The Acres
The Acres, also known as Galesburg Country Homes, is a residential development in Charleston Township, Michigan, United States. Developed starting in the late 1940s, it consists of 21 or 22 circular land lots, of which five contain houses. Four of the houses were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, while the other was designed by Taliesin Associated Architects fellow Francis Wilsey after Wright's death. The Acres also contains of open land, including a pond; the entire complex is accessed through a single road, Hawthorne Drive. The development was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
From west to east, the development consists of the Pratt, Fonken, Meyer, Eppstein, and Weisblat houses. All of the houses have different designs, though each has a concrete-block and mahogany exterior. The Pratt, Weisblat, and Eppstein houses are designed in the Usonian style with an "in-line" floor plan. The Usonian houses generally share features such as open plan floor layouts, radiant heating systems, overhanging flat roofs, and carports. The Fonken House is partially built into a hill, with a capital "T"-shaped layout, and the Meyer House is a solar hemicycle. All of the houses have either two or three bedrooms, in addition to rooms such as a combined living–dining space and a kitchen.
In the 1940s, a group of scientists from the Upjohn pharmaceutical company planned to build a community of homes. They eventually split into two groups, who developed the Galesburg Country Homes on a farm and Parkwyn Village closer to Kalamazoo; both groups hired Wright to design their respective projects. Plans for the Acres called for up to 22 houses on the site, most of which were never built. The first four houses were built from 1948 to 1953, and two of them were subsequently expanded. Wilsey designed an additional house for the Fonken family in 1959, after Wright died. After the houses were completed, each house was sold several times; the last original resident, Christine Weisblat, died in 2007.
Site
The Acres is located in Charleston Township, Kalamazoo County, Michigan, United States, in the eastern suburbs of Kalamazoo. The development, spanning, is located just south of Interstate 94 and about south of Galesburg. It is one of several Usonian developments planned by Frank Lloyd Wright and one of the first Wright–designed multi-family developments that were actually completed. Prior to designing the Acres, Wright had drawn plans for other multi-family developments such as the unbuilt Broadacre City; the partially built Suntop Homes in Ardmore, Pennsylvania; and the Usonia Homes in Pleasantville, New York.The houses are accessed by from Hawthorne Drive, a narrow, winding street flanked by trees; it serves as the only thoroughfare in the Acres. At the entrance to the neighborhood is a stone signpost structure, which contains letters spelling out "The Acres" on one side. The signpost measures about wide by tall. There are six niches within the signpost: one for packages and the other five for mail.
Land lots
The southern half of the development includes either 21 or 22 circular land lots with an area of. The lots each measure in diameter and are located on both sides of Hawthorne Drive. Since the circular lots are tangent to each other, there are large tracts of communal land in between each lot. The use of circular lots contrasted with Wright's other designs, such as the Usonian Houses in Pleasantville and Parkwyn Village in Kalamazoo, Michigan, both of which used polygonal lots. Wright's original plans called for the tracts to be clearly demarcated so that "any house owner can tell where his lot limits are", and for the areas between each tract to be filled with native plants. In practice, there are no clear boundaries between each lot, and some of the landscaping stretches across multiple lots.Although seven of the lots were sold to individual owners, only five of these contain houses. Three of the houses are located south of Hawthorne Drive, while two are to the north. The Fonken and Meyer houses are accessed by driveways branching off Hawthorne Drive to the north and south, respectively, and the other houses are closer to the road. The Fonken House is accessed by a curving driveway that slopes down from Hawthorne Drive north of the Pratt House. Another driveway extends southeast near the Pratt House, ascending a slope before looping back to the north; the Meyer House is located on this driveway.
Common areas
The development was also intended to have of open land. The unsold lots and all of the open land are communally owned by the Acres' residents. Throughout the complex are grassy paths measuring wide, which meander between the lots. The winding paths made it harder for random people to amble around, thereby protecting the privacy of the Acres' occupants.A creek and a bog run through the Acres; the presence of these geographical features had been particularly attractive to Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect who designed four of the Acres' five houses. There is a pond at the northern end of the development, which is cited as covering or and was created by placing a dam across the creek. The pond is fed by a natural stream on the site. Prior to the development of the Acres, the stream was too shallow for swimming or fishing; depending on the time of year, it could measure as small as wide and deep. Early plans for the development entailed the creation of multiple terraces with ponds, though this was ultimately not done. The rest of the Acres contains vegetation and trees. There is a communal tennis court next to the Eppstein House, which dates from 1958.
Architecture
Wright designed nearly all of the buildings at the Acres, in contrast to both Parkwyn Village and the Pleasantville Usonian development, where Wright designed only a small number of buildings. At the Acres, Wright designed the Weisblat, Pratt, Eppstein, and Meyer houses, while the Fonken House was designed by Francis "Will" Willsey, a onetime apprentice of Wright's at Taliesin Associated Architects. In general, the Usonian houses have open plans, large windows for passive heating, floors with embedded radiant heating systems, overhanging flat roofs, and a carport. These houses also included built-in furniture, small bathrooms and hallways, and large living rooms. The Acres' houses are made of 25,000 concrete blocks, which are known as "Usonian Automatic Blocks" because they were manufactured by the houses' own residents. Each of the Usonian Automatic Blocks was cast around a metal mold, permitting a hollow interior structure, and the outer edges of the blocks are grooved so that rebar could be inserted between the blocks.Although the five houses have unique designs, all are low-rise structures with horizontal roof lines. The Pratt, Weisblat, and Eppstein houses are designed in the Usonian style; they are sometimes characterized as Usonian Automatic houses because their concrete-block construction contrasts with the board-and-batten design of typical Usonian houses. Like some of Wright's other Usonian designs, they are arranged around an "in-line" plan, in which all the rooms are arranged more-or-less along an axis, with bedrooms on one end. By contrast, the Meyer House is a solar hemicycle and is arranged to maximize sunlight exposure. While the Pratt, Weisblat, and Eppstein houses used Usonian Automatic Blocks, the Meyer House was built out of standard concrete blocks. The Fonken House, though built later, is also designed in a Usonian style. One source described the Acres as "Wright's first foray into organic ranch-style architecture".
Pratt House
The Eric and Pat Pratt House is at 11036 Hawthorne Drive. It is on the southern side of the road and is the first building that is visible when entering the Acres. The Pratt House is oriented from east to west, with a taller "core" at the center of the house. There is a concrete-and-wood storage shed northeast of the house, which is built into the western slope of a hill.The Pratt House's facade, made of concrete blocks and mahogany trim, is topped by a flat roof and overhanging eaves. The center of the house's northern elevation has perforated concrete blocks, which illuminate the interior while still providing privacy, while the eastern elevation is made of solid concrete. The rest of the facade has windows of varying sizes, including some floor-to-ceiling windows. There is also a carport at the northeast corner of the house.
The house has or, with two bathrooms and two bedrooms. The interior is arranged around a grid of square modules, and has decorations such as a red concrete floor and mahogany trim. There is a radiant heating system beneath the floor slab. The bedrooms, study, and one bathroom are within the western end of the house. A second bathroom, a "workspace" kitchen, and laundry room are located within the house's core, while the western part of the living–dining room abuts the core to the south. The rest of the living–dining room, along with the studio and carport, are to the east of the core; the living–dining room has two fireplaces. The Pratt family constructed their own house; since they were not experienced contractors, some of the interior walls do not line up with the floor grid. The house originally had three bedrooms, but a partition between two of the bedrooms was removed in the 1990s.
Fonken House
The Günther and Anne Fonken House is at 11069 Hawthorne Drive. Designed by Wilsey in a style resembling Wright's other work, it is sometimes nicknamed "the not-so-Wright house" because it was designed by a different architect than all the other houses in the Acres. Its northern facade is built into an earthen berm that covers about three-tenths of the house. Unlike the Wright houses, the Fonken House is laid out with two wings in the shape of the capital letter "T". The facade is made of concrete blocks and mahogany trim, and the house is capped by a hip roof. There is a concrete-block mechanical structure at the intersection of the house's wings, as well as clerestory windows throughout the facade.The "stem" of the T runs west–east and contains the main living areas. The stem ends at a north–south crossbar which contains bedrooms at its northern end and a carport at its southern end. The master bedroom is located at the northeast corner of the crossbar, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a patio outside the master bedroom.