Antonin
Nechodoma, Architect, 1877-1928
The Prairie School in the Caribbean
by Thomas S. Marvel
Foreword by
H. Allen Brooks
University Press of Florida, 1994
ISBN 0-8130-1269-4
In the tropical islands of the Caribbean, far from America's heartland, an
improbable
number of homes in the Prairie Style of architecture dot the landscape. this book
brings to light the life and work of the shadowy architect of these remarkable
buildings.
Although facts about Antonin Nechodoma are sketchy, strange rumors and small bits
of information about his work circulated among architectural historians for
decades.
What is known is that he grew up in Chicago, where he worked as a contractor for
six years, and perhaps served an apprenticeship as a craftsman and builder.
Thomas Marvel
follows obscure leads about Nechodoma's life from Chicago to Florida and
eventually
to Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, where he settled in 1905. He unravels
complications
in Nechodoma's personal life and sorts out the influences that shaped his
designs, describing
with care and thoroughness the career of the person who introduced modern
architecture
to the Caribbean.
Nechodoma's relationship to
Frank Lloyd Wright, whom he never met, emerges from this
search as a troubling issue. Marvel reveals that Nechodoma freely used Wright's
Wasmuth
Folio as a source for some of his best-known residences, sometimes tracing a
perspective or changing only minor details in designs that he unabashedly sent to
magazine
publishers as his own. Acknowledging that this practice taints one's regard for
Nechodoma's
originality, Marvel writes that "he can be faulted for emulation, but he can also
be praised for producing great houses of his own from the great houses of
Wright."
Marvel credits Nechodoma with adapting the architecture of Wright's Prairie
School
to the tropics, creating a regional style that fuses design, climate. comfort,
and
natural materials that can be seen today in modest bungalows throughout Puerto
Rico.
Nechodoma's later work combined ornamentation and architecture in the manner of
Louis
Sullivan and includes magnificent residences that explode with colorful mosaic
tiles
and glass.
This book, profusely illustrated with nearly 200 photographs and drawings,
includes
a bibliography of Nechodoma's published projects from 1908 to 1927 and a list of
the location, dates, and current status of all his projects.
from the book cover
