SAN RAFAEL (KCBS RADIO) – Famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed many of the world's most remarkable buildings during his lifetime, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Fallingwater House in southwestern Pennsylvania, and the Imperial Hotel in Japan.
He also designed a doghouse in San Anselmo.
For more, stream KCBS Radio now.
The four square foot house is the smallest structure Wright ever planned, and currently sits in the largest building he ever drew, Marin's Civic Center.
In 1951, San Anselmo’s Berger family commissioned Wright to design them a Usonian-style home, which they subsequently built and is now famously known as the "Berger House."
A few years later, one of their two sons, Jim, then 12-years-old, wrote a letter to Wright asking him if he could design a matching doghouse for their four-year-old Labrador retriever, Eddie.
Wright provided plans for the doghouse the next year at no extra charge, written on the back of an envelope and complete with many of his signature features including low pitched roof with exaggerated overhang, according to the civic center. Jim joined the army in 1963, so his father, Robert, and brother, Eric, constructed it instead and named it "Eddie's House."
However, the tiny home went unused because Eddie preferred to sleep in the main house. Eventually, Gloria Berger, Jim's mother, discarded the doghouse in 1970.
In 2010, as part of a documentary on Wright, Eddie and Jim Berger rebuilt an exact replica of "Eddie's House," constructing it using the iconic architect's original drawings from the envelope that he sent to their family nearly 60 years before. The doghouse was donated to Marin County in 2016 and now sits inside the Civic Center’s cafeteria.
"The doghouse is the most fun Frank Lloyd Wright project here in Marin," Libby Garrison, spokesperson for the Marin County Department of Cultural Affairs, told KCBS Radio. "We are so fortunate, we have so much fun with it, showing it to the residents of Marin County and the tours to come see the Civic Center."
DOWNLOAD the Audacy App
SIGN UP and follow KCBS Radio
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Related
