Exhibition Catalog - Lawrence Technological University
Exhibition Catalog - Lawrence Technological University
Exhibition Catalog - Lawrence Technological University
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
1<br />
History of Frank Lloyd<br />
Wright’s Affleck House<br />
Dr. Dale Allen Gyure<br />
Tucked away on a wooded knoll less than 100<br />
yards from a major eight-lane thoroughfare leading<br />
through Detroit’s northwest suburbs, the Gregor and<br />
Elizabeth Affleck house is a hidden gem from Frank<br />
Lloyd Wright’s early Usonian house period. The home<br />
captures everything that was best about Wright’s<br />
“organic” approach to architecture, and it served<br />
the Afflecks well for over three decades. Its history<br />
and design can tell us much about Wright’s architectural<br />
philosophy and the Afflecks’ unique tastes.<br />
The Afflecks<br />
The story of the house begins with Gregor Sidney Affleck,<br />
who was born in Chicago in 1893 and raised<br />
in Wisconsin. Little is known of his early life. His father’s<br />
family was from Muscoda, Wisconsin, about<br />
twenty miles west of Frank Lloyd Wright’s home<br />
territory. Gregor recalled that as a boy he lived in<br />
Spring Green, Wisconsin, across the river from where<br />
Wright’s family owned land and where Wright would<br />
build his own home “Taliesin.” Gregor “often visited<br />
the Hillside Home School” run by Wright’s aunts Jane<br />
and Ellen Lloyd-Jones, and he knew the Lloyd-Jones<br />
family (from Wright’s mother’s side). 1 A cousin of<br />
Gregor’s father was said to have worked at Taliesin<br />
as a secretary. Whether or not young Gregor had<br />
any other exposure to Wright is unknown.<br />
After graduating from Muscoda High School, Gregor<br />
enrolled at the <strong>University</strong> of Wisconsin to study chemical<br />
engineering. He joined the Navy ROTC program<br />
and the Chemical Engineer’s Society. Upon receiving<br />
his bachelor’s degree in 1918, Gregor briefly attended<br />
the Stevens Institute of Technology in New<br />
Jersey before heading to France at the end of World<br />
War I as an ensign in the Engineering Bureau of the<br />
Naval Reserve. 2 Then he drifted for a short period,<br />
briefly working for the Union Dye and Chemical Corporation<br />
in Kingsport, Tennessee and the French Battery<br />
Company of Madison, Wisconsin. 3 Eventually,<br />
like many other young professionals at the time, he<br />
was drawn to Detroit and the burgeoning automobile<br />
industry. By the early 1920s Gregor was working<br />
as a metallurgist for the Dodge Corporation in Detroit.<br />
A <strong>University</strong> of Wisconsin alumni magazine listed<br />
him as being “in charge of the physical testing laboratory<br />
of the Dodge Motor Co.” at the time.4 While<br />
there he met and fell in love with Elizabeth Besterci,<br />
a secretary for the Michigan Central Railroad who<br />
originally came from east central Pennsylvania. They<br />
were married on September 14, 1923; Gregor had<br />
just turned thirty and Elizabeth was almost twenty-two.<br />
Photograph by Harvey Croze