In December, Carbon Copy art gallery held its opening reception + inaugural art show, “Joy with Sharp Edges.”
The new, appointment only art gallery in Old Louisville is located in a building that is a blueprint carbon copy of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Winslow House.
Located at 1212 S. Fourth St. near Forage, the building was originally created in 1905 to be the headquarters of the Louisville’s Women’s Club by local architect Mason Maury, a decade after Wright designed the original at 515 Auvergne Pl. in River Forest, Illinois.
As a fan of Wright’s work, Mason took the blueprint of the modern monolith known as the Winslow House + recreated it in the sea of Victorian homes.
Originally, it was identical to its Illinois counterpart with its giant sloping roof and wide eaves, but after decades of disrepair + changing of hands, only traces of the similarities are still noticeable today — like the placement of the windows and horizontal striping details below them.
Mason, who died in 1919, is also responsible for 700+ Derby City buildings and pioneered Richardsonian Romanesque + Prairie School architecture in Kentucky, with Prairie-style being the notable style of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Here are three other notable buildings Mason designed:
- Louisville Trust Building at 5th and Jefferson Street
- The six-story Kenyon Building that was razed in 1974 + today the site of the Humana Building
- The 1903 Kaufanab-Straus Department store on Fourth Street, visible under the glass canopy of today’s 4th Street Live!
