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Modern classic

A Wright-inspired house continues to charm its owners with its simple distinction.

Diane Flaherty and Bill Gibson's house was designed and built 18 years after Frank Lloyd Wright's death, but Wright's influence shows in every corner of the building. "It's just amazing what a knockoff it is," says Flaherty, who bought the house with Gibson, her husband, in 1983.

Designed in 1977 by Greenfield architect John F. Bednarski, the house is in the "Usonian" style Wright saw as an expression of distinctly American sensibilities and aspirations. (Usonian, a term coined by Wright, is derived from "United States of North America.") At the heart of the Usonian ideology was the democratic impulse to put stylish single-family homes within reach of ordinary people.

Built into a hillside in a town near Amherst, the two-level Flaherty-Gibson house is relatively small - 2,200 square feet. Like other Usonians, it is designed to blend into the surrounding landscape. The mahogany-floored upper level holds the living, cooking, and dining areas as well as the main bedroom; on the lower level are a study and a bedroom for the couple's son, Casey, 11.

The preponderance of wood, stone, and glass - materials Wright thought could be combined inexpensively yet elegantly - is typical of the style. So are features like the mitered-glass corner windows, recessed light fixtures, carport (a Wright invention), the oversize open fireplace in the center of the house, and the living room cantilevered over a hillside. And, of course, the signature flat roof.

Bednarski, who designed the house for the previous owners, didn't set out to imitate Wright but hopes "I absorbed the principles" Wright stood for.

When she and Gibson bought the house, it had been on the market for more than a year, Flaherty says, but they loved it right away. "A lot of people think it's weird, it's too - what it is," she says.

And they both admit that, as happened in Wright's houses, practicality was sometimes sacrificed to design. The large open fireplace smoked up their9p,5l living room; they were forced to seal it up and use a wood stove.

The flat roof has caused problems, too: "We've got Lake Titicaca in one corner," says Gibson. But they won't hear of replacing it with a pitched roof, as has been proposed. And they were horrified by the suggestion of an energy auditor that they hang quilted window shades on the expanses of glass. "They don't care about aesthetics," he says.

As it is, the white ceiling of the living room seems to extend right through the top of a large window into the white underside of the roof overhang, drawing the eye outward and integrating interior and exterior spaces.

The couple remain attached to their house, with its combination of simplicity and distinction. There are no showy features or luxury accouterments such as a Jacuzzi, says Flaherty: "The effort was spent on the little things" - the details that the owners feel make their house not just home, but a work of art.