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Quasqueton
The Height of
Audacity
Copyright 2011,
Lowell Cross
assigned to Steinway and Sons Owners' Magazine
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Wyoming |
 First settled in 1842 at a point where several Indian trails converged to
ford the Wapsipinicon River, Quasqueton, Iowa is also home to Cedar Rock State Park,
location of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Cedar Rock, a structure Wright
designed and built for Agnes and Lowell Walter.
Lowell had amassed his fortune as owner of
the Iowa Road Building company, where he had invented an asphalt topping for
country roads in Iowa. In a letter to Mr. Wright, Walter requested a
modest home be designed and built on a limestone bluff overlooking the Wapsipinicon.
Perhaps one of Wright's most complete designs, Cedar Rock was begun in 1948
and completed in 1950. It was another of Wright's Usonian homes --
originally intended to be an affordable
yet stylish design for the working American family.
The roof is flat and made entirely of reinforced concrete, while the walls
are brick and glass; the floors are concrete as well and utilize a gravity
hot water heating system beneath them. Outside the building is the
signature red tile (the only Wright structure in Iowa to bear the coveted
tile) used by Wright to indicate that everything was designed by him... and
I mean everything, from the Cherokee red brick of the outside, right
down to the cups and saucers on the table! Supposedly,
the only thing allowed on the property that was not designed
by Wright was the Thompson TVT, a
special boat built
Lowell Walter by the Thompson Brothers Boat
Manufacturing company of Peshigo, Wisconsin
sometime in the mid- to late-1930's. It was regarded as one of
the best and fastest boats on the market at that time,
and Walter was often seen speeding up and down the river during the summer
months.
The layout to Cedar Rock is quite
interesting, with the total length being about 150 feet; the bedrooms were
on one end and the roughly 30-foot square garden room -- the main and most
open space of the house -- on the other. It is angled some 30-degrees
to give a better view of the nearby river. On the day we visited, our
tour guide asked if anyone played the piano. I raised my hand... and
was asked to play something on the Steinway & Sons Grand that was
custom-made especially for the Walters and sat prominently (at its
lower-than-normal height) in front of a giant fireplace, capable of burning
five-foot logs. I was definitely humbled to have been allowed to play
a few chords, noting the incredibly fine condition of the well-tuned piano.
The remainder of the home is compact and efficient; some parts --
especially the bedrooms and the long, narrow hallway that led to them --
seemed small, but only by today's standards. Storage was, as it is in
all Wright designs that I have visited, built-in and even the closets were
not designed to hold much. Even the kitchen was quite small, with no
space available to eat, as dining was intended to take place in the Garden
Room.
Perhaps most impressive was the lighting;
almost all of the light was ambient and came from skylights and windows
located near the ceiling. The grounds and river could be seen from
three floor-to-ceiling glass walls (they were really more walls than they
were windows) and the views were nothing short of spectacular. There
was however, some recessed, artificial lighting that created the feel of
natural light in the evenings.
I have had the
pleasure of having now visited more than a dozen Frank Lloyd Wright-designed
structures, from his original
Home and Studio in Oak Park, Illinois, to a
gas station in Cloquet, Minnesota, to a home in
Atherton, California, and
many more in between. Each trip and each visit gives me more insight
into the man and into his incredible designs. Each visit to another
building also gives me
greater appreciation for an architectural style that is absolutely unequaled;
Cedar Rock was certainly no exception. Upon his death in 1981, Lowell
Walter donated to the Iowa Conservation Commission and the people of the State of Iowa his beloved Cedar Rock.
Originally built at a cost of about $150,000, it has been taken care of
through a trust fund and managed by the
Iowa DNR. (Not being owned
privately is what allows visitors to take the pictures that would not
normally be allowed... or to play the Steinway as I did.) That trust
is now running precipitously low on funds. I hope that this well-preserved
example of Wright's work will not succumb to the same fate as many of his
other structures. And if you have not yet been to Quasqueton, this is
definitely a place well worth the visit!
Read about the rest of our tour on the Walter River Pavilion
page!
Photos and text property of Northern Sky Designs, LLC
©2009
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