[Kimbell175113]

One day in 1950, John Christian, a professor at Purdue University, and his wife were thinking about building a house. John decided to call Frank Lloyd Wright's office, just to see what would happen. Wright himself - not a secretary or apprentice or anyone else who would certainly brush this off - answered, and he and Christian started a conversation that ended 5 years later with a house, titled Samara, in West Lafayette, IN.

It's like a seven minute walk from me, and I had never heard about it until today. Though he has retired from teaching, John Christian is still alive, still lives there, and is very accommodating about taking visitors.

One of my teachers mentioned it today in class, said he was going at 7:00, and asked if anyone wanted to meet him there. I have no great interest in architecture, but I'd heard the mystique of Frank Lloyd Wright and wanted to see what was up. Plus, extra credit, LDO.

So I stepped out at 6:41, put the address into my trusty handheld Garmin GPS thingy, and set off. It's no wonder people don't know about this house, because, while it's right there next to Ross-Ade Stadium in absolute terms, it's built in/on/around a hill surrounded by trees at the dead end of a nondescript road that turns out to be maddeningly spirally. In the darkness, walking by bad cars and beat-up mailboxes, I began to wonder if I was on the right track, or if this place even existed at all.

Finally I got to the end, couldn't see much but knew this must be it, and started walking up the curvy brick path. There were vaguely Asian-looking lights, a smiling Buddha that in this particular light looked like someone telling a scary campfire story while holding a flashlight to his face, and some mysterious twisted pieces of metal that ran from each corner of the building to the ground. It certainly didn't look like a house. Too low, too flat, too everywhere. Soon I was surrounded by it, but where was the front door? and where were my classmates?

I kept going around - the path was never straight - and came to a window. There was an old woman sitting there, inside, who saw me. I thought I must have the wrong place, wtf is wrong with you James why didn't you go with somebody or check it out in daylight first or learn some real directions instead of trusting this newfangled GPS doohickey? But she reacted to me like I was expected, and she pointed just a little farther down the path. I walked, and hey, a door. She opened it, beckoned me in to the small, rather cramped entryway, and pointed to the right. I turned and started walking.

The ceiling went up. The floor went down. The walls became glass. I was in the living room of John Christian's house. It was something. I saw two chairs, each occupied by an old man, on the far end, and closer to me, a couch with my classmates. I was still a bit stunned, but I sat down and signed the guest book I was handed.

It's hard to describe what I was experiencing then. This room was a work of art, overwhelmingly so. It was open to other rooms, as well, and anywhere I looked I could see more; I didn't see flat walls or doors or televisions. I felt as though I should be watching this through a camera, where only one thing would be in focus and the rest wouldn't be so heavy on my mind all at once. Not only that, but I was sitting on the couch. It was like being a museum and getting to not only touch the painting, but to walk inside it, say hi to Mona Lisa and ask what she was smiling about.

One of the men in the chairs was Mr. Christian, and the other was a docent who, along with his wife - the woman at the entrance - proceeded to give us a tour of the house. They were knowledgeable and funny and did a great job explaining Wright, and how he went about building this particular house.

They described the house as a symbiotic melding of Wright's general principles with the Christians' personalities. "If you like this house, you like John," said one of the docents. Well, I guess I like John, and now I really want to see other buildings, especially houses, by Wright, to try and figure out what came from whom. I also really want to come back to this house in daytime, to see the way the light comes in and moves through the place.

I could keep going, but let's just stop here and say
-any of you guys know about FLW? I'm very interested but know nothing, any books I should read, buildings I should see?
-ask me specific questions about the house; I want to describe it, if only to get it straight in my head, but I don't know where to start.

cliff notes: I got Stendhal syndrome.