What Is Your Comfort Food?

I attended Christmas eve services with my family as millions of people did the other night. The familiar interior of the sanctuary, singing the hymns that you have memorized over the years and seeing the familiar faces (though they are older) felt just like when you eat comfort food.

This beautiful space is where my love for architecture began. I remember sitting with my parents and siblings and trying to look interested but really what I did most of the time was look at the beams, windows, the texture of the oak and cool smoothness of the marble. I remember when they installed the pipes. What excitement. Counting the different sizes of pipes and instead of listening to the sermon was quite entertaining. When I wasn't counting and I was sketching various views of the santuary on the service folders.

They say over and over that a church is not a building. It is the people. I guess that is some what true. For me, though, the building represents the people and all that it holds from all the years past and its future.

P.S. In the old days they had real trees that went all the way to the ceiling.

Archive: Angel Oak, Johns Island, Charleston County, South Carolina

This massive and majestic oak is said to be over 1,500 years old. Named after former owners Martha and Justis Angel it is probably our countries oldest live oak tree. It stands only 68 feet high but the area of shade covers 17,000 square feet! The longest limb is 89 feet long. Just 12 miles from Charleston it is worth the visit.

Located near the intersection of the Maybank Highway and Bohicket Road / Main Road on Johns Island, SC. Latitude 32.71727, Longitude -79.91917

FLW S.000 Unity Chapel, Spring Green, Wisconsin

1886. Is this FLW's first built design? No one is 100% sure. The interior of the chapel is credited to him as is a perspective drawing. It looks like a Silsbee as he worked for Joseph Silsbee when he first arrived in Chicago. The chapel was already in the works when FLW arrived. How fortunate that his Uncle Jenkins was the preacher of the church.

A tour bus from Taliesin arrives for a tour.
Frank is not here. He use to be here but he was moved to
Taliesin West as per his wife no.3 direction.

August 15, 1914. This is the grave of his love Mamah Cheney, the wife of a client (she divorced by then). Frank Lloyd Wright was in Chicago overseeing Midway Gardens when he received word that there was a fire at Taliesin. But it was far, far worse than that. A deranged worker locked all the doors, set fire to the house and killed Mamah, her two children 4 others with an
ax as they tried to escape. Who is reading Loving Frank by Nancy Horan?

This was the second time I visited the Spring Green area. I didn't learn until later that Ann Baxter is buried here as she is the granddaughter of FLW.

Sources: Frank Lloyd Wright by Ada Louise Huxtable, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright A Complete Catalog 3rd Edition, William Allin Storrer