Vacation: Monday

After all of our hard concrete work, Rick and I took a little vacation to the central and eastern parts of Florida.  Rick has long been a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright, so we decided to start our vacation by visiting Florida Southern College (FSC) in Lakeland.  Why go there? We had to see the college since almost the entire campus was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

In 1938, FSC had three buildings -- large, red brick squares that resembled every other college across both the United States and Europe.  Dr. Ludd Spivey, the president of FSC, wanted something different and uniquely American.  An article in Time Magazine brought the work of Frank Lloyd Wright to his attention.  The rest is history.

Write's influence is apparent even in the fountains and
the landscape on campus.  He believed that buildings
and nature should enhance one another.

The already 70-year-old Wright agreed to plan and to build a campus that he called the "child of the sun." His plans called for 18 structures, 12 of which were actually built in the next 20 years.  Since the construction took place from 1938 - 1958, events like the Great Depression and World War II made both money and manpower short. Spivey saved money by using native materials like cypress trees and building blocks made from local sand and stone,  and he solved the manpower problem by offering students free tuition if they would work on building the campus.  When WWII took many of the young, able-bodied men off campus, Spivey offered the same free-tuition idea to young women.  They accepted and built at least two complete buildings during the war years.

A huge fountain is the counterpoint of the campus.  When the fountain
is turned on, the water jets form a water dome.

The campus today is a wonder of Frank Lloyd Wright designs. Present are the flat roofs, the almost-hidden doorways, the entries opening to expansive room, the use of natural materials and abundant light through stained-glass and soaring windows, and the covered walkways and gardens that are earmarks of Wright's architecture.

Over one mile of covered "esplanades" offer shade to the
students and protection from Florida's intense rain showers.

While OSHA regulations have spoiled parts of the designs by demanding railings on staircases and exhaust ventilation systems in science labs, the majority of his structures are intact.  We had an excellent tour guide who shared stories about what Wright wanted and what reality dictated.  One story explained the metal lattice work on the top of the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel. Wright loved bougainvillea, and ornamental climbing bush that blooms year-round in Florida.  What he did not understand was that while summers were wet, winters are dry.  And if the rain does not come every day in the summer, those metal supports on the roof would become so hot in the intense Florida sun that anything touching them would just fry.  Sadly, while the idea was good, the bougainvillea were short-lived.

Bougainvillea does bloom beautifully on the ground of the campus.

The tour took over 2 1/2 hours, and we had to leave before it was completely finished, but it is a destination work seeing.  I will let the rest of the pictures tell the story of Monday's adventure.

The reading room of the original library was filled with light
from overhead windows. This entire structure was built by
women who attended the College during the war years.

The final picture is inside the Danforth Chapel, and the windows, which lead the eye to an "infinity" point,  are pure Frank Lloyd Wright.

Florida sunshine streams through the clean lines of the stained
glass windows in the William H. Danforth Chapel on campus.