The Pergola
As the restoration of the Hills house neared completion, the homeowners turned their attention to landscaping of their yard. They eventually decided to recreate the terminus of the long-demolished pergola that once connected the two homes. This pergola was long thought to be an unexecuted project, until research turned up historic photos of it. The photos also showed that the terminus was not built exactly as specified in Wright's drawings. From historic photos and the hint of a pencil sketch on Wright's drawings, they guessed that the pergola ended in a segmented horse-shoe shape .
As construction began, excavation revealed the foundation of the original pergola. The conjecture was proved correct — the terminus was a segmented horse-shoe shape. The owners made the terminus larger than the original, but the original stone foundation lies under the new, and was used to align the new exactly as the old.
Research © Jack Lesniak 2010. Do not reproduce without permission.
Photo courtesy of the Northwest Architect Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries in Minneapolis.
