Care to be the Caretaker? How to Apply The Frank Lloyd Wright Committee seeks candidates interested in applying for the resident caretaker position at the Weltzheimer/Johnson House. Applicants must be seniors, and preference will be given to art majors. The residency must be part of a private reading or research project done for academic credit under the supervision of a faculty advisor. The proposed project must have clear relevance to the house and must benefit both the house and the community. The resident caretaker must complete a docent orientation and will become a member of the Frank Lloyd Wright volunteer docent program for the duration of the residency. The resident caretaker must abide by the guidelines for living in the house and must understand that house is used both for overnight guests of the College and as a public facility open for tours. Residencies can be for one or two semesters, and the caretaker will be required to pay a nominal rental fee. Interested students should submit a project proposal, along with a letter of recommendation from a faculty advisor, to the Frank Lloyd Wright committee at the Allen Memorial Art Museum. Submit proposals in March for residence during the fall semester and in October for residence during the spring semester. The committee will have main oversight for determining the appropriateness of proposals. Alum Lives a Frank Lloyd Wright Dream by Anne C. Paine | photos by John Seyfried May 12, 2003     Ireta Kraal sits at one of the tables she helped construct according to Frank Lloyd Wright's original plans for the Weltzheimer/Johnson House. Living in the Weltzheimer/Johnson House, a structure designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and owned by the College, was the opportunity of her life, and Ireta Kraal made it happen from start to finish. An aspiring architect, Kraal majored in visual arts with a concentration in architecture. She studied the house, a late example of Wright's Usonian style, in her architectural history courses. The more she learned, the deeper her appreciation for Wright's work became. "In visiting this house, I learned how much I love Wright. Some people really like Wright, and others greatly dislike him. He's controversial in that way," said the December 2002 graduate, sitting in a 1930s Empire-style chair in the house's serene main room. Opposite her, an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooks a long lawn dotted with mature trees and bright yellow dandelions. The lawn slopes down to Morgan Street, barely visible through the leaves. "I firmly believe that to understand architecture, you need to experience it in the way the architect meant it to be experienced. So I wondered if I was approaching this house from a biased viewpoint. I needed to live in it to see if it is really good architecture." As the dream took shape in her mind, Kraal ingeniously devised a way to achieve it. She successfully proposed to the College's Frank Lloyd Wright Committee—composed of several people from the Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM), the art department, and the Office of Facilities Operation—that she be appointed the resident caretaker. The late Oberlin art history Professor Ellen Johnson had bequeathed the house to Oberlin for use as a guesthouse, but it had not been permanently occupied since Johnson's death in 1992. The proposal was a win-win situation: the College gained the benefit of having a responsible person on site, and Kraal got to live a dream that most people could never even envision. She moved into the house last November. The caretaker's responsibilities include making sure the house is ready for overnight guests and regularly inspecting its interior and exterior, alerting the committee of any required maintenance. Personal belongings must be confined to an assigned bedroom, and everything must be out of sight when the house is open for tours. The caretaker also works as a volunteer docent, conducting tours of the house. The living restrictions were a bit of a hardship, Kraal admitted. She had to leave her computer at home due to lack of space. "But it wasn't too bad because, as a recent college graduate, I don't own too much. And the trade-off was worth it." That trade-off included being in the house at night. "No one ever sees this place at night. It's a totally different experience. It's a lot spookier," Kraal said. Constructed of redwood and red brick, the house is dimly lit even on a sunny day, but at night, it's even darker. When the house was built in 1950, privacy on the 2.8-acre lot wasn't an issue, since the surrounding area was undeveloped. So in the original plans the windows in the main room and bedrooms, which face Morgan Street, were not curtained, Kraal explained. Today, in a concession to modern times, curtains have been installed in the bedrooms. "I spent a lot of time in the kitchen and the main room. In the winter, the main room is very visible from Morgan Street, yet I couldn't see 10 feet into the darkness looking out of the windows," Kraal said. Another benefit: the satisfaction of getting things done. "The Frank Lloyd Wright Committee had been talking about having tables in the house for a long time," Kraal said. One original table remained in the main room, but the architectural plans called for two others that, aligned with the first, would form a modular dining table. With AMAM Preparator Michael J. Holubar, Kraal constructed two tables. "We learned that the table that was there wasn't built according to plan," said Holubar. "It had a lot of cross-grain joinery, which in cabinetmaking is a real no-no. We made two duplicates according to the plan, and then we glued the original table, which had cracked along the top, back together. We tried to make the original match the plan as best we could." Holubar has built furniture for several owners of Wright homes in Ohio and has helped restore two other Wright homes, the renowned Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, and the Zimmerman House in Manchester, New Hampshire. The pair also had difficulty matching the specified shellac, because more distinct specifications for shellac exist today than when Wright's plans were drawn up. "It was a hands-on exercise that showed Ireta what you can do with materials, and how specified materials are not always the best to use in restoration," Holubar said. In her other work with the committee, Kraal helped shape a grant proposal to request funding for restoring a front-lawn orchard. Another goal is to get the house listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Kraal included an academic component in her proposal for the position. As a private reading supervised by Associate Professor of Art Susan Kane, she researched and wrote two papers relating to the house. The first concerned how the uses of a structure contribute to its identity. The second related to furniture for Oberlin's Wright house. Kraal is certain that while living in the house, she came to know the ghost of Ellen Johnson, the building's last owner. Johnson purchased the house in 1968 and began its restoration, removing white paint from the redwood interior and exterior. "There are a lot of noises in the house at night, and sometimes it sounds as if someone is moving around," Kraal said. "I do believe that Ellen still lives here. She's a friendly ghost. I think she cared so much about the house when she was alive that she's keeping an eye on it still, making sure that no harm comes to it." Kraal's six-month care-taking stint ended at the close of April. Asked if she could now judge whether the house constitutes good architecture, she skirted the issue, reflecting the love-it and hate-it extremes expressed by Wright's admirers and critics. "I've decided that Frank Lloyd Wright architecture is really a very subjective thing. I'm so enamored by his architecture that I was willing to live the way he wanted me to live in the house," she said. Wright wanted people to gather in the main room and socialize, she explained. Thus the main room is spacious and has many windows, while the bedrooms are small, nearly ascetic, with little furniture. "If you like to watch TV in your bedroom, this isn't the house for you," Kraal laughed. "There are a lot of problems with Wright's architecture," she continued. "His designs weren't always ideal for the climate in which a structure was built, and his roofs often leak. This house has a flat roof, for instance, which is not a great idea in the Ohio climate, and this roof leaks. But those imperfections are things that I can live with. If you are willing to make concessions to the architect, you realize how skillful he was in making you do what he wanted you to do. It's when you fight it that the house becomes unlivable. Related Links: The Weltzheimer/Johnson House/tour information Wright House photo album Art Students Learn about Architecture from Frank Lloyd Wright