Auldbrass

Book excerpt: A revised and updated edition of this comprehensive volume dedicated to Wright's only plantation design. Although Frank Lloyd Wright designed more than 1,000 projects during his long and prolific career, Auldbrass Plantation, in Yemassee, South Carolina, is the only plantation he ever designed. It is also one of the largest and most complex projects he ever undertook. Wright had an unusually intense commitment to Auldbrass, and worked on it, off and on, for more than twenty years, from 1938 until his death in 1959. Because Auldbrass was private and because it fell into disrepair in the 1960s after the owners' death, it was rarely photographed or studied, and as a consequence little has been known about this major work. With a recently completed restoration and new photography, this book affords a rare opportunity to see one of Wright's greatest works, as the master himself originally envisioned it. Through photos, plans, and drawings, we see what Wright planned, and how it has finally all been either restored or realized for the first time. In 1986, film producer Joel Silver (Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours, Predator, Romeo Must Die, The Matrix, and over forty other films) bought Auldbrass. He had earlier bought and meticulously restored Wright's famous 1923 Storer House in Hollywood. Now he has again collaborated with Wright's grandson, architect Eric Lloyd Wright, who restored the Storer House, to restore the Auldbrass Plantation.