On Saturday, January 10th, nine Wright State history students and friends traveled to Springfield for a special tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Westcott House. There, they met with Chris Oldstone-Moore, Senior Lecturer of History, and their tour guide Kevin Rose, an architectural historian on the staff of the Turner Foundation. Rose discussed the expensive and complicated restoration of the house, its important role of the house in Wright's career and the history of American architecture. He also discussed the many ways the house reflected the industrial and social history of Springfield and Ohio.
The group also discussed the challenges and opportunities for the practice of public history offered by the Westcott House. Currently, curators and consultants are busy at work identifying, purchasing and manufacturing appropriate furnishings and carpets for the house to enhance its potential as a window into life in Springfield during the 1910s and 20s. The house is valuable not simply as a window in the past, but also in telling the story of modernization and innovation. The house was a product of its time, but in many ways it was also ahead of its time, and more than a century after it was completed retains a strikingly modern quality.
Find out more about the Westcott House at their website https://www.westcotthouse.org/
