Reporter Volume 25, No.9 October 28, 1993

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Bureau Staff
The School of Architecture and Planning will hold a scholars
conference and workshop on the Darwin D. Martin House on Saturday,
Oct. 30, and Sunday, Oct. 31. Invited scholars will review and discuss
aspects of the restoration plan for the property and make
recommendations for its operation as a house museum. 
The conference, co-sponsored by the School of Architecture and
Planning and through a major grant fromThe Buffalo News, will be held
in the Martin House, 125 Jewett Parkway, Buffalo. While the conference
is not open to the public, its conclusions will be reported at a
public forum to be held from 2-4 p.m. on Oct. 31 in the Buffalo and
Erie County Historical Society on Nottingham Terrace in Buffalo.
Participants will include parties to the agreement signed in March
1993 that outlined the program for the property's restoration. The
signatories are the University at Buffalo; the State University of New
York (SUNY) Construction Fund; the New York State Office of Parks,
Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the Martin House Restoration
Corporation. 
Invited scholars, described as the greatest collection of Frank Lloyd
Wright scholars and experts ever to gather in Buffalo, include
nationally regarded restoration architects and architectural
historians; a principal of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation;
representatives of Wright properties operated as house-museums at
Taliesin West in Arizona, Taliesin East in Wisconsin, the Wright Home
and Studio in Illinois, and Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. Wright's
grandson, architect Eric Lloyd Wright, also will attend the
conference. 
Bruno Freschi, dean of the UB School of Architecture and Planning,
helped plan the event with the assistance of a consulting focus group.
He says the visiting scholars have been asked to explore several
issues and advise parties to the agreement with regard to the
following: 
	n The technical and architectural implications of conservation
and restoration of the building fabrics, furnishings and artwork.
	n The social and historical significance of the building and
of the larger estate, part of which was demolished in the 1950s.
	n How to develop the interpretive, or museum qualities, of
this building; that is, its position in the context of Buffalo's
history and of Wright's architectural legacy.
	n The operational and functional aspects of running a 20th
century property as a living museum and tourist attraction in Western
New York.
The Martin House was built between 1903 and 1905 for businessman
Darwin D. Martin. One of the finest extant examples of Wright's
"Prairie Style" of residential architecture, it has been owned by SUNY
since 1963 and operated under the stewardship of UB since that time.