The Pope-Leighey House
An Interview with Loren Pope
By Steven M. Reiss, AIA
Blueprints Summer 2006
Volume XXIV, NO. 3
In 1939, a young journalist named Loren Pope wrote a three-page letter to Frank Lloyd Wright asking him to design
a house for his family. Pope said that he had one-and-a-third acres of land in Falls Church, Virginia, and could afford to spend $5,000. Wright accepted the job, and went on to create a house that was later praised by Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., son of the couple who commissioned Wright’s famous Fallingwater, as the architect’s “greatest legacy to the nation.” It was one of Wright’s first “Usonian” houses, his vision of affordable living for the “family of moderate income.”
In the 65 years since its completion, the Pope-Leighey House—named after its two private owners—has been dismantled and moved twice, once to avoid the construction of Interstate 66 and once because of subsurface soil problems, yet it still looks as contemporary and welcoming as it did when the Popes moved in, in March 1941. It now stands on a wooded site ten miles south of Old Town Alexandria, on a 2,000-acre estate once owned by George Washington.
Wright was 72 years old, experiencing a renaissance of recognition and significant commissions as he entered the most prolific period of his career, having recently completed the Jacobs House, Fallingwater, and the Johnson Wax Administration Building, to name a few. Pope was 28 years old, newly married and living above Ware’s Drugstore in Falls Church, Virginia.
Today, Loren Pope is 96 years old and can vividly recall the events leading up to his first meeting with Wright, the euphoria of watching the master develop his design, a construction process that attracted curious visitors from around the area and, most importantly, his life-long relationship with Wright, as well as with Gordon Chadwick, the Taliesin apprentice assigned to the project, and Howard Rickert, the young Vienna, Virginia, carpenter who constructed the house.
I recently met with Loren to talk about his house.
Steven Reiss: How did you first hear about Frank Lloyd Wright?
Loren Pope: I was working at my first newspaper job for the Washington Evening Star and just out of college, when my boss suggested I look up a kindred maverick thinker and architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. I did some initial research and found Wright’s Wasmuth papers. The sepia tone of the drawings did not appeal to me so I didn’t do any further reading. In January 1938, a Time magazine article again sparked my interest in Wright and his recently published An Autobiography. I borrowed the book from the library, returned it the next day, bought my own copy and soaked up every chapter two and three times before going on to the next. Long before the book was finished, the light had become dazzling and I was a true believer. From An Autobiography on, my bride and I stopped thinking about the picket-fence Cape Cod we had initially planned to build.
SR: Do you remember the first time you met him?
LP: Later in 1938, Wright was in D.C. to discuss his design of Crystal Heights, a complex [never built] which would have included the largest building in the District. He gave a presentation to the Association of Federal Architects at the Hay-Adams Hotel. I went with my friend Ed Rowan, who headed up the New Deal art program, and our wives. After Wright’s speech I gathered up the nerve to ask if he might someday consider creating a house for me. He replied that he built them only for people like me—“people who deserved them.” He added that he never built houses for real estate men or subdividers, of which I was neither.
SR: How did you get up the nerve to write him a letter asking him to design your house?
LP: Faith filters out fear (and some error). I was making the grand sum of $50 a week working as a copy editor and living above Ware’s Drugstore in Falls Church, newly married. With the encouragement and urging of my friend, Ed, I decided that no matter how busy or important, the master would listen to someone who wanted one of his works so much. I wrote and rewrote the letter at least half a dozen times. When I finally dropped it in the mailbox, I felt that I had poured out my heart as best I could and that he would listen to me. I included along with it a map of the site, contours, and trees. It was a letter that no man with a normal ego could ignore.
SR: How did you begin your letter?
LP: “Dear Mr. Wright, There are certain things a man wants during life, and of life. Material things and things of the spirit. The writer has one fervent wish that includes both. It is a house created by you.”
SR: And how did Mr. Wright respond?
LP: Every day I would go to the East Falls Church post office. Finally after three weeks I received a buff-colored envelope with a red logo in the corner. Inside was a thin and terse reply. “Dear Loren Pope, Of course I’m ready to give you a house.”
SR: Your first meeting with Wright in Taliesin— can you describe it?
I shook the master’s hand and greeted Mrs. Wright. Much of the conversation before dinner was about his autobiography. Dinner was served by several of his apprentices and although I am interested in food, I have no recollection of the menu. It seems most of the conversation was about the New Deal. Wright had strong opinions but he was a willing listener and a charming host.
The next morning we had an oatmeal breakfast eaten on Wright-designed china which sat on Wright-designed place mats. After breakfast we walked down to the great drafting room where 30 or more apprentices were working at their drafting tables, drawing and making models of projects. We reached Mr. Wright’s drafting table, which was near a large stone fireplace, and there was the top sheet of the plans for my house, labeled “House for Loren Pope, East Falls Church, Virginia.”
He described the drawings to me. First the floor plans and how a person coming into the living area would see not wall meeting ceiling but surprisingly, a lacy ribbon of clerestory windows with cutout designs around the top of the whole space. The walls seemed to be only screens, barely separating the inside from the outside. The house was L-shaped with a low brick-paved entry. Outside, a cantilevered carport floated over the driveway. Inside the house on the right were rooms labeled “sanctum” and “workshop” and, to the left, was a long gallery with bedrooms. Straight ahead and down five steps soared the open area of fireplace, dining, and living areas. An open kitchen was off to one side. A line of French doors opened inward, on the right, into an extension of the living room floor. It just flowed out into the grass. The roof floated over the entire space supported by only three brick masses.
SR: And your reaction to his sketches?
LP: I thought Mr. Wright was a genius as he described the house to me.
SR: Did he indicate what effect he was trying to achieve with his design?
LP: Years later he was quoted as saying, “What I was aiming for was the sense of a happy, cloudless day.”
SR: How did you afford the house?
LP: Every lending agency I went to was afraid of loaning me money for the house. In fact, the retired diplomat who ran the East Falls Church Savings and Loan Association tried to counsel me, “Loren, this house would be a white elephant.” My last resort was the Evening Star, which financed homes for its employees. The Star offered to lend me $5,700, to be taken out of my pay at $12 a week. Around that same time Mr. Wright called to say the house he had shown me would be too expensive and he would have to rework it. That meant the workshop had to come out and the sanctum shrunk. [Note: The initial size of the house, 1,800 square feet, was eventually reduced to 1,200.]
SR: Tell me about the apprentice that Mr. Wright assigned to your house.
LP: Gordon Chadwick was a 26-year old graduate architect from Princeton who had been working with Mr. Wright as an apprentice for two years. Another Usonian house was to be built at the same time in Baltimore for Joseph Euchtman and both jobs were to be handled by Gordon. I was to provide room and board and give him $25 a week, half of what I was making. The Usonian houses used no stock materials, so doors, windows and so on had to be made on site. Gordon bought a carload of second-grade red tidewater Cyprus from the Florida everglades so he could pick out the knot-free boards of the same shade for the houses and still save money. To keep the costs down on the Usonian houses Wright often had his apprentice act as the general contractor. So Gordon also had to get separate contracts for the concrete work, and masonry, the plumbing and electrical work and of course the carpentry.SR: And who was the house’s carpenter?
LP: Howard Rickert from Vienna, Virginia, was the master carpenter who built our house. He was one of the few men who understood what it was all about. After one careful study of the blueprints, he became enthusiastic saying, “This house is logical.”
SR: Describe the house.
SR: How did the neighbors react to the house as it was being built?
LP: With curiosity. People would just walk onto the property and watch the construction. Architects would come by and try to pick up any sets of drawings lying around.
SR: How much did the house cost?
LP: About $7,000, including Wright’s fees. [Note: Wright’s standard fee was 10 percent of the construction cost.] What we got was an extraordinary house for an ordinary price. And what’s more, our house came completely furnished: carpets, furniture, stove and so forth, all for just about the cost of an ordinary one.
SR: What type of contact did you have with Wright during construction? Did he visit the house?
LP: He visited the house several times. During one trip he said that the house was costing me too much and he never asked for the remainder of his fee. He felt it was one of his best Usonian houses and actually wanted to name the house “Touchstone.”
SR: What was it like living in the house?
LP: The house gave us pleasure day and night. Each morning, the big window that took up most of the outside bedroom wall enabled us to enjoy the lawn and the magnificent tulip poplar outside the living room and the woods beyond. The sun would shine through the leaves and the clerestories created dancing patterns of light and shadow as it moved across the walls. Even on a cloudy day the house never looked cold or drab, it was so open, the wood and brick so warm and rich. Just being there simply made us feel fulfilled and happy and proud, day after day. To us, it had a presence and a character. Dinner became a relaxing time to enjoy with my little family. Then when it got dark we could sit by the fireplace and see the stars, or have coffee outside and enjoy our dramatic Japanese lantern. The whole effect was a lift for our souls.
SR: There are numerous stories about Mr. Wright’s “control” of his projects. Did you experience this with your house?
LP: People often asked if Mr. Wright dictated matters of decor, what kind of dishes we should use or whether we should follow a certain lifestyle. He did not, usually. But there was a case with a magnolia tree I’d planted in front of the carport. Soon it grew above roof level. I was bringing him out to the house. The instant I turned onto our road he spotted the offending magnolia and exclaimed, “What are you trying to do Loren, ruin this place?” So the next day I cut it down. Another time, I had placed four or five rows of the brick patio outside the dining area, using a 30-inch mason’s level. It was not the most professional of jobs. He looked it over and said, “Loren, use a string.” So I tore out what I had done and used a string. The next time he came, he approved, especially the square opening I’d made at the outside corner for an azalea.
SR: Why did you move after only six years?
