THE FAWCETT RANCH HOUSE

21200 SOUTH CENTER DRIVE

NEAR LOS BANOS, CALIFORNIA

The Fawcett House: A Memoir

Henry Whiting II

Randall and Harriet Fawcett had been introduced to Frank Lloyd Wright while taking an architecture class together, as undergraduates at Stanford University. Randall had worked all of his life outdoors and saw a kindred spirit in Wright. His buildings seemed to embody all of Randall’s beliefs about the human relationship with nature. Harriet had fallen in love with Randall, in part because each day he placed a few fresh flowers in his dormitory room. Ten years later, they met with Wright. Their house would be built on the Fawcett family ranch five miles south of Los Banos, in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley. A delay of a few years in no way dampened their enthusiasm, and in 1959, they began construction, a process that eventually took two years. They raised a family of four in the house, and both lived in it until their deaths.

“Ours is the best house Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed,” Randall ‘Buck’ Fawcett, a robust man with few doubts and firmly held convictions, told members of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy when they visited during their Annual Conference in 2003. He often said this to people, and his logic was reasonable: Wright may have designed more famous houses, but they were often on spectacular sites, like Fallingwater, hovering above the cascade on Bear Run in western Pennsylvania or the Walker house in nearby Carmel perched on a rocky cliff with the Pacific Ocean at its footings. The Fawcett house was sited in the middle of hundreds of acres of agricultural crop land with a vista that took in the expanse of the Central California Coast Range; and the fact that Wright created such an extraordinary sense of place made it his greatest achievement in Buck’s mind.

He shared this sentiment with dozens of other Frank Lloyd Wright homeowners, who also believed that their house was Wright’s best – a sign that Wright was doing his job well. When Wright himself was asked which was his best house, he looked up with a twinkle in his eye and replied, “My next one!”

Randall and Harriet Fawcett were barely thirty in 1954 when they went to meet the world’s most famous architect, who was eighty-seven and at the peak of his fame, designing the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Some years earlier, on Grant Street in San Francisco, they noticed the red square that was Frank Lloyd Wright’s logo on Aaron Green’s second floor office. After passing it by dozens of times, the day came when they realized, “We’re going to have to go up there and meet him or it will be too late.” Later, they introduced themselves to Aaron, who set up the meeting with Wright. Afterwards, Harriet, who was ecstatic, said that Wright’s vibrancy and vitality, “made me feel old!” I admired the courage and the audacity of this young couple, but they didn’t see it that way. “Why wouldn’t we go to Frank Lloyd Wright if that’s what we wanted?” In the ensuing years, I have met many couples who went to Wright at this point in their lives: Bill and Elizabeth Tracy in Washington, Mary and Bill Palmer in Michigan, Ruth and Quin Blair in Wyoming, Don and Jane Stromquist in Utah, George and Millie Ablin, Robert and Mary Lee Walton, all in California, Roland and Ronnie Reisley in New York, Don and Mary Lou Schaberg in Michigan. The commonly-held myth that Frank Lloyd Wright was imperious, intractable, and impossible to work with was belied by the experience of each of these couples, who communicated only their love for him to me. Working with Frank Lloyd Wright was unanimously a high point of their life.

These were not people who were easily pushed around or intimidated. A favorite picture of mine is of Wright standing with Edgar Kaufmann, Sr., builder of Fallingwater, outside Taliesin West in 1947. Kaufmann is leaning into the conversation, clearly not intimidated by the architect’s presence. When the Fawcetts traveled to Taliesin West to meet with Wright, they took photographs of the proposed site with them. As Wright was thumbing through the photographs, he said, “Not much beauty there.” Buck replied, “Actually, Mr. Wright, the Central Valley of California contains the most fertile agricultural land in the world, and you should consider it an honor to build a house there!”

Despite being from the small San Joaquin Valley town of Los Banos, Buck Fawcett held several California state track records, and was a renowned football player in high school. He went on to a storied football career at Stanford. He relayed to me that one of the highlights of his career was in a game against arch-rival USC when he tackled Jackie Robinson, the greatest athlete of his era, in the open field. He was drafted by George Halas, Sr. of the Chicago Bears in 1946, and would have played professional football for the Bears, except that his father was seriously ill with Valley Fever and he opted instead to return home to help his father farm. It was a decision he would rue the rest of his life, for he wanted to know if he had had the mettle to play football professionally.

Harriet Fawcett, gracious and warm-hearted, loved to cook and to entertain and be surrounded by people. Frank Lloyd Wright designed a spacious, fully-functional kitchen for her which served as the center of the Fawcett home. Last minute visitors were always welcome to join the family for a meal. The kitchen had a large pantry and full height freezer, so that she was able to accommodate surprise guests. Friends would gather around the island in her kitchen to join in conversation as she cooked.

If the generous ranch-kitchen was Frank Lloyd Wright’s tribute to Harriet Fawcett, the living room fireplace was his tribute to Randall. Walnuts were one of Fawcett Farms most important crops at the time. The orchards were continually pruned and as trees grew old and were cut down, the trunks and branches became a never-ending supply of firewood. Wright created one of his most extraordinary fireplaces for this room. It was fully twelve feet wide by six feet high – a cavelike room in itself -- where a fire could blaze uncontained on the slab floor. In this chasm, huge walnut logs, at times five feet long and three feet in diameter weighing several hundred pounds, would burn for days. These larger-than-life fires were communal events, where the fascination of the fire and the meticulous placement of each new log drew comments from family and friends alike. For fifty years, from October until April, Buck tended the fires. Even late into his life he refused assistance in this duty. The fireplace was a metaphor for his providing for his family and is as perfect a portrait of a client as Frank Lloyd Wright ever created.

Wright knew what it was like to live on a farm from his earliest years with his Uncle James in the Helena Valley of Wisconsin. Indeed, on meeting he held out his hands before Buck and said, “You know, these hands have milked cows, too.” This deep, unspoken rapport must have been one of the chief reasons he accepted the Fawcett commission.

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Frank Lloyd Wright’s house designs are a product of the functional requirements of the owners and the environmental factors of the site. The Fawcett house, subtly sited, hunkers down into the landscape like a mother swan protecting her young with her wings in a storm. Two wings radiate out at 120 degree angles from the living room/kitchen core. One wing contains the dining room/play room, while the other contains the bedrooms. The roof slopes toward the prevailing west and north winds, and the soil is bermed against the house. The house seems to lean into the wind, forcing it to pass over like a giant wind foil. On the lee side, Wright created one of his most memorable landscape spaces. Slightly sunken from the floor level and sheltered on three sides by the house, the grassed patio, bordered by flower beds and rock gardens, creates a verdant refuge. On the windiest of days, it is still pleasant to have a cup of tea outdoors. At the Fawcett’s request, Wright moved the swimming pool from the east side of the house where it was originally sited, to be a part of the magnificent interior garden space. Wright designed the facades of the house facing the courtyard for maximum interpenetration of interior and exterior space. The dining room and bedroom wings have 1 ½ story glass facades that face the courtyard, and fifteen pairs of French doors open to the generous steps of the patio -- an extension of the interior floor slab. Wright took the design of the modern California ranch house, as epitomized by the dwellings of designer Cliff May, and made it his own with the Fawcett house. In May’s houses the low, horizontal wings sprawl out into the bucolic California landscape, creating an openness that makes it almost impossible to tell inside from outside. The lushly landscaped courtyards are full of Mediterranean plants, enhancing the feeling of being in a paradisal sanctuary. All of these qualities are present in the Fawcett plan, yet Wright’s plan has a tightness and architectural rigor that May’s designs lack.

In order to maximize views and maintain the proper orientation to the sun, Wright chose to base his floor plan on an equilateral triangular module where walls intersect at 60 or 120 degree angles instead of the traditional right angle. It was a geometric order that Wright had begun experimenting with in his drawings in the mid-1920's, and later built in the Hanna house in nearby Palo Alto in 1937. In addition to opening up views of the Coast hills, Wright’s module has the added benefit of opening up the spatial flow of the house. Spaces merge together instead of being defined by doorways. Walking through the house, one does not encounter a wall head on, but is gently redirected along the120 degree angle. The sun reaches deeply into the living room only in the winter when it is at its lowest angle. During the summer, the broadly overhanging roof protects it from the hot sun. Wright first experimented with this environmental roof design fifty years earlier in his Midwestern Prairie houses and continued to refine the design throughout his career.

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Because of the unusual nature of his drawings that utilize an underlying grid instead of actual dimensions, Frank Lloyd Wright would send an apprentice architect from the Taliesin Fellowship to supervise the construction of his houses. For the Fawcett house in 1959, Wright chose apprentice Robert Beharka, a gifted designer and talented cabinetmaker. Wright had often asked Beharka to work on his own private spaces at Taliesin. Bob built the Luis Marden house by Frank Lloyd Wright in McLean, Virginia, and a house for Wright’s son, Robert Llewellyn Wright in Bethesda, Maryland. Both were hemicycle houses designed with curving walls that posed difficult construction challenges. As the apprentice architect, Beharka would act as the day-to-day interpreter of Wright’s plans. Bob vividly recalls arriving a few minutes late for his first day of work at the Fawcett building site and being reprimanded by Buck who had been waiting for him. He was never late again, and fondly remembers that he was never more fairly treated or better paid by an employer.

Construction began by meticulously laying out the foundation and floor slab for the house, a crucial step because an error here would compound itself as the house grew. The colored concrete slab, typical of Wright’s houses of this period, was scribed with the dimensional grid lines of the floor plan. The grid pattern of the Fawcett house is based on the equilateral triangle module -- three sets of parallel grid lines, four feet apart, intersect at 60 degree angles. Beharka, working with surveyor Harry Said and Buck Fawcett, set up string lines on the site mirroring the grid lines of the floor plan to perfectly scribe the slab. During construction, Buck called Frank Lloyd Wright to discuss the color of the concrete. Wright typically dusted on a powdered mixture of iron oxide, which caused the concrete to turn the deep red color known as Taliesin red. Most of Wright’s concrete floors are red, and the Fawcett floor was intended to be red as well. When he talked to Wright, he described the golden tan color of the soil on the ranch. He explained that the soil would inevitably be traipsed throughout the house, leaving a red floor looking continually dirty. He suggested to Wright that they change the floor slab color to match the soil. Wright immediately saw the sense of the suggestion and gave his approval, saying that he was tired of red floors anyway. Later, after the house was finished and Wright had died, his widow, Olgivanna Wright claimed that Wright never would have made such a suggestion. Her opinion was backed by her close followers at Taliesin, but Buck Fawcett knew the truth and examination of the Fawcett floor slab today shows the wisdom of the choice.

Not only did the precision of the slab make the remainder of the construction easier, but it set the tone for the quality of work expected from subsequent subcontractors. Bob Beharka proved to be an exemplary leader. Bob is a gentle man, who Buck Fawcett explained didn’t lead by military discipline, but rather by the example of his own integrity. Workers saw that Bob worked hard, cared deeply about the process, and sought perfection in each act. He had an infectious excitement and love for building that communicated to all of them.

The design and construction of the Fawcett house became more than just a job for those involved because they realized that they were participating in something greater – they came to see that they were creating a work of art in the middle of the field. No craftsman ever forgot the life-changing experience of working on the Fawcett house, even decades later. It is a tribute to the leadership of Randall Fawcett and Bob Beharka that the Fawcett house is one of the most meticulously built houses Wright ever designed.

Cinder block walls define the mass and emphasize the horizontality of the building. The horizontal joints between the blocks are raked half an inch deep and the vertical joints are grouted flush, creating the effect of horizontal bands. Some of the block walls at the Fawcett house are battered and some are vertical. The vertical walls structurally support the weight of the roof above, while the battered walls emphasize the connection of the house to the site. Wright first used this technique to emphasize horizontality fifty years earlier in the brick walls of his Prairie houses to be of and blend with the Midwestern prairie. Brought to perfection in masterpieces like the Robie house of 1906 and the the Johnson Wax Building of 1936, Wright used horizontally raked brick throughout his career.

The gravel roof of the Fawcett house is banded by a deep patterned copper fascia. Designed by Wright to complement the triangular grid pattern of the floor, this hand-fabricated detail, running hundreds of feet on the exterior, penetrates into the interior at the dining room to further weave the design into an integrated, harmonious fabric. The copper fascia is incorporated into the triangular trellis above the entry loggia, and the diamond (two equilateral triangles) trellis outside the living room, creating displays of pattern, shadow and texture. Ed Holton, working out of his shop in the nearby town of Gustine, fabricated by hand the thousands of folds and cuts necessary to create the remarkable fascia.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed another horizontal band with patterned pierced boards under the soffit in the living room and kitchen. His intention was to let light in, and to allow a partial view out, while still preserving privacy. The geometric pattern, using the triangular grid, complemented the copper fascia and the floor plan. These pierced boards constructed from mahogany and plexiglas are characteristic of Wright’s houses of this period.

Frank Lloyd Wright selected mahogany for the interior walls, cabinets, and shelves, as well as for doors, windows, and structural posts to create the simple, elegant harmony. Working with a small crew of finish carpenters, Bob built in all of the wood elements for the Fawcett house. Later, as a gift for the house, Bob designed and fabricated a large, disc-shaped urn from concrete that was placed atop the wall leading to the entry door. His design paid homage not only to the tractor disc used nearby in the fields, but also to Wright’s Prairie School urn. It was a distinctly modern version of the design Frank Lloyd Wright created more than a half a century earlier.

On a summer day while the house was under construction, Bob Beharka was visited by two beautiful Los Banos girls, Dolores Bambauer and Norma Patricio. Thrilled by their interest, he gave them a thorough tour of the construction site. Dolores and Bob were later married, and instead of returning to Taliesin at the project’s end, they settled in Los Banos, and together built the block house Bob designed for them. Bob went on to have a distinguished architectural practice spanning fifty years. Los Banos is dotted with examples of his exquisitely refined houses and buildings – easily identifiable by their artistry, sophistication, craftsmanship, and low horizontal rooflines. Bob, who still lives in Los Banos, maintained a close friendship with Buck Fawcett until his death. Perhaps because they were of such opposite natures – Bob gentle and soft spoken, Buck vigorous and outspoken – they became a great team, with Buck acting as the patron, and Bob as the artiste.

The Fawcetts, who loved to travel, had a deep affinity for the continent of Africa. They collected African art, including sculpture, textiles and beadwork. The African art complemented Wright’s architecture. The painted cinder block walls, the high-gloss waxed concrete floors, and the mahogany shelves provided elegant backdrop for the strength and boldness of the African pieces. The notion that art cannot be accommodated in a Wright house is belied by the Fawcett house – it is truly an extraordinary place to display art, especially sculpture.

In 1988 the Fawcetts traveled to Bucks County Pennsylvania to meet George Nakashima and commission a walnut slab dining table and chairs, along with a triangular burl coffee table and chairs for the Fawcett house. They reveled in the peaceful atmosphere of the studio, created not only by Nakashima’s presence, but also by the silent beauty of the huge slabs of ancient wood. The organic nature of Nakashima’s work blended perfectly with the Fawcett house, and indeed Nakashima’s furniture graces the interiors of several Frank Lloyd Wright houses. The furniture was completed shortly before Harriet’s death – time enough for her to enjoy the stillness of its simple and profound beauty. After her death in 1993, Buck commissioned the renown glass artist Arthur Stern to design and build two stained glass windows in her memory for a pair of French doors in the living room that open to the garden. Stern had restored and replicated art glass windows in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin house in Buffalo, the E. E. Boynton house in Rochester, and the John Storer house in Los Angeles. The Fawcett commission offered him his first opportunity to design and fabricate original art glass windows for a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Arthur Stern’s stained glass doors remain in the Fawcett house, though George Nakashima’s furniture was sold after Buck’s death.

In the 1980's Buck made the acquaintance of Jim Kamimoto, a landscape gardener who specialized in building Japanese gardens in Fresno. They started simply, with Jim coming to Los Banos three or four times a year, bringing bedding plants with him. As they got to know each other, they began to develop larger and more ambitious plans for the Fawcett property. A trip to the Sierra Nevada Mountains netted a large supply of granite boulders for the garden. During this time, Jim learned of a stockpile of Japanese landscape items for sale in Sacramento. A traditional garden had been dismantled in Japan and shipped to the United States for a restaurant in San Francisco. Things hadn’t gone as planned and much of the collection was sold. When Jim learned about it, the items were strewn haphazardly in a barnyard near Sacramento. Buck decided to buy the remaining collection even though they had no idea what to do with it. After it was shipped to Los Banos and laid out on the ground, they began to make plans. Combining these items with the Sierra granite boulders, they created a Japanese garden on the east side of the house. Comprised of a cascading waterfall and a large Koi pond, the garden includes stone benches for viewing the fish and enjoying the sound of the water, a stone Tsukubai (water basin), and a granite dry well, a symbolic representation of the water source.

During construction Jim received a call from Buck, who said, “You’ve got to come over here, and let me show you what I’ve created!” When he arrived, he saw that Buck had created an impeccable rendition of an ancient Japanese lantern atop a tall column of granite. The curved ‘roof’ of the original lantern had been found in the Sacramento barnyard, but the other parts had disappeared. Buck had sculpted granite pieces to create the breathtaking form that sits at the north entrance to the garden.

The Fawcett garden is a reflection of the collaboration of Buck Fawcett, Jim Kamimoto and Frank Lloyd Wright. Their love for landscape is evidenced today in the carefully composed order of the garden. As with the architecture, each part, be it plant, stone or water, is in harmony with the other parts, to create the integrated whole.

In the 1980's, Bob designed and built a studio/workshop for Buck located north of the house, where Buck turned massive burl bowls from the walnut wood in the orchards. The workshop includes a fireplace, a bathroom, and a vault, and is designed for adaptation into a guest apartment or caretaker’s quarters.

H. G. Fawcett Farms was one of the premier agricultural properties in California. Homesteaded by Buck’s father H. G. (Harry) Fawcett, it was developed atop a seventy foot deep layer of topsoil. Harry was one of the founders of the Producers Cotton Oil Company, and a pioneer in the Central California Irrigation District. CCID still delivers water to the ranch property. Such was the reputation H. G. and Buck built that when Ronald Reagan came to campaign in the area for governor of California, he chose to give his stump speech from a wagon at Fawcett Farms. When Senator S. I. Hayakawa went to Washington, D. C., he asked his long-time friend Buck Fawcett to serve as his agricultural advisor in the Senate. Harriet worked at the Museum of African Art teaching inner-city school children African art and culture, inspiring them to learn about their heritage.

The Fawcetts hosted hundreds, if not thousands of people who came specifically to see the Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. Buck usually took the lead on these tours, showing people the house he was so proud of. Over the years, he watched the effect the architecture had on visitors. He said that it seemed to set people at ease because, “You feel safe with beauty. It allows people to be who they are.”

As he grew older, and his mobility became more of a problem, Buck liked to choose a seat, inside or out, and reflect on the qualities of the beauty surrounding him. Despite his gruff manner, he embodied gentleness and a sophisticated appreciation of beauty. When she was a young girl, Buck would take his daughter Lynn to the ranch. With her hand in his, they would walk out into a field and sit in a furrow between rows of corn. He would whisper to her, “If you are still, you will hear the corn grow!” And they would sit and listen. His love inspired in Lynn a life-long appreciation for the enchantment of nature. In later years, whenever they were together, they would spend hours discussing the beauty of the Frank Lloyd Wright house. The early morning winter sun might catch the edge of the fascia to create a zig zag shadow on the concrete block. Sitting at the dining table, they would look up at the copper fascia and comment on the extraordinary beauty Wright created when he continued the fascia into the room from the outside. Standing near the front door, they would peer at the line where the glass was incised into the concrete block to form the almost invisible barrier between inside and outside. Wright’s strong raked lines on this battered wall create a pervading emphasis on horizontality and an alluring perspective as the lines disappear into the distance on the long wall. To Buck, the house was an expression of freedom and potential, as wide and vast as the surrounding land. He would comment on the low, 6' 8" ceiling at the entry and how it made one feel sheltered and protected in the midst of all that vastness.

Though he seemed an indomitable force of nature, as he got older, Buck realized that he wouldn’t live forever. The house he had created, and its legacy began to more frequently occupy his thoughts. If he could not always live in the house, he wanted to assure that someone who loved it as much as he did would take over its stewardship, and treat it as a work of art. He believed that stewardship is a responsibility; one which he had acquitted himself in an exemplary manner. To him, this meant respecting what Frank Lloyd Wright had created – valuing and preserving its uniqueness. If someone would want to come in and change things, he would say that the Fawcett house wasn’t for them. Initially, he envisioned a group or an organization taking over ownership. He wrote in his will:

It is my strong preference in light of the fact the dwelling was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, my home be developed as an art museum, center for educational instruction, design institute, or other similar facility. Consideration should be given to developing, either independently or in conjunction with others, an organization to fulfill this preferential purpose if economically feasible.

But whether the subsequent owner was an organization or an individual was less significant to him than that the house he loved be respected as a unique work of art created by America’s greatest architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.

I sat down with Buck Fawcett in his living room in November 2002, and we discussed many of these things. Farming all of his life, Buck was a man deeply tied to nature, with a profound appreciation for the rhythms of life. He watched, year after year, as the seasons came and went, bringing their never-ending cycles of decay and rebirth. Spring was his favorite season. He realized that together he and Harriet had created a home of immense and lasting beauty, he had loved it hugely, and had maintained it flawlessly. He said that the time would come when he would have to let it go, and in anticipation of that time he was setting a clear intention for the direction he wished it to take.

And then he turned to me and said, “There’s going to be the day when I walk out. And that will be it.”

© Henry Whiting II