Millard House, also known as La Miniatura, is a

textile block house The textile block system is a unique structural building method created by Frank Lloyd Wright in the early 1920s. While the details changed over time, the basic concept involves patterned concrete blocks reinforced by steel rods, created by pourin ...

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...

and built in 1923 in

Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1976.

Wright's textile block houses

The Millard House was the first of Frank Lloyd Wright's four "textile block" houses — all built in Los Angeles County in 1923 and 1924. Wright took on the Millard House following his completion of the

Hollyhock House The Aline Barnsdall Hollyhock House in the East Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright originally as a residence for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall (built, 1919–1921). The building is now the centerpi ...

in Hollywood and the Imperial Hotel in Japan. By this time, Wright felt typecast as the

Prairie Prairies are ecosystems considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and a composition of grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the ...

house architect and sought to broaden his architectural vision. Wright turned to the concrete block as his new building material. Wright wrote in his autobiography that he chose to build with concrete blocks as they were "the cheapest (and ugliest) thing in the building world," and he wanted to see "what could be done with that gutter-rat." The textile-block houses were named for their richly textured

brocade Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in colored silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word " broccoli", comes from Italian ''broccato'' meaning "emb ...

-like concrete walls. The style was an experiment by Wright in modular housing; he sought to develop an inexpensive and simple method of construction that would enable ordinary people to build their own homes with stacked blocks. By adding ornamental designs to mass-produced blocks, Wright hoped the blocks could become a "masonry fabric capable of great variety in architectural beauty." Writer Hugh Hart described Wright's concept this way: "By unifying decoration and function, exterior and interior, earth and sky — perforated blocks served as skylights — Wright saw his Textile Block Method approach as an utterly modern, and democratic, expression of his organic architecture ideal."

Design of Millard House

Wright was commissioned to build Millard House by Alice Millard, a rare-book dealer for whom Wright had built a

house A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air cond ...

Highland Park, Illinois Highland Park is a suburban city located in the southeastern part of Lake County, Illinois, United States, about north of downtown Chicago. Per the 2020 census, the population was 30,176. Highland Park is one of several municipalities located ...

in 1906. Seeking to integrate the Millard House with the land, Wright designed the house to cling to the lot's steep

ravine A ravine is a landform that is narrower than a canyon and is often the product of streambank erosion. The blocks were created in wooden molds with patterns on the outside and smooth on the inside. The blocks feature a symmetrical pattern of a cross with a square in each corner. Wright reinforced the blocks using conventional mortar. The project cost $17,000 — 70% more than the $10,000 budget Millard had given to Wright. Some accounts state that the builder walked off the job, "leaving Wright to finish the project himself, out of his own pocket". The house consists of a vertical three-story block. The first floor has the kitchen, servant's room and a dining room opening onto a terrace with a reflecting pool. The second floor has the main entrance, guest room, and a two-story living room with a fireplace and balcony. The third floor contained Millard's bedroom with a balcony overlooking the living room and outdoor terrace. Like many of Wright's households , Millard House suffered from leaks during rains. After the house flooded in a storm, Millard wrote a letter to Wright complaining about the inadequate storm drain that resulted in the basement filling entirely with muddy water and the water rising to six inches (152 mm) in the dining room. Millard added a separate studio in 1926, designed by Wright's son, Lloyd Wright.

Critical response

The initial critical response to Millard House and the textile block structures was not positive. The homes were greeted with "howls of laughter", as Beaux Arts-trained architects were "appalled" to see a common building material used for the facades and interior walls of expensive homes. As ''The New York Times'' later said of the California houses built by Wright in the 1920s: "It didn’t help that he was obsessed at the time with an untested and (supposedly) low-cost method of concrete-block construction. What kind of rich person, many wondered, would want to live in such a house? Aside from the free-spirited oil heiress Aline Barnsdall, with whom he fought constantly, his motley clients included a jewelry salesman, a rare-book dealing widow and a failed doctor." However, Wright himself took great pride in Millard House. He said of it: "I would rather have built this little house than St. Peter's in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

." Over the years, critical views of Millard House became positive, and it is now considered one of Wright's finest works. In 1965, the ''Los Angeles Times'' columnist Art Seidenbaum wrote: "Environmentally, the place is fascinating because it still looks modern in a neighborhood that is gracious but aging. Or, maybe better, the Millard house is of no time and its own place." In 1969, Millard House was ranked as one of the 12 most significant landmarks in the Los Angeles area by a panel of ten distinguished citizens and architecture experts. In 1980, ''The New York Times'' noted that the Millard House was known around the world and ranked it among the few buildings in Los Angeles that "have become classic works of the 20th Century."

In popular culture

The house appears as the Secarus IV home of the Albino, an alien villain in the ''

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ''Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'' (abbreviated as ''DS9'') is an American science fiction television series created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller. The fourth series in the ''Star Trek'' media franchise, it originally aired in syndication from ...

'' episode "Blood Oath", which aired on American television on March 27, 1994. The house appears as Arnold Weber's family home in the

second The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ea ...

and

third Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * 1⁄60 of a ''second'', or 1⁄3600 of a ''minute'' Places * 3rd Street (disambiguation) * Third Avenue (disambiguation) * Hi ...

seasons of HBO's science fiction series ''

Westworld ''Westworld'' is an American science fiction-thriller media franchise that began with the 1973 film ''Westworld'', written and directed by Michael Crichton. The film depicts a technologically advanced Wild-West-themed amusement park populate ...

''.

References

*Storrer, William Allin. ''The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion''. University Of Chicago Press, 2006, (S.214)

External links