Frank Lloyd Wright in Puerto Rico?

                                                  

About a week ago I lead a tour that included an elderly couple who were very enthusiastic about Graycliff.  After the tour they informed me that they lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright designed house in Puerto Rico for ten years.  That amazed me because I knew of no FLW houses in Puerto Rico, although FLW and his wife travelled to PR in 1927 while he was designing Graycliff. 

So I searched a little more and found that there was an architect who worked in PR who emulated FLW's style very closely.  He was actually accused of taking and retracing FLW designs  from the Wasmuth Portfolio and putting his name on them .  The house pictured above is one of his designs.  It is Casa Roig built in 1920 for Antonio Roig.  It is actually FLW's Westcott house in Springfield which  Antonn Nechodoma copied from the Wasmuth Portfolio.  Some of his designs are outright copies of FLW and others seem to be copies only of FLW style.  The above house was saved by the University of Puerto Rico in 1984 and restored and is currently open as a museum in Humacao. If you are interested in checking how closely this architect copied/emulated FLW there is a great photo source of some of his other  buildings at  Nechodoma.tripod.com/  . Check out how closely his interiors copied Wright.   So FLW in Puerto Rico, not exactly, but they do claim that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  I wonder if FLW thought so.  Nechodoma died in a car accident a year after Frank and Olgivanna visited the island for about a two month stay.  I am sure that staying that length of time and Nechodoma being well established at that point, that FLW must have known something about him during that visit.  So, the next time you are visiting Puerto Rico, there are still some remaining FLW wannabe's  standing if you care to check them out.

So I really am happy I did not know all this when the couple lovingly told me of living in their Puerto Rican FLW house.  Their eyes grew large and they became very animated describing how wonderful it was to live in a house designed by the master.  Glad I didn't know the truth at the time.  Some bubbles are better left unburst.     

George