1938 - Architecture, Real Estate

Architecture, Real Estate

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright is the subject of cover story in Time magazine January 17 and designs a house for LIFE magazine intended for a family with an annual income of $6,000. It includes a swimming pool, an L-shaped double fireplace, and a combination living and recreation room. He builds a house at Falls Church, Va., for a Washington Star employee who earns only $3,000 per year and has an apprentice come from Taliesin to supervise construction, paying him $25 per week plus board. The one-floor dwelling has plate-glass doors from floor to ceiling with no corner posts to block the view; rooms are distributed on two levels to follow the contours of its sloping site. Now 71, Wright goes to Arizona with his wife and apprentices in the fall (he has been advised by his physicians to spend the winter in a warmer climate) and begins construction in the Paradise Valley 26 miles east of Phoenix of a rambling structure that he calls Taliesin West. It is to have sweeping views of the Superstitious and Camelback mountains.

Gropius House is completed by architect Walter Gropius, whose new residence at Lincoln, Mass., gives fresh direction to residential architecture.

Congress establishes the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) to buy loans from the U.S. Housing Authority that was established last year by the Wagner-Steagall Act and make Federal Housing Administration (FHA) home mortgages more widely available at a time when commercial banks and thrift institutions make loans only to borrowers with high credit ratings (see Freddie Mac, 1970).

Architect John Russell Pope dies at his native New York August 27 at age 63.