The Seth Peterson Cottage is an understated masterpiece designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the most famous architects of all time. This tiny gem is nestled in the woods of Mirror Lake State Park, Wisconsin- located an hours drive from Taliesin Studio. The Peterson Cottage is one of Wrights last designs. It is also one of the few FLW homes that allows guests to stay overnight.
Having an appreciation for Wrightian architecture (and also needing a vacation,) my family and I were excited to escape for a relaxing three day weekend!
“No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
The Seth Peterson Cottage is part of Wright’s “Usonian” collection (United States of America[n])and has the distinction of being the smallest building he designed. At only 880 sq. feet it is roughly the same size as a modern 2 1/2 car garage ( a testament to how attitudes have changed towards architecture in the last seventy years). Picture a garage as a living space, and then compare. Wright had the ability to transform a simple square box into a space flooded with light, openness, warmth, thoughtful design, and a subtle palette of earthy colors and textures.
Homes in the Usonian style are typified by an abundance of organic materials, and the avoidance of plaster and painted surfaces. They tend to have low, flat roofs with large overhanging eaves, a horizontal emphasis, and lack attics and basements. (Also among Wright’s notable contributions, although not visible here, are: Sliding Glass Doors, The Car Port, the Open Concept Design, and the Ranch Home.)
“More and more, so it seems to me, light is the beautifier of the building.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
Wright blurred the lines between inside and outside. Vertical floor-to-ceiling windows stretch across an entire wall, while transitions are almost seamless (notice the glass corner windows and stonework).
The small Clerestory windows (located between the ceiling and the main windows) are typical of Wright’s Usonian homes. Wright often used these windows by themselves to create a sense of sacred illumination, or in concert with larger windows (as he did here) to create the effect of bringing the outside in. Each Usonian Clerestory has a distinctive design, reflective of the house and location. It is more than just an interesting repetitive element: Try covering the clerestory to see how much these details influence the overall.
“ Space is the breath of art.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
Wright had a preoccupation with “compress and release,” the concept of creating tight spaces that open up into larger rooms. This experience can make even a smaller spaces feel grand and important (notice the kitchen ceiling/lighting). Wright (a man of small stature,) is known to have taken pleasure in placing low ceilings to make people uncomfortable, and to move them into other parts of the home.
A pitched wooden ceiling is a major element in the Peterson Cottage. It creates a tall ceiling on one half of the room, where there are numerous windows, while at the same time maintains a low ceiling over the sitting areas (and establishes the ceiling height for adjoining corridor and bedroom).
Built-in storage is placed in strategic locations, and function as part of the design: They often overlooked by the casual observer until much later (eg., cabinets in corridor, and under seating area).
“The fireplace is the heart of the home itself.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
You will almost always find a fireplace in the middle of a Wright-designed home; Wright believed that a fireplace was the heart of a building, and representative of the heart of a family gathered around it. The impressive overhanging Peterson fireplace (created using Wisconsin Sandstone) is no exception. The Peterson floor-plan circles the fireplace, almost exactly on-center. Even as technologies changed, Wright maintained this view until his death.
Heated Floors date back to ancient China, and were commonly in use during the Roman Era, although they had largely been forgotten about in Wright’s time. Frank Lloyd Wright is credited with re-introducing in-floor heating, and popularizing them again.
It seems inevitable that Wright would gravitate towards heated floors. His main motivation seems to be in the pursuit of good design (one mech room was preferable to many radiators). It is notable that radiant floors could comfortably heat a house, even with the sandwich-style wall construction and the minimal insulation standards of the 1950’s.
The Peterson Cottage uses Flagstone over a radiant floor, but Wright also experimented heavily with concrete flooring, and radiant heat ( he perfected the art of acid staining color into concrete). However, he did not seem to understand that copper corrodes when in contact with concrete, causing the pipes to leak and eventually become unserviceable. Many of Wright’s heated floors were necessarily abandoned for modern heating systems.
Wright dreamed of creating affordable, architect-designed homes for the middle-class, yet he almost always over-shot the budget (to the dismay of his clients). One can assume that skilled craftsmen were expensive. Custom stonework, woodwork and windows would have cost a small fortune, to say nothing of the a-typical roof and in-floor heating. In fact, the young homeowner, Seth Peterson, was so heavily in debt by the middle of the building project (and it contributed substantial turmoil to his already troubled life,) eventually leaving his parents to care for the burden.
The Cottage has been fully refurbished and is today maintained by the Seth Peterson Conservancy, but remains part of Mirror Lake State Park, Department of Natural Resources.