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!