The Boynton House: Tour a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Rochester

Hi, welcome to my home. Please come take a look. This is the entrance and notice that the front door is to the side of the house not in the middle of the house which is a typical Frank Lloyd Wright design because he wanted the house to be an architectural experience and he wanted it to be different than all other homes. And also please notice when we go through the house the different heights of the ceiling. He wanted you to feel a feeling of enclosure and an expansion as you walk through the house so you have an architectural experience. Before Frank Lloyd Wright homes were always set up the same way basically. Four walls, a door for each room, the window, you know, one or two windows. Notice all the windows that he used to bring the light in all the time. And he's also the first to put the fireplace in the center of the house and he used a horizontal brick because he wanted you to look at the horizontal lines in the house. It was a very Japanese feeling to his prairie style home. He was very influenced by that I believe. So come in here and take a look at the bookshelves in the living room. These were built-ins. Frank was the first to do built-ins. He was also the first to do recess lighting and indirect lighting which you'll see here. All these sconces are original to the house but back then in 1908 the highest wattage you could get for a light bulb was eight watts. Mr. Boynton, the owner of the house, he was a salesman for lanterns and we found that lantern over there downstairs in the basement. We cleaned it up and gave it a place of honor. There have been nine families that have lived in this house and it was still there. So this is an original point. That was the lantern that his company made. That's how he made his money. Back in 1908 the land and the house cost $50,000 which was a fortune back then. Of course the land was much bigger. It went almost all the way to Park Avenue. There was a tennis court. There was a wading pool. There were beautiful gardens. In the 1920s that land was sold off. We were able to build a new garage in the back and we put in a little pond as well to give the feeling of what Franklin Neely had done originally with the house. What's really nice about this is that we can sit out here. We can see people walking by but they really can't see us. We have our privacy. Maybe they see the top of our heads when we're sitting down. Wow. Isn't it beautiful? It was enclosed in the 1920s, the late 20s because the second family that lived here felt no they can't use it in Rochester because of the cold. So they did a beautiful job but it wasn't original. When we bought the house we wanted to bring it back to its original beauty. So how is this supported? The cantilevered roof is supported by two huge metal beams that go back 60 feet holding it up. I know this has been an ongoing theme but you look at this and you just don't see anything else like this. I mean this still feels fresh and forward thinking and the fact that it was built more than a hundred years ago is incredible. Sometimes we'll have a delivery and the gentleman will say oh was this a new house it's so modern and I'll go would you believe it was the second house built on this street and it was built in 1908 because people if they don't know about Frank Lloyd Wright and they see it they think it's a new house still and that was 111 years ago. But those weren't originally there when they enclosed the porch. When they enclosed the porch they put those lights in but they're so beautiful. I didn't want to take them down. No they look great. But they were not there originally this was just all solid. And it totally fits. I mean it fits. It's not like it doesn't feel like these were added on at all. Right and it's kind of nice. So the people who did that they used the same company that Frank. I was going to say they look like his window. Yes in fact all the windows that they had used to enclose this they used the same company and it was it was done beautifully but it wasn't original and it was really important to me to bring it back to its original. And like I had mentioned when I give a tour I do tell people that it was really important to get it back to its original because to me when they enclosed it would be like putting a frown on all these spaces in the painting. It's not what was meant to be. And the dining room is the most famous room in the house. There's a book written about Frank Lloyd Wright's most favorite rooms and this room is in that book. There are over 3,000 pieces of bar glass in this room alone and everything you see other than the accessories he designed. I mean it's you don't think of an architect as always as someone who takes so much time and detail to like design windows. It's incredible. This is what I wanted to mention to you. Of course. Take a look here. Stand right here where I'm standing. You'll see the two windows to the left. Narrow ones to the left. Look outside. The two to the right look into the house. Then if you step over here you'll see the same thing on those windows. Over here? Right here. Right here. Take a look. Wow. And that's something I didn't realize until I had lived here for a little while. Right. How ingenious that was. Okay the reason there are two tables in the dining room is that Mr. Boynton when he built the house he was a widower and he and his daughter lived here. They had help. So this was their breakfast room and this is where they ate all their meals. So it was just the two of them. When they had company they used the larger table which even opens up bigger. There were leaves for it as well and Frank believed not to put flowers in the center of the table. He believed flowers should go in the corners so that it doesn't take away from communication. So in here there are little metal boxes where you can put the flowers and water and then these light up. Originally they were electrified but now we have them on led lights so that we preserve the wood. Oh yeah. So and who designed this thing? Frank did. Everything in this room Frank designed. Even these cabinets as well? Everything. Everything you see other than the candles and the sculptures and what's inside of them. Every every detail he designed in this room and the carpet he did not. The carpet was new but it's in the same style as would have been back then. The arts and crafts style. So when you say arts and crafts style can you elaborate on that just a little bit for us? Well that was our style in the late I think it started in the late 18 very late 1800s early 1900s and they used the woods this way. It was very contemporary for that time. Sure this is the pantry. It's just it's just the most ludicrously gorgeous pantry I've ever seen. Everything in here is original except for the light there and this is interesting too. Back in 1908 first of all the help would come in from the kitchen into the pantry and then into the dining room. From this point on Frank did oak because he knew to match the rest of the house the public rooms and the reason he did oak was because he knew when the help opened up the store to serve that the guests could see this room and he didn't want them to see the cheap pine that was in the kitchen because back then when you had help you didn't put spend money in the kitchen you you you know it was the least uh beautiful room. Today it's just the opposite so we had permission to redo the kitchen and we redid it as if Frank were alive today and we matched it to the other rooms including the wood and all and you'll see that in a minute but this here is original too and this was a plate warmer it was a gas plate warmer and when it wasn't working of course and we when we moved in we bought the gas company here to check it out and said can we get it to work again and they said you do not want that to work he said so now we use it for a different warmer exactly a company warmer as it were isn't this all original isn't that amazing original sink yeah original everything in here is original i know i know we like keep asking it it's just we we keep asking it but it's still it's still somehow so so so mind-blowing down the cabinets are new but they're in the same style that was here um what we did is we added the upper cabinets there were no upper cabinets we used some of the windows that were out on the porch for lighting in here and we did the same indirect lighting that Frank did in the living room we did that here however there is something very original in this room back then and that's the refrigerator that's an original ice box it was even before it was electrified it was an ice box the ice man would come and put the ice in the back wow and it was made in buffalo oh my goodness and it's so how does this work today it does work it's nice and cold however i just keep i just keep drinks in there our real refrigerator we recessed here wow look at that that is and we also we didn't want all the contemporary mom things showing so we also recessed the dishwasher too how clever you would have no idea yeah that it was there it's amazing so originally this over here was actually two bedrooms and a bathroom for this for the housekeeper and the cook and we were able to redesign it so we added a bathroom over here and we added a breakfast room in here we raised the ceiling because there was nothing above it and we did the same type of ceiling that upstairs in the bedrooms because as i said this was done on a pine inexpensively and we redid it as if frank were alive today and what he would have done today and this is our breakfast room this is where we eat our meals because we want to preserve all the frankly right furniture this was mr boyton's office this is the only room in the house that was done in mahogany and the furniture is new but it's in the same style that would have been here originally um and another thing i just want to show you the pocket door this is original pocket door he did this side of the pocket door in mahogany but the other side he did in the oak to match this side of the house so every detail he was involved in nature was exactly the way he wanted to be and and this almost goes with the theme like with the windows were like half of the windows looking to one part and the other half is looking through something that's so cool that you can like see the difference in the grain so this one's of the house this is in the house from from hawthorne looking toward east boulevard you can see the old-fashioned car there and about two years after uh beulah who's the name of the daughter mr boyton's daughter beulah lived in the house she got married to a gentleman and they lived here in the house only for 10 years but she had this little girl when she was living in the house that was her daughter um and there's a picture of the daughter in the garden area here's a picture of the pond that they had on the other side of the house now now that land belongs to somebody else a picture of beulah's bedroom and here's a picture of the house when it was enclosed for the 76 years after the portion being enclosed yeah it doesn't it does not look uh nearly nearly as uh well frankly nearly as good right and just it does not he was very upset when he saw it in the 1930s came back to rochester okay so this is our archival room and our architect john page set this up for us there are pictures of the house the way it used to be some the way it is today this over here is a picture of mr boyton wow the original owner of the house and this is his son-in-law and his grandchild and here's beulah his daughter and you can see them right by the front door in front of the house and the old-fashioned clothes and we have all the original drawings there were like 79 original drawings we have copies of every one that we got from taliesin west but we had some of them in large our architect did this for us of the original drawings that he did there are copies of them and we have them hung and all around you'll see different pictures oh my goodness this is gorgeous and then this is really i think this is one of my couple of things i'll show you these are my favorite things our architect did this for us this is a timeline right here it tells you who owned the house what years they owned it what was done to the house and who the president was in the united states at the time so i think if you took a picture termite and carpenter ants but that was that was typical of what the beams looked like they were all nine months just changing yeah here's uh this is a good picture of it with the after we did that took it away and you know those two that's a big difference no and it's i mean i know like there's like some landscaping difference too but yeah it's so one this is how frank would have done it he wanted the house you to look at the house like it came out of the earth so he this was more minimal the landscaping um there's something over here i think you'll be interested in too this is a picture of frank lloyd wright when he was in his early 40s and that's how old he was when he designed this house over there is a picture of frank lloyd wright right before he passed away at the guggenheim museum in new york city that he designed and over here is our list of all the people who worked on the house do you you see what it says and then to the right of it the boss i mean the only two people who forgot to sign it on the two most important people were the uh architect right our landscape architect and our regular architect has john merrill and mark