FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 4, 2005 Contacts: Sharon M. Courtin Executive Director Frank Lloyd Wright's Rowing Boathouse Corporation 716-362-3140 Earl Wells/Laura Taczak E-3 Communications 716-854-8182 ERIE COUNTY TO LEASE WATERFRONT SITE FOR FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT BOATHOUSE ADJACENT TO WEST SIDE ROWING CLUB Project receives $500,000 gift from Buffalo native. More than 75% of funding raised. Buffalo, New York - Marking a milestone in the development of Buffalo's waterfront, Erie County Executive Joel Giambra today announced that the County, in a multi-party agreement with New York State and Buffalo State College, will lease a parcel of waterfront property to Frank Lloyd Wright's Rowing Boathouse Corporation for construction of Wright's famed rowing boathouse designed in 1905. The site is adjacent to the West Side Rowing Club. The Boathouse Corporation is conducting a $5.4 million capital campaign to fund construction of Wright's rowing boathouse. "Similar to our commitment to Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D. Martin House, Erie County is delighted to be contributing to the construction of Wright's boathouse," Mr. Giambra said. "With yet another Wright attraction, our region continues to build upon our growing national and international reputation as an architectural and cultural destination." The Boathouse Corporation also announced that Buffalo native Tom Fontana, the award-winning television writer and producer, has made a $500,000 gift to the project. Fontana will serve as the Honorary National Chair of Frank Lloyd Wright's Rowing Boathouse Campaign: Icon for a New Century. "I am so pleased to be able to support this historic campaign," Fontana said. The writer and producer of such television programs as "St Elsewhere", "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "Oz" added that "my gift is in honor of my father, Charlie, who dedicated much of his life as a rowing coach to the youth of Western New York, as well as in honor of my mother, Marie, who was always there by his side at every regatta and boathouse function." The Boathouse Corporation began the "silent phase" of the campaign in 2003 and has raised more than 75% of the campaign goal to date. Contributions have come from government, foundations, corporations and especially from individuals from across the country. "Wright's boathouse, once constructed, will not only be a great cultural tourism asset and waterfront development project for Buffalo, but more importantly, a wonderful way to involve more of Buffalo's youth in the sport of rowing," Ted Marks, president, Frank Lloyd Wright's Rowing Boathouse Corporation, said. The Wright boathouse will be operated both as an architectural tourist site and as a working boathouse. West Side Rowing Club will operate the boathouse for rowing purposes. Even though it has a large boathouse nearby, WSRC is pressed for space and will immediately utilize all the rack space for shells that this new boathouse will provide. The Boathouse Corporation plans to begin construction later this fall or early spring of 2006. "Wright's iconic rowing boathouse fits naturally in Buffalo," Sharon Courtin, executive director of the Boathouse Corporation said. "Not only is this gem of a boathouse much needed, but it is also a great project for our Buffalo waterfront. Rare is the work of architecture that has been famous for a full century before it is built. Moreover, Buffalo is one of the strongest locales for the sport of rowing anywhere in North America, and it has been for more than a century," Courtin added. "So this project leverages two of Buffalo's distinctive strengths - rowing and Wrightian architecture," she concluded. Frank Lloyd Wright Said His Boathouse Design is "Apropos of Style". Even though this boathouse was never built during his lifetime, Frank Lloyd Wright considered it one of his finest works. When asked about his boathouse, Wright referred to his design coyly as "apropos of style." Wright featured his boathouse design in two major national exhibitions of his best works in the United States and in Europe more than 75 years ago. Given its sophisticated level of abstraction and lack of ornamentation, the boathouse is recognized today as one of the root buildings, along with the Larkin Administration Building (Buffalo, 1904), which exerted the most influence in the development of modern architecture in America. These buildings were the great form-givers and innovative pioneers from which modern architecture grew. The boathouse was originally designed for the University of Wisconsin at the informal request of a University student who was the son of close friends of Wright's. When the University learned of this student's request of Mr. Wright to design a rowing boathouse, the University chose not to support the project. The student soon graduated. And it was never built. Notably, what may have begun as something "of an amusement" for Wright, a courtesy design for the son of a good friend, took on much more importance for Wright once he sat down at the drafting table and designed his only rowing boathouse. Wright's Boathouse Design - Architectural Pioneer For the boathouse was the first design in which Wright carried to its logical conclusion his emerging interest in very abstract composition. While it was designed during Wright's "Prairie House" era, the boathouse design was something very new, well beyond the Prairie Style idiom. This was one of Wright's first designs where he abandoned the low-pitched hip or gable roof and used a reinforced concrete flat-slab structure. Building an unbuilt Wrightian work presents special issues. Construction of the boathouse will be faithful to Wright's design especially to the details and choices of materials he provided. Basically, a rowing boathouse is a warehouse for 64' boats and 12'4" oars. The first floor interior spaces will be used exactly as Wright intended as the working spaces of a rowing boathouse. This floor is necessarily open and spare, centered around two long open boat bays. The second floor features a club room, locker rooms and east and west facing balconies, with diamond-paned art glass windows, all exactly as Wright designed them. John C. Courtin, executive director of the Martin House Restoration Corporation and a founding director of FLW's Rowing Boathouse Corporation, said, "After 100 years as a set drawings gathering dust on a shelf, it is about time this famous Wrightian boathouse will finally come out of the ground and into the light. Martin House visitors will surely be drawn to it. Where better for it to stand than in Buffalo, at water's edge, beside America's largest rowing club, the venerable West Side Rowing Club and near other important contemporaneous Wrightian works (e.g. the D.D. Martin House 1903-05, the Larkin Administration Building 1904-06, the W.E. Heath House 1905). All these innovative designs including his rowing boathouse came off Wright's drafting table during one intense period of creativity." Frank Lloyd Wright's Rowing Boathouse Corporation is a New York State not-for-profit corporation formed in 2000. The Boathouse Corporation welcomes participation by the entire community in this historic project. For more information, visit its website at www.wrightsboathouse.org.