An Arizona Dwelling by Frank Lloyd Wright

ON APRIL of 1940 one could stand on top of a long lean rock encrusted desert hill not far from the Arizona Biltmore and look south and west over the green-watered valley to the limits of Phoenix and north and east to the nearby Phoenix Mountain range and the front end of Camelback with a glimpse of Paradise Valley in between. Today were you to go to this long lean hill you would find it crowned with a graceful long lean structure, a desert dwelling built for the most part of desert rock and redwood boards. A house so simply and almost coarsely built of the dense sharp substance of the sun-baked desert yet with more all that makes the difference between a mere building and a work of art. Just as the desert has more with the same inde scribable atmosphere which transfigures the abstract beauty of the expansive Arizona desert into a thing of the spirit itself. Miss Rose Pauson of San Francisco had long been a winterdweller in this "Valley of the Sun" and with her sister Gertrude had appreciated and enjoyed the architecture of the Arizona Biltmore hotel. But Rose Pauson who had known of his work for many years wanted a house completely conceived and built for this arid country by Frank Lloyd Wright himself. She had already bought this hill on which we first stood and asked Mr. Wright to build a house for the modest living requirements of herself, her sister, with room for a China-boy and room for a guest or maybe several thrown in for good measure. After ap proving the plans in their entirety she went back to San Francisco and did not return until the house was finished. It was an exThrough the high windows is the beauty and simplicity of the desert.

DWELLING BY WRIGHT

citing evening in November of last year when the Pauson sisters ran up the long flight of steps (49 to be exact) to the houseeach first went directly to her own room and then excitedly toured the house, perfectly at home. Within an hour dinner was announced and a toast drunk in honor of the architect. All was as familiar as though they had been living there for years, so completely had they grasped the plans.

The bulk of the house is of desert-concrete consisting of vari-colored desert rock carefully placed into wooden forms so that the best flat surface is visible, chinked in between each big stone with small boulders from the desert washes below and the whole mass filled in with rubble and a dry mix of concrete. These walls have a slight batter or slope either inward or outward harmonious with the gentle slope of the hill itself and the mountain views. These walls form the parapets of the terraces, certain high interior walls, the great fireplace in the living room and the cozy one in the bedroom upstairs.

The rest of the structure is simply built of overlapping redwood boards making the same slope as the concrete-stone walls. A one-process house the boards making the inside while they make the outside-sealed at all edges with tung-oil mastic.

Stopping at the car-port, cut into the side of the hill below the house, one comes up the flight of broad wide steps and enters the house through a terraced loggia to find oneself in a passageway lit by a long panel-board perforated with an interesting pattern, abstract as the desert plants. The wall in front of the patterned

perforations is lined with shelves. The light through the perforations, through the brilliant glass and pottery on these shelves makes the passage a fascinating entrance to the house.

This half-lit gallery makes the sudden brilliance of the living room itself all the more startling as one steps down into it. There are the Phoenix Mountains so close, there is the front end of Camelback and way beyond and between is the golden range of the McDowells on the other side of Paradise Valley seeming almost a mural designed for the house. One can almost see Taliesin West, the desert camp of the architect at the foot of the McDowells. All round about is the desert itself.

The views from within this desert living room are intensified by the great clear-glass windows which reach from floor to ceiling on two sides of the room. The floor of the room extends clear beyond the end windows through to an open terrace as large as the living room itself. This extension doubles the sense of space

PLAN OF MAIN LEVEL

In what is a comparatively medium-sized room. At the other end of the room and below the projecting balcony of the bedrooms above is the dining space separated from the kitchen work-space by a glass screen. The table is lighted by the perforated board panels overhead which extend through the kitchen into the dining area. This section is on a slightly higher level than the living room itself.

On the fourth side of the room is the stone mass of the heart of the house and from this juts the hood of the great fireplacefourteen feet high-in which roaring ironwood logs make the rocks back of them glisten with rich black patina.

A study of the plan is necessary to better understand the relationship of all these features to each other and to the site itself. The house is entirely furnished with integral pieces of comfortable furniture and brilliant fabrics of jute and other simple native homespuns chosen with rare sympathy by Miss Pauson herself. Nothing is painted or even stained. The exterior wood has been oiled once and the interior wood once waxed. The stone walls both inside and out are left exactly as they were when the wooden-forms were stripped from them.But come in at night when the brilliant glass of the tall windows reflects the roaring fire and the rock mass of the wall. The entire interior space of the room is transfigured against the night sky and if you look carefully through the rock and fire reflections, the brilliance of a desert night of stars makes the pattern of Orion and Leo and a million constellations intermingle with the organic patterns of this appropriate structure.

And again in full moon and no light but the soft glow of a late fire and the desert night is real and living within the interior of the desert house. A chord of sympathy rare in human habitation is a new reality. A design in gracious, simple living, the Pauson house honors and is honored by the Arizona desert.

Of Mr. Wright

IN THESE days of trouble and travail, when the world is tumbling about our ears, we should pause for just a moment and consider the man who builds houses and forget the man who destroys them. Such a builder is Frank Lloyd Wright, truly a great man and a great American, whose houses will stand long after the madmen of our time and their marks of destruction have been erased from the earth.

Last Spring ARIZONA HIGHWAYS had the privilege of presenting a story in words and pictures on Taliesin West, Mr. Wright's winter camp in Paradise Valley, near Phoenix, Arizona. Here each year, Mr. and Mrs. Wright and the young men and women of the TaWe are pleased to offer in these few pages a desert dwelling built by Mr. Wright for the Pauson sisters of San Francisco. The man who conceived and dreamed the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo translates the beauty and simplicity of the Arizona desert into a design for gracious living under the comforting Arizona winter sun.

Mr. Wright is more than an architect. He is a philosopher, an artist, a man of courage and independent thinking, who leads today where others follow tomorrow. His reputation is national and international. His buildings and houses are milestones in architectural conception, holding inspiration for builders to come.

Arizona can well be proud of Mr. Wright and what he has contributed to the desert. Few people who have come to live here have a greater love for the desert than he has; few people have added more to it, changed it the less... R. C.