For the past couple months the National Trust for Historic Preservation has been conducting a public campaign around three flood-mitigation ideas for architect Mies van der Rohe’s modernist icon Farnsworth House. There’s a website, farnsworthproject.org, and in May the trust held a few town-hall meetings cosponsored by Landmarks Illinois and other interested groups. The favored proposal so far? A contraption that would allow the house to be jacked up like a jalopy in a garage whenever there’s a threat of seriously rising water. The estimated cost of this hydraulic lift: about $3 million.
The famous architect and his client, the brilliant nephrologist Dr. Edith Farnsworth (a researcher as well as a physician, she was also a literary translator and an accomplished violinist) met at the home of a mutual friend at a dinner she probably engineered. She was chatty; he, elusively silent, but at the end of the evening, when she asked if he knew someone who might design a small country retreat for a property she’d recently purchased, he said he’d very much like to do it himself.
That’s true: the idea of Farnsworth House being trucked to someplace like Long Island was appalling enough to convince a group of donors to pitch in the $7.5 million it took to buy it at auction in 2003.
14520 River Rd., Plano 630-552-0052farnsworthhouse.org Wed-Sun 9 AM-4 PM $20 in advance, $25 at the door
