Frank Lloyd Wright boathouse in Buffalo opens to the public

Last Updated: Saturday, September 29, 2007 | 5:00 PM ET

CBC News

A group of Frank Lloyd Wright aficionados in Buffalo, N.Y. has built and opened a boathouse designed by the famous American architect — more than 100 years after it was conceived.

The idea to resurrect the design nearly 50 years after Wright's death — the architect died in 1959 — came at a conference of Wright scholars a decade ago.

The Rowing Boathouse, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905, officially opened on the Niagara River in Buffalo, N.Y. on Friday.
(Don Heupel/Associated Press)

"This is such a spectacular design," said Ted Marks, an oarsman who helped created the Frank Lloyd Wright's Rowing Boathouse Corp. to raise funds for the project.

The two-storey structure with red oak doors and trim and a cantilevered roof was first imagined by Wright in 1905. The architect redrew those plans in 1930, altering the stucco exterior to concrete.

It opened to the public for the first time on Friday.

"This is really a piece of modern architecture that still looks modern, even though it was modern 102 years ago," says Marks, who heads the corporation.

Marks got permission from Wright's estate to build the boathouse and hired architect Anthony Puttnam, a Wright apprentice, to help in its construction.

He also enlisted the aid of television writer and producer Tom Fontana, who grew up in Buffalo, to help raise $5.5 million among his Hollywood friends, which included the likes of Mary Tyler Moore, Blythe Danner and producer Diane English.

The structure, to be called The Charles and Marie Fontana Boathouse, is located on the Niagara River with the Peace Bridge to Canada as its backdrop.

Buffalo's West Side Rowling Club will run some of its programs at the 5,000-square-foot space.

The boathouse marks the latest addition to Buffalo's contingent of Wright structures, which includes the Blue Sky Mausoleum, Graycliff Estate and Darwin Martin House.