Murdoch Mysteries and Frank Lloyd Wright

As some of you know, we have been watching the Murdoch Mysteries this season.  

We were drawn in by the first episode, in which the fictional Detective William Murdoch of the Toronto Constabulary encounters the real life Nikola Tesla, in a clever plot line.  Since then, there have been any number of well-known figures from the early 1900s making appearances, from Thomas Edison and Henry Ford to Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Annie Taylor, Winston Churchill, Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, Elizabeth Arden, Al Jolson, the Wright Brothers, Mark Twain, Buffalo Bill, Alexander Graham Bell, J P Morgan, Jack London, Andrew Carnegie, George Westinghouse, Guglielmo Marconi, and Teddy Roosevelt (whose life Murdoch saves not once but twice, so far).  To name but a few.  Such fun!

At our recommendation, Judy's sister Donna has been watching these as well, from her home in Rochester, NY.  We comment to her when we have seen particular interesting episodes.  She has gone far ahead of us, episode-wise, and has been eager for us to reach one particular episode.

This week, we did.  

We came to the episode in which Detective Murdoch and his wife Dr. Julia Ogden, move into their long-anticipated new house.  The visuals crept up on us.  The happy couple paused in front of their new house, and I said to Judy, "Well, it looks like someone has been dabbling in the Prairie Style!"  Sure enough, when they got inside, they were greeted by their architect.  Who was none other than Frank Lloyd Wright.

As the story unfolded, the question came to our minds: Did Wright design a house in Toronto?

From what we can tell, no he did not. However, there were some buildings in Canada - both residential and commercial - that were designed by Wright's only Canadian associated architect, in the prairie years and thereafter.  Francis Conroy Sullivan was his name. You can read all about his life and work on Wikipedia.  However I thought some visuals might prove interesting, so I will add them below.  

By the way, the episode about the Murdoch house and Wright gets it mostly right.  Wright is quite self assured and somewhat disparaging of other architects (very true to life!).  

The house is recognizably prairie style in almost all of its details, and I won't quibble about the places where it varies from them.  The long and low one story exterior is somewhat reminiscent of the Edwin and Mamah Borthwick Cheney House in Oak Park, right down to the front wall.  Although, the imaginary Murdoch house has a flat roof, while the Cheney house has a low slung hip roof.

The interior has a central hearth, lot of wood bands set along the walls in a plain geometric pattern (some of the vertical wood details tie in with some of the now-gone shops Wright designed in Chicagoland), grouped leaded glass windows in a prairie style type design, and the muted fall colors of the prairie.  The lights in the interior remind one of the lights in the Robie House, among others.  More conventionally-minded visitors to the Murdoch house (such as Inspector Brackenreid) note the absence of walls separating one space from the next, which was a typical Wright motif.  The floors emulate slate in a random paving pattern not unlike Fallingwater, but in a near-Cherokee Red hue (more Usonian than Prairie).

The interior also utilizes immediately recognizable Stickley dining and living room furniture (still being made by them in the Arts and Crafts style, and marvelously so).  Wright specified Stickley furniture for clients who did not choose to have his custom-designed furniture (especially in the bedrooms).  Julia's desk is based on the print tables of Wright, and looks convincingly authentic.  Desk and table lamps have leaded glass shades.

As for Wright's accompanying female assistant, the obnoxious "Miss Ann Ryand", (played by Downton Abbey's Sophie McShera aka "Daisy Mason") well, she is not based on any of the women who worked with Wright - certainly not the two best-known, Marion Mahoney (who would have rather been caught going over the Falls in a barrel than accompanying Wright on his jaunts), and the ever-faithful and proper Isabel Roberts.  The ficticious sidekick was mean in the extreme and had a pronounced British accent.  No one in the Oak Park years even faintly resembles this annoying character.  The similarity of the character's name to the novelist Ayn Rand is perhaps not coincidental; since Miss Rand was a devotee of Wright.

In my article about Isabel Roberts, which you can read here on the blog, I note all of the people who worked with and for Wright in the Oak Park Studio.  Francis Conroy Sullivan is listed there as working with Wright in 1907.  Interestingly, at the end of his life he again worked with Wright in Chandler, Arizona, dying there in 1929.

Here are some photos for you to enjoy, of the Canadian Prairie Style of Francis Conroy Sullivan.  If you see similarities to Wright's work, this is not accidental. It is up to you to decide if they indicate contributions Sullivan made to Wright's more famous creations, or vice versa (those of you who follow me know what I would say about that):