Wrightian Houseboats

As an American architecture student, I have been inundated with things Frank Lloyd Wright for time immemorial. For many, he is the American architect, and for others perhaps the only famous architect they've ever heard of. Thus, for much of my youth, relatives and friends would give me book upon book on the man, so that by the time I began studying architecture in earnest, I was quite sick of him (a feeling not uncommon among my colleagues).

It is then a special pleasure to come across a Wrightian project one has never seen before. Many of Wright's unbuilt schemes are fascinating in their fantastic, slightly whimsical formulations. One such project was his proposal for a summer resort colony on the shores of Lake Tahoe, for which he designed more conventional lodges and cabins, in addition to a rather fanciful fleet of floating cabins. I present a few images of these rustic houseboats below, courtesy of our own Library of Congress.

This project was proposed in 1923, which was after Wright's Prairie house period (though, in plan, there are certainly still similarities between the houseboats and the Prairie houses), but before his stylistic transformation into the unapologetic modernism of his later works (Fallingwater, the Usonian houses). One can sense the influence of the California textile block houses, which were being built around similar time in a relatively similar setting and climate.

The last image bears a striking resemblance to the Beth Sholom Synagogue, which wouldn't be built for another thirty years.