The Randall Fawcett House is a

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 ...

–designed Usonian home in Los Banos,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. The home was designed in 1955 and completed in 1961. The original owners, Randall "Buck" and Harriet Fawcett, met Wright while taking an architecture course at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. Buck Fawcett was a star college football player, selected by the

Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine NF ...

in the

1944 NFL Draft The 1944 National Football League Draft was held on April 19, 1944, at the Warwick Hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With the first overall pick of the draft, the Boston Yanks selected quarterback Angelo Bertelli. Player selections Round ...

. Instead, he returned to work the Los Banos farm that his father had homesteaded, after the patriarch became seriously ill with

valley fever A valley is an elongated low area often running between hills or mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers or streams ove ...

. The couple's daughter Lynn and her husband, Henry Whiting II (an architectural writer), live in the Wright-designed Archie Boyd Teater Studio in Bliss, Idaho. The Fawcett House is one of three Usonians in

California's central valley The Central Valley is a broad, elongated, flat valley that dominates the interior of California. It is wide and runs approximately from north-northwest to south-southeast, inland from and parallel to the Pacific coast of the state. It covers ...

(along with the Dr. George Ablin House in

Bakersfield Bakersfield is a city in Kern County, California, United States. It is the county seat and largest city of Kern County. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's populat ...

and the Robert G. Walton House in

Modesto Modesto () is the county seat and largest city of Stanislaus County, California, United States. With a population of 218,464 at the 2020 census, it is the 19th largest city in the state of California and forms part of the Sacramento-Stockton- ...

), with this one being in the most unlikely of locationsfarm and dairy land well beyond the outskirts of Santa Nella better known for Andersen's Pea Soup Restaurant nearby on Interstate 5 than as a mecca of modern architecture. Constructed of battered (sloped) concrete block, the plan is a sort of "H" or "K" plan with wings at 60/120-degree angles. The broad copper fascia and horizontal roof line lies flat and long like the of crop fields the house rests on. The yard is landscaped with a

Koi or more specifically , are colored varieties of the Amur carp ('' Cyprinus rubrofuscus'') that are kept for decorative purposes in outdoor koi ponds or water gardens. Koi is an informal name for the colored variants of ''C. rubrofuscus'' ke ...

pond and swimming pool. The house has a shallow, circular flower planter, more commonly found in Wright designs of 50 years before, on top of one of the walls near the entrance. The hearth's 12-foot-wide fireplace rises tall and grand to the left of the entrance. Living spaces incorporate five bedrooms, 4.5 baths, open-plan living room, dining room, a kitchen formalized by ornamental screens, a utility-store room and central laundry.

References

Sources

* Storrer, William Allin. ''The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion''. University Of Chicago Press, 2006, (S.385)

External links

Official Frank Lloyd Wright Fawcett House website
Frank Lloyd Wright buildings Los Banos, California Houses in Merced County, California Houses completed in 1961 1960s architecture in the United States Modernist architecture in California {{California-struct-stub

See also

References

Sources

External links