UB Sponsors Scholars Conference On Martin House

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning will hold a scholars conference and workshop on the Darwin D. Martin House on Saturday, Oct. 30, and Sunday, Oct. 31. Invited scholars will review and discuss aspects of the restoration plan for the property and make recommendations for its operation as a house museum.

The conference will be held in the Martin House, 125 Jewett Parkway, Buffalo. While the conference is not open to the public, its conclusions will be reported at a public forum to be held from 2-4 p.m. on Oct. 31 in the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society on Nottingham Terrace in Buffalo.

Participants will include parties to the agreement signed in March 1993 that outlined the program for the property's restoration. The signatories are the University at Buffalo; the State University of New York (SUNY) Construction Fund; the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the Martin House Restoration Corporation.

Invited scholars include nationally regarded restoration architects and architectural historians; a principal of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation; representatives of Wright properties operated as house-museums at Taliesin West in Arizona, Taliesin East in Wisconsin, the Wright Home and Studio in Illinois, and Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. Wright's grandson, architect Eric Lloyd Wright, also will attend the conference.

Bruno Freschi, dean of the UB School of Architecture and Planning, helped plan the event with the assistance of a consulting focus group. He says the visiting scholars have been asked to explore several issues and advise parties to the agreement with regard to the following:

• The technical and architectural implications of conservation and restoration of the building fabrics, furnishings and artwork.

• The social and historical significance of the building and of the larger estate, part of which was demolished in the 1950s.

• How to develop the interpretive, or museum qualities, of this building; that is, its position in the context of Buffalo's history and of Wright's architectural legacy.

• The operational and functional aspects of running a 20th-century property as a living museum and tourist attraction in Western New York.

The Martin House was built between 1903 and 1905 for businessman Darwin D. Martin. One of the finest extant examples of Wright's "Prairie Style" of residential architecture, it has been owned by SUNY since 1963 and operated under the stewardship of UB since that time.

SCHOLARS CONFERENCE • OCT. 30-31

Bruno Freschi, O.C., Dean and Professor

Director, Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, N.Y.

H. Allen Brooks

Trustee, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation at Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Ariz.

Frank Lloyd Wright Home at Taliesin East, Spring Green, Wis.

Eric Wright Architects & Planners, Malibu, Calif.

FLW Home and Studio