Don’t let the golden glow of the evening sun illuminating the sun porch fool you. This is one of those cold winter days that makes Iowa feel like Siberia. Thank God for central heating! We’ve had the thermostat cranked up to 71 degrees today trying to battle the arctic air that makes its way through the drafty old doors and windows. But somehow the cold air always seems to win.
Copies of photos from the 1920s are taped to the garage wall to show visitors how the house would have looked before additions.
We knew when we bought the Delbert Meier House that we would receive visits from people interested in Frank Lloyd Wright and the American System-Built Homes. The couple we bought the house from – who had only owned it for about three years – attested to this at the closing by sharing stories of drop-ins. And they were correct – we started getting visits from those interested in the house and its history almost immediately.
“What’s this?” I asked our friend Joan as I pointed down at the ground. It was our first spring in the house and Joan, the real estate agent’s wife, was kindly helping us get the mess of a yard into shape. (And helping two city guys avoid a freakout over the amount of work they had just taken on with this new house!)
“Oh that’s rhubarb!” Joan said, and then furrowed her brow. “That’s a strange place to put it.”
We were standing in the front yard, pulling plants out of a bed that the previous owners had installed.
“It’s grows like a weed,” Joan said. “We used to just mow over it!”
I dug up the fledgling little plant and plopped it in a corner of the garden. Joan was right. Rhubarb is an easy plant that will thrive anywhere you put it. By the end of that summer I was able to get a few mature stalks off the plant. And we’ve had rhubarb ever since. Continue Reading…
This Zillow image shows the house at 212 N. Tennessee
When Frank Lloyd Wright and Arthur Richards partnered on the American System-Built Home project in the 1910’s, they surely envisioned a large scale endeavor that would see their houses popping up all across America. After all, Wright prepared hundreds of designs and was known to think big. Unfortunately, he was also known to be difficult to work with. By 1917, the relationship between Wright and Richards had soured and, with America entering World War, the ASBH project had all but fizzled. Continue Reading…
Hallelujah and pass the peas! It’s been a year in the making and at some points I thought we might never finish it, but I’m happy to report that the kitchen at the Delbert Meier House is finally (mostly) done. There are still a few lingering little tasks – repainting the walls and replacing the faucet – but it’s finished enough to show off the before and after photos here on the blog. Continue Reading…
