Frank Lloyd Wright's Plan for Emerald Bay
Many people are unaware that the iconic American architect had drafted plans for a development in Emerald Bay.
Wright's designs for the Lake Tahoe Summer Colony, begun in 1923 while he was pursuing hopes for Doheny, were also speculative. The site of some 200 acres enclosed the head of Emerald Bay at the southwest corner of Lake Tahoe. As records show, he attempted to interest the owner of the property - a woman of means by the name of Jessie Armstrong - with preliminary drawings of his proposal. Impressed with Wright as a person, she remained reserved regarding his work. His ideas for Lake Tahoe remained unrealized, although the site, now a state park, has survived largely untouched.
Mobility was fundamental to Wright's concept, not the mobility of the automobile and integrated roadways seen in the other projects in the exhibition but that of the houses themselves. Here he conceived floating cabins whose changeable positions on the water would intensify the visual impact of the bay, and conceived the inn, itself approached by a floating bridge, as a sort of elaborate jetty.
Wrights sketches reveal several natural terraces, bordered by rocks, that correspond to perspectives of the other types. Only a few cabins are shown to suggest the openness Wright might have sought. The inn and its network of floating piers were developed from the surviving sketch showing a site plan and partial elevation.
Two views of the Lake Tahoe Summer Colony Project and perspective sketch of
Wigwam cabin. Wright superimposed an outline of the Lake Tahoe summer colony
over an aerial photograph of the site, reflecting his broad, inclusive vision
of landscape
and facilitating the depiction of his knowing manipulation. The original sketch
remains undiscovered.
Emerald Bay Inn
The site of the colony included the lake's only island, about the size of a city block, and there Wright located the focal point of the development: an inn built out over the bay and linked to the mainland by a varied network of floating piers. Wright gave it special prominence by placing it adjacent to the island itself, where it would have appeared romantically isolated.
The outline of the small island would have been intensified by the sympathetically scaled inn, and brought into strong alliance with the surrounding mountains through its connection to the shore. Had he continued to plan, bringing the individual cabins more firmly into the composition, they would no doubt have further structured their setting.
The true basis for any serious study of the art of architecture is in those indigenous structures, the more humble buildings everywhere, which are to architecture what folklore is to literature or folksongs are to music . . . . All are happily content with what ornament and color they carry, as naturally as the rocks and trees and garden slopes which are with them. 1910
Lake Tahoe Cabins
Along the shore and on nearby mountain slopes, Wright proposed a series of individual cabins. No site plan survives to locate these exactly, and probably none was ever drawn; as with the Doheny Ranch, he had conceived prototypes that could be varied to meet specific demands. He gave them names evocative of appearance or location: Lodge, Wigwam, Fir Tree, Shore Type.
He again proposed his system of concrete blocks, but to be made of Tahoe's white sand rather than the granite and sandstone of Los Angeles, and limited to the retaining walls of terraces and the lower walls of the buildings. The upper levels of the cabins were to be of stained boards and the steep roofs of copper, with standing seams aligned to emphasize crystalline patterns.
Floating Cabins
The floating cabins, like houseboats, were to be moved about the bay, thus bringing the lake itself into special play. Their names, like those of the cabins, reflect specific qualities: Catamaran, Fallen Leaf, Family Type, Barge for Two. Except for the Catamaran, all incorporated angled geometries, most notably in their prows. The Barge for Two records Wright's first known use of a fully hexagonal module. Not only its bays but the spaces throughout are so shaped, resulting in a fully hexagonal plan. It was a device he would explore in later years with extraordinary results.
