A Frank Lloyd Wright Doghouse: on Display at the Civic Center Library (2017)
by Laurie Thompson
On June 8th, in honor of the 150th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth, the Civic Center Library, in partnership with Cultural Services and the Frank Lloyd Wright Civic Center Conservancy, will be displaying the only doghouse ever designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
The doghouse — known as Eddie’s House, after the Berger family’s Labrador retriever — was donated to the County of Marin by Jim Berger last May.
Berger grew up in San Anselmo in a Wright-designed home that today is widely known as the Berger House. His parents, Robert and Gloria Berger, commissioned Wright to design the house in the early 1950s, and it was built to specifications by Bob Berger over the course of 20 years. Wright also designed a triangular doghouse on the back of an envelope — at no charge — when Jim Berger, then 12 years old, wrote to Wright and requested plans.
Bob Berger built the first doghouse in the late 1950s, but it was disposed of by the family a few decades later. In 2011, Jim Berger, by then a retired cabinet maker living outside of Sacramento, received permission to build an exact replica of the doghouse, per the original plans, for a documentary about Wright and his legacy.
The Civic Center Library invites you to view Wright’s unique — and only! — doghouse from June 8 — September 8, 2017.
Originally published at https://annetkent.kontribune.com.
