Inside the Quest to Restore a Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie Landmark—Piece by Piece

In 2017, the Darwin D. Martin House was reborn. After suffering decades of neglect, the Frank Lloyd Wright landmark in Buffalo, New York, emerged from a major restoration newly returned to its 1907 form. The structure’s horizontal aspect was revived, its curved garden bed freshly sown. Within, the house’s interiors were similarly renewed in an endeavor that called for the painstaking recovery of its original furniture and objects.

In fact, the task of reuniting these Wright-designed furnishings has been so formidable that it remains ongoing—and forms the focus of the Martin House’s new exhibition. At “Collecting Ourselves,” the house museum’s decades-long effort to document and track down objects designed for the building comes into view, shedding light on an often-overlooked aspect of restoration work.

“Restoration is not only about building. Wright’s philosophy is that everything about this place is part of the design, but sometimes objects are not the emphasis of the restoration story,” Susana Tejada, the Martin House’s curator, told me when I visited the site.

“We are recreating the whole vision that Wright had, not only by putting all the pieces of the puzzle of the building together, but reintegrating those objects into the story.”

Designing the Martin House

Darwin Martin was one of Wright’s earliest and staunchest patrons, their partnership growing into a lifelong, almost brotherly bond. A chief executive at the Larkin Company, Martin would push for Wright to design the Buffalo headquarters of the soap firm in 1903, before commissioning the architect to build a residence for his family on a 1.5-acre site. Wright was given a wide creative berth and an unlimited budget.

“Martin had the sense of how he wanted to live with his family and Wright had the sense of how do you translate some of those ideas into bricks and mortar,” the museum’s CEO Jessie Fisher told me during a tour of the house.

What Wright delivered was a spectacular example of his Prairie School ideals. The Martin complex encompassed several connected structures: the first to emerge was the Barton House, a smaller building that housed Martin’s sister and her husband, followed by the main residence, conservatory, carriage house, and gardener’s cottage, added in 1908. 

The two-story Martin House itself was dominated by wide, horizontal planes—what Wright called “the line of repose”—its interiors laid out on an open plan, with its entry hall flowing into the dining room and library. Outside, a pergola joined the structure to the conservatory, installed with a large plaster statue of Nike. (Martin, unhappy with the size of the conservatory, would construct a separate greenhouse, not of Wright’s design. When Wright offered to “put some architecture on it,” Martin simply responded: “We cannot afford any more architecture.”)

The devil was in the details, in what Wright termed the visual “grammar” for the main building. The brick used on the exterior carried through indoors, with shimmering gold leaf gilding the horizontal joints. Oak was deployed across the space, as was a palette of earth tones. Presiding over the entry hall was the fireplace—a Wright residential feature—mosaicked with iridescent tiles of gold and green forming a motif of wisteria vines.

The architect’s holistic vision for the home reached its finest detail. “The objects, the furniture, the decorative art, the art glass—they’re all an extension of the architecture,” Tejada noted.

For the Martin House, Wright designed his Barrel and Slipper chairs, and stanchions for its dining table. Most prominently, he conceived nearly 400 luminous art glass designs, or what he termed “light screens,” for the house’s windows, doors, and skylights—the so-called Tree of Life pattern on the first floor called for more than 750 colored panes. Scattered throughout the home, too, were Tiffany lamps and 24 Japanese woodblock prints handpicked by the architect.

Saving a Prairie Icon

Following Martin’s death in 1935, the complex was abandoned by the family and fell into disrepair. By the time it was foreclosed on in 1946, its buildings were crumbling. Local architect Sebastian Toriello acquired it in 1953, financing restoration by selling half of the site to developers who razed the conservatory and carriage house to build three apartment buildings. 

Some restoration work was carried out on the main house after the University of Buffalo snapped it up in 1967, including the reinstallation of original furniture such as Barrel chairs and the grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs. But it wasn’t until 1992, when the nonprofit Martin House Restoration Corporation was formed by the university and New York State’s Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, that the site underwent a years-long, $52 million restoration.

The Martin House’s resurfacing as a museum—with its insides restored, and its carriage house and conservatory rebuilt to original specifications—is nothing short of a “civic miracle,” Fisher said. She noted the support of local patrons including Stan Lipsey, publisher of the , and Robert Wilmers, CEO of M&T Bank, who were “tentpoles” of the project, but also volunteers in the community who cared for the house, gave tours, and tended the gardens.

The work to reunite the house’s furnishings itself called on the efforts of scholars, archivists, curators, private collectors, and other institutions “who were very intentional in wanting to see this place come back together,” Tejada said. Pieces have arrived from as far as Australia and Scotland, she added, often from stewards who understand that “the objects were designed for this place and meant to be seen in this place.”

“It’s not that we’re just trying to collect anything that we can,” Fisher explained. “We’re thinking about this house in the context of Buffalo and its reconstruction and rebirth. Every time a piece comes back here, we’re restoring a piece of Buffalo’s cultural heritage.”

A Living, Evolving Landmark

“Collecting Ourselves” explores these restorations through letters, drawings, and other documentation that detail Wright’s furniture and interior design, including a 1907 photo shoot of the home that was key in archival research. Objects such as Wright-designed tables, chairs, and sconces will be shown alongside loans from other institutions that hold Martin House artifacts. 

The museum’s ongoing conservation work will also get the spotlight, as well as its approach to collecting. For Tejada, this facet of the exhibition sparks bigger questions about stewardship and responsibility: “What objects should be collected? Who should be collecting them? Is it about care or custody? Can we come together to have shared stories about things?” It’s a conversation the museum is tackling at an April 28 symposium featuring Tamara Lanier.

Uniquely, this continuing project of returning objects to the Martin House has also ensured the residence is far from a static monument. In one visit, you might find a floor lamp newly installed; in another, more art glass. When I dropped in, the museum was expecting the arrival of three Tree of Life windows in the master bedroom. Such is “the beauty of this place,” Tejada said. “It’s living, it’s evolving, it’s growing.”

“Every time we’re able to bring something back, especially the art glass, it really changes how you view these spaces,” Fisher added. “You get a much stronger sense of what Wright was trying to do when you can see it the way that he intended you to see it.”

“Collecting Ourselves – The Objects of Martin House” is on view at the Martin House, 125 Jewett Parkway, Buffalo, New York, March 27–September 7.