THE GORDON HOUSE BY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT (SILVERTON, OREGON) Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

The Gordon House in Silverton, Oregon, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

My friend Caroline Hatton, a children’s writer and frequent contributor to this blog, took these photos in April 2025 when she visited the Gordon House in Silverton, Oregon.

The Gordon House.

If you like houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), consider visiting the Gordon House the former home of the late Conrad and Evelyn Gordon, which is now a museum. In the above photo, the ground floor window on the right is the same one as the ground floor window on the left in the top photo in this post.

Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright with supervising architect Burton Goodrich, the house was  completed in 1963 in Wilsonville, Oregon, with a breathtaking view of snowy Mount Hood on one side and of the rushing Willamette River on the opposite side. After the deaths of the Gordons the house had fallen into disrepair before it was rescued from demolition and painstakingly moved 20-some miles to Silverton, Oregon, in 2001.

As the only house in Oregon designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, it offers a nice opportunity to see real life examples of some of his signature architectural concepts, such as horizontal lines stretching smoothly from exterior to interior spaces and an open interior plan (with no physical separation between the living and dining room). This house was his idea of a middle-income family home, Usonian (uniquely of the U.S.), small (yes), built in part from local natural materials (it was), and inexpensive (well… not really).

Helping to distinguish the Gordon House from other Wright designs, its geometry is based on squares (not triangles or hexagons) and 15-degree angles reflecting something personal to late owner Conrad Gordon that is explained during the guided tour.

Living room.

The above photo shows the living room as seen when emerging from the entry. As usual, Wright designed a relatively smaller, darker entry to make people feel compressed before releasing them into the big bright living room where they can’t help but be wowed.

Dining room fretwork and built-in cabinets.

In contrast to the big living room, where floor-to-ceiling glass lets natural light pour in, and the outdoors and indoors don’t feel separate, cozy spots are smaller and dimmer, with sunlight filtered by decorative fretwork of a design unique to the Gordon House and featuring 15-degree angles.

Kitchen.

The docent (in the blue shirt in the photo) giving the guided tour led visitors into the small kitchen. With blinding sunlight flooding straight down, it felt like the bottom of a sinkhole.

Kitchen.

This vintage kitchen was the state of the art in 1963.

Upstairs bedroom.

In addition to the ground floor master bedroom, I got to see the two upstairs bedrooms. Between those two, the staircase landing was owner Evelyn Gordon’s creative space where she weaved the designs and garments she envisioned on her loom. In the bedroom in the photo, the desk predictably triggered in me delusions of grandeur as a writer.

Same bedroom.

In the same bedroom, the docent opened both of the unusual corner glass doors. He then led visitors out onto the roomy L-shaped balcony.

I liked the exterior better than the interior, because on the outside, the simplicity of the horizontal lines makes this small house look supremely serene and elegant. Inside, I didn’t like the floor-to-ceiling windows in the bedrooms, because they prevented the room from feeling cozy to me. This was despite the fact that tight quarters with small spaces (such as the nooks and crannies of built-in desks and shelves) made me feel like a guest welcomed in a mouse house, warm and safe in the perfect spot to read, write (travel blog posts) and hand-craft a miniature (such as a mouse house).

The Gordon House (G) is located at the Oregon Garden in Silverton, Oregon, about an hour-drive south of Portland (P). The guided tour takes a little less than an hour. I especially enjoyed the docent’s many stories about the owners and their interactions with Frank Lloyd Wright.

For more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_House_(Silverton,_Oregon)

 

VIENNA, AUSTRIA: Art, Food and Music

Vienna, Austria. Saint Stephen's Cathedral

Why go to Vienna? The answer is easy--the food, the music, the art and architecture. Vienna, center of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, is still one of Europe’s great capital cities. The glory of its powerful past is reflected in the magnificence of its churches, public buildings, and surrounding parks and plazas. Large and impressive, they form the heart of the city center. Most are constructed of white stone and they tower over plazas and courtyards. In typical Baroque fashion, every ledge, parapet and rooftop is decorated with some sort of statuary.

Ceiling in the foyer of the Vienna Opera House

In early October we spent two days in Vienna with our friends from Berlin, who had been there before and showed us around. (This was our first time in Vienna.) We enjoyed great music ( La Boheme at the sumptuous Vienna opera house, the Haydn Quartet playing in the Brahms Hall at the Vienna Musikverein, and a concert of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at St. Stephen’s Cathedral.)

Vienna is famous for its pastries, most notably Sachertorte, a chocolate cake originally made at the Sacher Hotel

In between, we toured the historic sights of this beautiful city and feasted on schnitzel and other Viennese delights. At our last supper together on Saturday night, I ordered marmeladepalatschinken--a very close relative of the egg pancakes made by Art's grandmother, and just as delicious.

One of the many buildings of the Hofburg Palace complex

Our first day was bright and sunny (although crisp!)--perfect for a walking tour of the city. We joined a small group with an English speaking guide at the Vienna tourist center, and she led us through the labyrinth of streets of the inner city, filling us in on the historic significance of the buildings.

The Baroque Karlskirche (Church of St. Charles)

We woke up to rain on our second day in Vienna, but since our main activity was planned for inside--a trip to see the Red Vienna exhibit--the rain didn’t matter, except that, instead of walking, we took a trolley around the “ring” to the museum. The Ringstrasse is a circular grand boulevard that serves as a ring road around the historic inner district of Vienna. The road is located on sites where medieval city fortifications once stood, including high walls and the broad open field ramparts, criss-crossed by paths that lay before them.
For our visit to Vienna we stayed in the Beethoven Hotel, conveniently located just outside the center of the city. (Vienna's musical history was evident everywhere--we ate breakfast at the Mozart Cafe (coffee, fresh rolls, hard boiled egg), saw statues of Wagner and other composers at the opera house, and visited the church where Haydn performed.) Our stay in Vienna was short but full and we saw a lot. Here are pictures of a few of the many highlights:

Augustinerkirche. In 1634, the Augustinerkirche became the parish church of the imperial church. Many Habsburg weddings took place there. The hearts of 54 members of the royal family are held in special urns in the Herzgruft, or “Heart Room,” in St. George’s Chapel of the Augustinerkirche

One of the Lipizzaner horses going to morning exercise and training for performances in the Winter Riding School at Hofburg Palace.

Royal crown on display at the Emperor's Treasures Museum, a collection of the Habsburg family jewels and other treasures. My favorite treasure was a giant narwhal tusk, once believed to be a unicorn's horn.

The Virgilkapelle, dating back to 1220-1230, was discovered when digging for a new subway in 1973. It has been preserved and has a small museum.

A sampling of delicacies at Meinls Gourmet Nacht, a delicatessen. Upstairs is a restaurant where we had a delicious lunch overlooking the center promenade of Vienna's commercial area.

Inside Saint Stephen's Cathedral at night.

Das Rote Wien (Red Vienna) documents the period of time of social reform in housing, education, health and community life, beginning with the first free elections in 1919. The Social Democratic Labor Party emerged with an absolute majority, creating the possibility to implement many of their ideas from before the First World War, helping to improve the living conditions of the working class.

One of the exhibits at the Vienna Museum. For more about the exhibit click HERE. The photographs, models, books and other objects in the exhibit are all well labelled in both German and English.