April 10, 2022
BACHMAN-WILSON HOUSE
600 Museum Way, Bentonville, AR 72712
“The Bachman–Wilson House, built in and originally located in Millstone, in Somerset County, New Jersey, United States, was originally designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1954 for Abraham Wilson and his first wife, Gloria Bachman. Ms. Bachman's brother, Marvin, had studied with Wright at Talisen West, his home and studio in Scottsdale, Arizona. In 2014 the house was acquired by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, in Bentonville, Arkansas and has been relocated in its entirety to the museum's campus.” – Wikipedia
I was thrilled when I heard there was a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Bentonville and quickly made arrangements to join a guided tour of the house. As stated in the Wikipedia report above, the house was built along a river in New Jersey. The river was prone to flooding and thus the house fell into disrepair. A New Jersey architect and his wife purchased the property and restored the house using Wright’s blueprints. They sought to relocate the house to avoid the floods, and Alice Walton purchased the house and made plans to relocate it to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas. All of the wooden and glass elements of the house were transferred, while the brick and concrete had to be replaced due to damage from the flooding. The blocks were built to the specifications in Wright’s original plans as was the stain in the concrete floors.
The house is in Wright’s Unison design where houses were a little smaller than some of his others and were usually a single story. The Bachman-Wilson House does have two stories with two bedrooms and a bathroom making up the top story. The house contains several of Wright’s signatures, such as no garage, cantilevers, and floor-to-ceiling windows to fuse the inside with the outside. The original budget for building the house was $20,000, though it actually cost $30,00 to build. Before Crystal Bridges obtained the house it was listed at $2.5 million, there is no record of what Alice Walton paid to purchase or relocate the house to Arkansas.
As with many Frank Lloyd Wright homes, photography was not allowed inside the house. If you go to the Crystal Bridges website you can find several photos of both the interior and exterior of the house.
One of Wright's design features was giving privacy to the home owner, thus the high exterior wall with windows high above sight level, and a "hidden" entry.
Another of Wright's signatures is an emphasis on horizontal lines. Looking closely you see that the vertical spaces between the blocks are filled in accentuating the horizontal spaces.
The pattern for the window decorations were the seeds from Maple trees.
Wright believed garages were a waste of material, therefore he incorporated carports in many of his houses.