|
| Photo by David Bader. |
This story appears in the November 2010 issue of Milwaukee Magazine.
story by Colleen Heather Rogan, photos by David Bader
Prominent Milwaukee architect John Randal McDonald was once labeled a “poor man’s Frank Lloyd Wright,” but he overcame that tag to design homes for clients all over the world, including celebrities such as Perry Como, Bjorn Borg, Maureen O’Hara and James Garner. In 1953, he designed “Ravine House,” a modernist home in River Hills celebrating organic design on a plot of wooded land then known as the Green Tree subdivision. Although he kept within the relatively modest budget of clients Norman and Charlotte Wegner, McDonald created a “little jewel,” as he often called it.
Decades later, while working with the architect in the latter stage of his career, builder Dan Ward had occasion to explore the home. “Looking outside to such an overgrowth of nature from the cool and calm of the home’s interior felt just like being on vacation in a cabin up north,” Ward recalls. Little did he imagine that by the end of the year, the home would be his. After all, McDonald often boasted that people only left the homes he designed “on their backs,” and the Wegners were quite alive. But when fate stepped in and Charlotte’s health necessitated a move to a warmer climate, her husband turned to Ward, recognizing his admiration for her home’s design. Ward bought it in 1997.
Her confidence in him turned out to be well-placed: Ward, today a partner in ArchiSpec – a firm specializing in high-end, vastly oversized windows and doors – has been dedicated to integrating every repair, addition and update into the home’s natural flow of form and function. Plus, he’s got plenty of anecdotes to share about the fun and challenges of working so closely with the dynamic architect of his home. “McDonald [who died in 2003] was a lively, bigger-than-life character who truly believed design was his calling,” Ward says. “In fact, his favorite words to hear were, ‘Will you be my architect?’”
Read the entire article
http://content.yudu.com/A1pd3t/1110ModernMarvel/
