Roland Reisley turned 101 years old in May and is in remarkable health. But that's not the thing he likes to brag about.
"I am the last original client of Frank Lloyd Wright, still living in the home he designed for me," Reisley told NPR, sitting in the bright open living room of the home designed by the famed architect.
The house where Reisley has lived for 73 years is nestled in the woods of Westchester County, New York, just 30 miles north of Manhattan. It's one of 47 that make up the idyllic mid-century modern village of Usonia. Wright believed that the buildings we live in shape the people we become. He conceived of Usonia to make beautiful, affordable homes — including built-in furnishings — connected to nature for middle class Americans.
Over the decades, Reisley has opened his doors to visitors, perfecting a tour that begins at the front door.
"The entries to his buildings always have a relatively low ceiling, without exception," he said, walking through the dark entryway of the 3,200 square foot house. "It provides a bit of compression so when you move through the house, and you emerge into the living spaces, the compression is relieved and you have the expansion and a much greater sense of the space that you move into."
The effect is dramatic going from the pinched hallway into the hexagon-shaped living room, which is drenched in light from the glass windows and French doors. It gives the impression of being up in a tree house, suspended in a canopy of maple, oak and black cherry trees.
The house has other signature Wright features. It's made with local materials, has a flat roof, a carport, wood paneling, built-in shelving, concrete floors and custom-made furniture. (Reisley said the only non-Wright designed furniture in the house is a pair of T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings chairs, but even those were approved by the fastidious architect.)
The other thing that Wright famously did in the buildings he designed, including what's now known as the Roland Reisley House, was select a repeating geometric motif.
"The House is based on a hexagon which creates a grid of 60 and 120 degree angles," Reisley explained.
That means all of the surfaces throughout the house — the floors, the walls, the windows, all follow the angular grid, which allow the eye to move fluidly through the space. There's no interruption to the spectacular views because there are almost no right angles throughout the dwelling. Reisley said Wright did it "to create a rhythm and a harmony in the space that one feels intuitively."
Usonia Utopia
After the Great Depression and after decades of building intricately designed homes for the country's wealthiest families, Wright came up with the idea of Usonian communities, where homes would be stripped down, more affordable versions of his organic architecture. He made dozens of Usonian homes across the country. But it was a group of Wright's former students, including David Henken, who in 1941 came together to buy 100 acres of wooded land in Pleasantville, New York. They allotted an acre and a quarter for each home, and envisioned that the collective would manage about 30 acres of protected trails, a communal swimming pool and tennis courts together.
Reisley said Henken was responsible for enlisting Wright to supervise the project. Once he was involved, the group set out to create a community of open floor plan homes, made with natural materials that integrated the surrounding landscape. And best of all, they were only supposed to cost $5,000 — that would be just under $67,000 today.
"It was a time when labor unions were flourishing and so on, and this was going to be egalitarian shoulder-to-shoulder cooperatives, not an exclusive kind of a place," Reisley recalled.
In 1951, Reisley was just 26, newly married and ready to put down roots. He and his wife, Rosalyn Sachs Reisley began looking for a place in Manhattan. But what they liked, they couldn't afford on his sound engineer's salary and what they could, they didn't like. Then they heard about Usonia.
On their first trip out, Reisley said they were greeted with such enthusiasm and commitment from the 10 families who'd already established homes there, that they decided to join. They used their savings and their honeymoon fund to buy a plot of land. They chose a site with a massive boulder jutting out from the ground, then waited to be assigned an architect.
"Now, we, as ordinary people, did not dream of approaching Frank Lloyd Wright," he said.
But something about the young couple and the challenge of the site, spoke to the infamously ill-tempered architect, according to Reisley.
Wright had a reputation for being arrogant and difficult to work with, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He was notoriously uncompromising, sometimes disregarding his client's wishes. His roofs leaked, and his finished buildings often ended up costing much more than what he would initially project. But Reisley says they formed a lasting friendship despite their age difference — Wright was 84 when they met.
"That may have contributed to him feeling somewhat like a mentor to me," he said, adding that the building process was a collaborative one.
When Reisley's wife realized there was no broom closet included in the design plans, Wright added one. When the couple asked for more bookshelves, Wright put one in every room. He even made concessions for the couple's television, designing a special nook in the study for one. And, when Reisley told Wright that he and his wife planned to have a child soon, Wright designed a bathroom vanity with a sink that could double as a bathtub.
The cost of living
There were, of course, bumps in the road.
"We gave him a budget of $20,000, which we thought was a lot of money. His contract came back for $30,000. The actual cost was over $40,000," he said.
Calculating for inflation today, that would be like starting to build a house for about $250,000 and ending up paying more than half a million dollars. Reisley said it wasn't easy to come up with the extra money but he found a way.
And when it was time to expand the house from a 1,200 square foot one-bedroom to a 3,200 square foot three-bedroom for Reisley's growing family a few years later, he again turned to Wright. In his own way, Reisley said Wright did try to save him some money.
"We re-used the windows and some of the wood and stone. That kind of thing was really important to him," Reisley said.
The house is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. But Reisley said neither he, his wife, nor his three children treated the home like a museum. The kitchen was cooked in, the family gathered around the Wright-designed dining table for meals daily, and each of the hearths in the house were lit and kept warm during the winters, he said.
"We never said to the kids, be careful, don't damage the wood or anything. They did what kids are going to do and it was all fine," he said.
A lasting legacy
Reisley said he's tried his best to be a good steward not just of the Wright creation he lives in, but all others as well. Reisley co-founded the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, an organization dedicated to the preservation of all of Wright's remaining buildings. He also co-wrote a history of the cooperative community titled, Usonia, NY: Building a Community with Frank Lloyd Wright.
Reisley believes that his devotion to the home and the community are what have kept him in such good health all of these years.
"Neuroscientists tell us that awareness of beauty in one's environment for a long time, reduces stress, can have physiological benefits, perhaps even longevity," he explained. "And I realized that there's not a day of my life that I didn't see something beautiful."
He said some days he's captivated by the way a stream of sunlight hits the wood paneling. Other days, he said, he sits enthralled watching the leaves dance in the wind through the windows. After more than seven decades, he's convinced. "That's my explanation. That's the secret."
It's a secret he hopes to pass on. He plans to leave the home to his one surviving son and two grandchildren.
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