USA - The last day - a visit to the Pope-Leighey House

Thursday morning of the day we flew home we visited the Pope-Leighey house in Virginia.  This house was formally in Falls Church, Virginia but was relocated to the grounds of the Woodlawn Plantation in Alexandria, Virginia.  It was designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.  It was commissioned by the journalist Loren Pope and his wife Charlotte in 1939 and was very innovative at the time.  The design of the house is of Wright's Usonian model of a well-designed space for middle income residents.  A design that is intended to bring nature inside using modest materials, a flat roof and lots of windows.

This house is a single story L shaped and the concrete floor is a 2 foot by 4 foot rectangular grid scored into concrete.  It has two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living and dining room and a kitchen with an entrance hall and study.  The windows in the living room are floor to ceiling and these doors open out into the garden as do the doors in the bedroom.  The house was heated with radiant hot water pipes embedded into the concrete slabs.  Even the furniture was designed by Wright and was 'mix and match' style.

Unfortunately we weren't able to take photos of the inside of the house.

Here is me and Norvell having a chat while waiting to go in.  I was asking her what the strange noise was that came in waves and she explained they were cicadas.  They must be quite different to the New Zealand cicadas that I heard while in NZ last year.

This was the view of the house you would have seen from the road where it was originally situated.

As you can see it is not very wide.  The hallway was based on a train's galley.

It was very interesting and the guide was very informative.  It was fortunately lovely and cool inside the house but not outside and it wasn't long before we had to make our way home for lunch and to get ready for the flight home.

We flew home on Champagne Belle

England here we come!

It will be quiet here for  a few days, but I have good news.

I have another visit from the USA come to have a holiday with me.

This time it is a boy and his name is Ryder...I think he is quite 'cool'.