UB to Co-Sponsor Conference of Wright Building Conservancy

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The ninth annual conference of The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, a national organization of Wright homeowners and preservationists, will be held Sept. 17-21 in the Buffalo Hilton Hotel.

The University at Buffalo will co-sponsor the meeting. The first vice-president of the organization is Jack Quinan, Ph.D., professor and chair of the UB Department of Art History and curator of the Darwin D. Martin House -- one of the finest of Wright¹s ³prairie² houses -- which is owned by the university and is currently undergoing restoration.

For registration information and a brochure, contact Sara-Ann B. Brigs at 312-663-1786.

Organizers said Buffalo was selected as the conference site in part because of its architectural heritage of buildings designed by Wright; Louis Sullivan; Daniel Burnham; H.H. Richardson; Eliel and Eero Saarinen; McKim, Mead and White, and other fine national and local architects.

The city¹s extensive park system, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, also appealed to the planners, as well as the fact that Buffalo is the site of the 13 Buffalo River grain elevators -- one is the largest in the world -- that inspired a generation of European modernist architects.

The conference will include presentations by distinguished speakers on aspects of preservation and the history of Wright¹s architecture, and a symposium of noted scholars and preservationists, led by Quinan and Neil Levine of Harvard University. The panel will discuss the preservation of Wright¹s architecture by examining world attitudes and approaches to historic preservation.

Among the activities planned are tours of the Darwin Martin complex built in 1903-05; Graycliff, the rarely viewed home that Wright designed for the Martins in Derby in 1927, and other Wright-designed homes in Buffalo and Rochester.

Other activities include tours of Sullivan¹s Prudential building, the Roycroft Arts and Crafts community, Richardson¹s Dorsheimer House and Buffalo State Psychiatric Hospital, and a newly discovered body of work by Joseph Lyman Silsbee, for whom Wright once worked. Boat tours of the Buffalo River grain elevators also will be conducted.