Imprinting

It was the late 1960s. I had recently moved to Riverside, a western suburb of Chicago. I was six years old, in the first grade and innocent. My classmate Jim S. was smart and funny and he was my first love. He would walk me home from school through the park where as I recall we had an awkward kiss. 

Jim lived not far from me in an extraordinary house. Even though I was very young, I knew that the house was something special (as was Jim). The stained glass was beautiful, the built-in furniture unusual and I remember playing inside on the bridge which you can see in the photo.

Image from the YouTube film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJG_RnsPcoQ

Jim’s home was The Avery Coonley House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright who had been inspired by the Midwestern flat landscape of the prairies. The Prairie style residence was originally built for Avery Coonley, a Chicago Industrialist and his wife Queene in 1907. 

The estate included the house, a Coach House and Gardener’s Cottage along with the surrounding gardens and a lily pond (turned into a swimming pool and later turned back into a lily pond to reflect the original design). 

Within the interior, Wright included furnishings to ‘be part of the building itself’. Wright once stated:
      In Organic Architecture…, it is quite impossible to consider the building as one thing, its
      furnishings another and its setting and environment still another. The Spirit in which
      these buildings are conceived sees all these together at work as one thing…The very
      chairs and tables, cabinets and even musical instruments, where practicable, are of
      the building itself, never fixtures upon it…
Frank Lloyd Wright, preface to ‘Ausgefuhrte Bauten und Entwurfe’, 1910

In the 1950s the estate was divided into five properties. The Main Public Wing is the part Jim and his family lived in. In 1970 the house was declared a National Historic Landmark. 

Both Jim and the house have been forever imprinted on my mind. I have appreciated Jim’s early friendship and the gift he gave me in experiencing his world. Such bliss.

On Coming of Age

My eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned
to one object of beauty, do or die.
Forever you, imprinted on my mind.

I see you for you, nature has designed
perfection and thus, I cannot deny
my eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned

to one and only one, the you enshrined
within a hopeful soul entwined belie.
Forever you, imprinted on my mind

despite when faces wrinkle, time unkind
I will return to this to sanctify.
My eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned

to keep you close and ne’er leave you behind
in memory angelic butterfly
forever you, imprinted on my mind.

Fluttering wings inside my brain outlined
passion to live immortal till I fly.
My eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned.
Forever you, imprinted on my mind.

Thank you for reading.

Kate

J

P.S. Another Jim moved into the Avery Coonley house a bit later, Jim Dublinski. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation wrote an article in 2022 about Jim D’s experience living within Wright’s fascinating creative space. Well worth a read. https://franklloydwright.org/growing-up-wright/