The Darwin D. Martin House Complex is a historic house museum in Buffalo, New York. The property's buildings were designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright and built between 1903 and 1905. The house is considered to be one of the most important projects from Wright's Prairie School era.
History
The Martin House Complex was built for businessman Darwin D. Martin, his wife, and their family; and his sister Delta and her husband George F. Barton.
Martin and his brother, William E. Martin, were co-owners of the E-Z Stove Polish Company based in Chicago. In 1902 William commissioned Wright to build him a home in Oak Park, Illinois, the resultant William E. Martin House built in 1903. Upon viewing his brother's home, Darwin Martin was significantly impressed to visit Wright's Studio, and persuaded Wright to view his property in Buffalo, where he planned to build two houses.
In 1904, Martin was instrumental in selecting Wright as the architect for the Larkin Administration Building, in downtown Buffalo, which was Wright's first major commercial project. Martin was the secretary of the Larkin Soap Company and consequently Wright designed houses for other Larkin employees William R. Heath and Walter V. Davidson. Wright also designed the E-Z Stove Polish Company's Factory built in 1905.
Wright designed the complex as an integrated composition of connecting buildings, consisting of the primary building, the Martin House, a long pergola connecting with a conservatory, a carriage house-stable, and a smaller residence, the George Barton House, built for George F. Barton and his wife Delta, Martin's sister. The complex also includes a gardener's cottage, the last building completed.
Martin, disappointed with the small size of the conservatory, had a 60 ft (18m) long greenhouse constructed between the gardener's cottage and the carriage house, to supply flowers and plants for the buildings and grounds. This greenhouse was not designed by Wright, and Martin ignored Wright's offer "to put a little architecture on it".
Over the next twenty years a long-term friendship grew between Wright and Martin, to the extent that the Martins provided financial assistance and other support to Wright as his career unfolded.
About twenty years later, in 1926, Wright designed the second major complex for the Martin family, Graycliff, a summer estate overlooking Lake Erie in nearby Derby, New York. The Blue-Sky Mausoleum Wright designed for the Martins in 1928, but never built, was finally installed at Buffalo's Forest Lawn Cemetery in 2004.
Design
The complex exemplifies Wright's Prairie School ideal and is comparable with other notable works from this period in his career, such as the Robie House in Chicago and the Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois. Wright was especially fond of the Martin House design, referring to it for some 50 years as his "opus", and calling the complex "A well-nigh perfect composition". Wright kept the Martin site plan tacked to the wall near his drawing board for the next half century.
In 1900 Edward Bok of the Curtis Publishing Company, bent on improving American homes, invited architects to publish designs in the Ladies' Home Journal, the plans of which readers could purchase for five dollars. Subsequently, the Wright design "A Home in a Prairie Town" was published in February 1901 and first introduced the term "Prairie Home". The Martin House, designed in 1903, bears a striking resemblance to that design. The facades are almost identical, except for the front entrance, and the Martin House repeats most of the Journal House ground floor. An awkward failure was no direct connection from the kitchen to the dining room. The Journal House had a serving pantry, but Wright was forced to give this up to accommodate the pergola.
Of particular significance are the fifteen distinctive patterns of 394 stained glass windows that Wright designed for the entire complex, some of which contain over 750 individual pieces of jewel-like iridescent glass, that act as "light screens" to visually connect exterior views with the spaces within. More patterns of art glass were designed for the Martin House than for any other of Wright's Prairie Houses.
Walter Burley Griffin landscaped the grounds, which were created as integral to the architectural design. A semi-circular garden which contained a wide variety of plant species, chosen for their blossoming cycles to ensure blooms throughout the growing season, surrounded the Martin House veranda. The garden included two sculptures by Wright collaborator Richard Bock.
