S. president overlooks Florida at his own peril, but even before this state was a political battleground , our nation's leaders found their way here on a regular basis.

First was Andrew Jackson, who was Territorial governor of Florida before Florida was a state and before Jackson was president. Neither Jackson nor his wife Rachel were particularly fond of Florida, in fact, The Hermitage's website says that they "despised the climate."

Several places in Florida are named after presidents, including Polk County, which honors our 11th president, James K. Polk. Fort Pierce began as an actual fort, named after Lt. Col. Benjamin Pierce, the brother of President Franklin Pierce. The Herbert Hoover Dike holds the waters of Lake Okeechobee, and is named after the president who authorized the money to build the earthen dam after devastating hurricanes swepth through the Everglades in the 1920s. Manned space flights launch from the Kennedy Space Center, named after the president who challenged us to travel to the moon, not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

Dr. Mudd, who treated John Wilkes Booth's leg and was himelf accused of plotting against Abraham Lincoln, was held prisoner at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. Fort Jefferson was named after our 3rd president, Thomas Jefferson.

Many presidents enjoyed fishing or hunting trips to Florida as breaks from the rigors of office. Several went as far as having second homes or "little White Houses" here - the Kennedy's had a family compound in Palm Beach, Nixon had a waterfront home on Key Biscayne, and Truman favored Key West.

So for all these presidents and more who have traveled to our sunny state, we wish you an Happy Presidents Day!

The Roux Libraries

Frank Lloyd Wright did not design every building now on the Florida Southern College campus. Nils Schweizer, a Frank Lloyd Wright protege, designed the college's current library. The E. T. Roux Library faces the Waterdome, and has some stylistic elements in common with the surrounding Wright buildings, such as the trim and horizontal lines.











My FLW pilgrimage last month was spontaneous, absolutely without planning. We were on our way to St. Augustine for a spring break vacation and took a spur-of-the-moment right-hand turn at Lakeland. So after wandering around looking for the campus, then wandering around the campus looking for buildings of a certain appearance, we stumbled upon a parking lot by the chapels. From there, the Waterdome was pretty obvious, but the building behind it, I thought at first might be a Frank Lloyd Wright building, but then again.... So we went in and asked the student at the circulation desk, "Is this one of the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings?" "Huh?" Okay... good thing there was a stack of brochures and maps right there with a walking tour of the FLW buildings on campus. Thank you very much, and off we go.

Now, we still did not know that the library was by the above mentioned Nils Schweizer and that he had studied at Taliesin before coming to Lakeland and working on the Child of the Sun campus construction. Later, I learned that the Roux Library was finished in 1968, and that Schweizer had a successful career as an architect in Florida. The Nils M. Schweizer Fellows is a non-profit organization working to preserve mid-century modern architecture in Central Florida.


















On the side of the Roux Library is the new Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay, Jr. Archives Center, designed by Straughn Trout Architects and dedicated in February of 2009. Although obviously a 21st century design (click here for photographs), the archives builidng uses elements of the surrounding Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, such as the tapestry block, the rectangular cut-outs in the overhangs, and the round shape of the original E. T. Roux Library.










The original E. T. Roux Library? Oh yes, the one built by Frank Lloyd Wright. What was the campus library is now the Thad Buckner Building, and houses the Child of the Sun Visitor Center. Which is where if I had planned my trip, and had the visitor center been opened, I could have visited the gift shop and learned more about the very buildings I was there to see. The Buckner building was built during World War II - the students provided the construction labor, including the co-eds. It's interesting to compare photographs of construction of the Buckner Building with photographs of construction of the McKay Archives building, with their circular shapes.















(The windows are quite unusual.)



And who was this E.T. Roux fellow? Edwin Timanus Roux was a Florida banker and businessman who was on the board for the college's early years. Before Florida Southern College came to Lakeland, an earlier campus burned. Roux helped the college find a temporary home in Clearwater Beach while new facilities were built on Lake Hollingsworth in 1922 (A Guide to Historic Lakeland by Steve Rajtar, The History Press, 2007).

----------------

Other buildings by Nils Schweizer

Polk County Science Building

From the Pfeiffer Chapel, I could see the Polk County Science Building. This is really several large, low, horizontal buildings connected by covered esplanades. The dome at the end is the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed planetarium to be actually built. The ventilation system on the roof was added during recent renovations. The book The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright at Florida Southern College has a photograph taken from a similar perspective (page 112) when the Polk Science building was under construction in the 1950s.













This was the last of the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings built on the Florida Southern College campus. It was built partly below grade, which caused problems with leakage and drainage (not an uncommon problem with Frank Lloyd Wright buildings...).




Walkway at Polk Science with aluminum-clad supports

Frank Lloyd Wright's Annie Pfeiffer Chapel

It's shameful. I've been living in Florida, studying its history and architecture for years and years and it wasn't until last month that I finally visited Florida Southern College's campus in Lakeland with its grand collection of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings.

The photograph above is of the William Danforth Chapel (front) and the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel. The original campus was in an orange grove on this hill overlooking Lake Hollingsworth, but the trees are gone now. Too bad, because the campus was glaring and hot even in April, especially with the concrete block buildings.

The Annie Pfeiffer Chapel was the first of Wright's buildings to be constructed at Florida Southern College. At its dedication, Annie Pfeiffer (wife of the founder of Pfeiffer Chemical Company) reportedly said, "They say it is finished," perhaps in reference to the metal bars forming a spire or steeple. Sometimes the chapel is referred to as "the bicycle rack."




















































FSC students provided labor for the construction of the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings on campus, including this chapel. Natural light inside the chapel comes primarily from the large skylight above. The walls are made of a special concrete block called tapestry block. The tapestry blocks have small squares of colored glass embedded in them, creating moving spots of red, blue, and amber on a sunny day.































The book Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright at Florida Southern College (Arcadia 2007) contains fascinating photographs of the chapel's construction and traces some of the changes in the building's interior and exterior over the years. Some of the major changes came after a 1944 hurricane shattered the skylight and parts of the building collapsed. During reconstruction the tapestry blocks above the first floor were stuccoed on the exterior to make them more weather proof.

Welcome to the Waterdome Redux

I finally had a chance to see the Waterdome at Florida Southern College in action, nearly a year and a half after its rebirth! It was bluer and smaller than I expected, although a nearby sign detailed a schedule of when the fountain is off, at partial power, and full blast. We were there on a Saturday afternoon -- at least half the people we saw were like us - wandering around staring at the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. Even though it has been a cool spring season, there's enough concrete and metal on that part of the campus to make a water feature like the fountain a welcome sight.

Welcome to the Waterdome (October 2007)

Frank Lloyd Wright Water Dome / Florida Southern College

Florida News

"My Florida dream" (St. Petersburg Times, Octoer 21, 2007)

"Pumpkin, knife, Scuba gear -- all set" (Earthtimes.org, October 21, 2007)

"Underwater carving contest draws fish" (Miami Herald, October 21, 2007)

"Film Festival: New Urban Cowboy: An interview with Michael E. Arth" (Connect Savannah, October 23, 2007; documentary about "New Pedestrianism" in DeLand)

"Architect's Vision Realized As Fountain Comes To Life" (Tampa Tribune, October 26, 2007; Frank Lloyd Wright's Waterdome)

"The great swan corral at Lake Eola" (Orlando Sentinel, October 27, 2007)

"Alligator Emerges From Sewer and Is Found Under a Parked Truck" (First Coast News, October 26, 2007)

"'A particular kind of beauty' spares house demolition" (News-Leader, October 25, 2007)

"Marineland: 'God's country'" (Bradenton Herald, October 14, 2007)

"Tomato packaging firms feel squeezed" (Bradenton Herald, October 23, 2007)

"An old look for Truman retreat" (Little White House in Key West, Chicago Tribune, October 14, 2007)

Welcome to the Waterdome

WUSF-Radio had a very interesting story during the evening rush hour about Florida Southern college's reconstruction of Frank Lloyd Wright's Waterdome ("Waterdome" Returns to Florida Southern). Listen to the podcast and you'll hear people muse about what Frank Lloyd Wright would think about the project, about how technology might finally have caught up with his ideas, and how proud people are to be involved with this effort. WUSF's website also has a slideshow of the restoration process.

From Florida Southern College's website:

"Long-awaited restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's Waterdome to begin at Florida Southern College." The third paragraph: "As a metaphor for the journey of student life, Wright intended the Waterdome to draw water from a deep artesian well and form the headwaters of an elaborate composition of “matriculating” streams and pools through campus to its natural counterpart in Lake Hollingsworth. The small planters and “paradise garden areas” he planned would be, “an expression of Florida at its floral best.”

"FSC Announces World Premiere of Frank Lloyd Wright's Waterdome" First paragraph: "Florida Southern College is pleased to announce the Frank Lloyd Wright Water Dome World Premiere, beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 25 in front of the Roux Library on the FSC campus. The Discovery Channel will be on campus to film the event."

Thursday, October 25, 6:30 p.m. How cool is that?!

(For a bloggers perspective, The Frank Lloyd Wright Newsblog: Category Archives: Florida Southern)

The Carpenters' Home

The Carpenters' Home in Lakeland was a retirement home for members of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, before Social Security. Built between 1926 and 1929 at a cost of $1,000,000, the home could accommodate 400 retired carpenters. There is also a Carpenters' Home Cemetery in Lakeland.

Several unions have built homes or communities in Florida for the benefit of their retired members (see previous posts about Salhaven and Nalcrest, for example).

(1920s photographs of the Carpenters' Home and gateway from the State Archives Florida Photographic Collection)