October 21, 1959: The Guggenheim Museum Opens

October 21, 1959: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum moves into its new building, at 1071 5th Avenue at 89th Street, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The oval structure was the last building designed by America's leading architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who had died the preceding April 9, and becomes one of New York's iconic structures.

Solomon Robert Guggenheim (1861–1949) was a Philadelphia-born businessman and art collector. His original museum was part of the Plaza Hotel complex, 30 blocks to the south.

Part of the stretch of 5th Avenue known as "Museum Mile," anchored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it consists of a 6-story, bowl-shaped main gallery to the south, a four-story "monitor" to the north, and a 10-story annex to the northeast.

A 6-story helical ramp extends along the main gallery's perimeter, under a central ceiling skylight. The Thannhauser Collection is housed within the top 3 stories of the monitor, and there are additional galleries in the annex and a learning center in the basement. The building underwent extensive renovations from 1990 to 1992, when the annex was built, and it was renovated again from 2005 to 2008.

The museum's collection specializes in 20th Century art, including Cubist works of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Marcel Duchamps; Russian variations thereon by Marc Chagall and Wassily Kandinsky; and Albert Gleizes' 1915 Pont de Brooklyn, a Cubist version of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Pont de Brooklyn

Perhaps one should start with The Met, then work one's way up to the Museum of Modern Art, before taking on the Guggenheim. To put it politely, it's an acquired taste.

There are now also Guggenheim Museums in Venice, Italy, opening in 1980; and Bilbao, Spain, 1997. Previously, they had opened museums in Berlin, Germany, opening in 1997 but closing in 2013; Las Vegas, 2001-08; and Guadalajara, Mexico, 2007-09. One is being built in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, with an intended opening of 2025.

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October 21, 1959 was a Wednesday. Dominican baseball star George Bell and Welsh/Irish soccer star Kevin Sheedy were born.

The baseball season had ended 12 days earlier, with the Los Angeles Dodgers beating the Chicago White Sox in the World Series. Football was in midweek. A new NBA season had just begun, but no games were played on this day. There was 1 game played in the NHL: The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the New York Rangers, 3-2 at the old Madison Square Garden.

January 17, 1938: Frank Lloyd Wright's "Fallingwater" Is Completed

January 17, 1938: "Fallingwater" is completed in Springfield Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania. It is the most famous design of America's foremost architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Wright was born on June 8, 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin. He believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called "organic architecture." By 1900, he was already being hailed for his "prairie style" houses.

He fell into a bit of a rut after World War I, and by the 1930s, competitor Philip Johnson was calling him "the greatest architect of the 19th Century." And like a later Chicago-based legend, basketball star Michael Jordan, Wright took that personally. He upped his game, and the 1930s would feature his most-hailed designs.

Among these was a house he was contracted for by Edgar J. Kaufmann, president of Kaufmann's Department Store in Pittsburgh. He and his wife, Liliane, enjoyed outdoor activities like hiking and horseback riding. Their son, Edgar Jr., was a student of Wright's, and he introduced the design giant to his parents in 1934, at Taliesin, Wright's artists' colony in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

The Kaufmann's owned a remote property outside Pittsburgh, a small cabin near a waterfall, which they used as a Summer retreat. In December 1934, with these cabins deteriorating, Kaufmann contacted Wright, and asked him to build them a new house there.

Wright received the results of a survey of the area in March 1935. It took Wright until October 1935 to complete his final design, construction began in April 1936, and the house was completed on January 17, 1938. With its horizontal-dominated design of stone and concrete, built into the rock of a hill, what Edgar Jr. called "broad bands of windows," and an incorporation of the waterfall into the house itself, the construction cost $155,000 -- about $3.2 million in 2022 money. Almost immediately, the house was featured in Henry Luce's magazines Time and Life, and restored Wright's reputation as America's greatest architect -- living or dead.

Fallingwater was the Kaufmann family's weekend home from 1937 until 1963, when Edgar Jr. donated the property to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Liliane died in 1952, and Edgar Sr. in 1955. Edgar Jr. taught architecture and art history at Taliesin and at Columbia University in New York, living until 1989. Wright died on April 9, 1959, 6 months before the opening of his last commission, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Due to the area's unusual patterns of sunlight and humidity, and the presence of the waterfall as part of the design, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy has spent a great deal of money to restore Fallingwater. They now operate the house as a museum, with some of the Kaufmann family's art collection inside, including many paintings by Mexican artist Diego Rivera, who was a friend of theirs. The house also has a Museum Store. It is 67 miles southeast of Pittsburgh; and 45 miles north of Morgantown, West Virginia, home of West Virginia University.

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January 17, 1938 was a Monday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL had no games scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.