Wright or Wrong

The Grand Canal of Venice is the most spectacular of all municipal thoroughfares. Graceful gondolas and chugging motorboats travel its waters, and its banks are lined with great pink-tinted palazzi, decorated with balconies and frills of cake-icing beauty and delicacy. Last week Venetians and Venice-lovers were engaged in a heated esthetic and sentimental wrangle with the advocates of progress and modern architecture. The issue: a proposal to construct a house designed by U.S. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright on a curve of the Grand Canal.

It all started in 1952 when a wealthy Italian contractor named Paolo Masieri commissioned Architect Wright to design a building as a memorial to Masieri's son Angelo, killed in an automobile accident in the U.S. The new palazzo was to be used as a study center and quarters for architectural students. A site was chosen on the Grand Canal between the magnificent 15th century Ca' Foscari, once a residence of the doges, and the 16th century Palazzo Balbi. The house which Wright's palazzo would replace is a dingy brownstone residence.

Wright drew up plans for a four-story structure of dark-veined marble ornamented with colored glass from the famed factories of nearby Murano. In his design, he kept the balconies for which Venice is famous, but separated them with sheer, vertical protrusions which would give the building definitely modern lines.

Even before Wright's designs--which have yet to be approved by the Venice city council--had been seen by the public, the battle began. The idea of a Frank Lloyd Wright house on the Grand Canal was enough. The art critic of the Italian weekly L'Europeo announced that "even if Wright were ten thousand times greater than Michelangelo, it would be presumptuous of him to wish to build on the Grand Canal." Letter writers to the London Times denounced the Wright invasion as "a piece of inexcusable vandalism." Mrs. Marie Truxtun Beale, a wealthy U.S. socialite, who helped raise more than $125,000 for repairs to St. Mark's Basilica, wrote Venetian Mayor Angelo Spanio: "Defend you city. If you allow this, I will regret having done anything for you."

In his Arizona home last week, Architect Wright himself dismissed the opposition to his building as the work of "unenlightened sentimentalists" -- mostly tourists. Said he: "I love Venice and in designing the palazzo, I have tried to show this love for the culture of Venice and not intrude on it . . . As an architect, I hope Venice will be able to save itself from the tourists."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.