Villa Zila: Wright, Sullivan, and the Griffins
Here is a “lost” building in Palm Beach, Florida with a Chicago connection. During its existence, many people believed Villa Zila was a Frank Lloyd Wright design but it was actually the work of husband-and-wife team Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. They had both been employees of Wright; Marion was first hired in 1895 and became his “right hand woman” off and on for nearly fifteen years. When Wright went to Europe in 1909, he offered his practice to Marion but she declined, although she ended up finishing a number of commissions he abandoned, like the David Amberg House in Grand Rapids, Michigan and three neighboring homes in Decatur, Illinois. Between 1901-06, Walter helped Wright “break the box” by developing more open, multi-level spaces, like the Larkin Building and Ward Wilits House. When Walter wasn’t made partner, he quit in disgust.
But let’s get back to Villa Zila, the oceanfront residence in Palm Beach, Florida that was commissioned by prominent Chicago photographer William Koehne and his wife Zila, who was the cousin of architect Louis Sullivan, Wright’s former employer. That family connection (their fathers both had Irish roots) explains why Zila’s husband William Koehne had taken portraits of Sullivan as well as some of his architectural work. Estranged for 20 years, Wright and Sullivan were not on speaking terms until a reconciliation in 1914. It’s not known the manner in which Zila established initial contact with Wright, but the project took off around 1909-10 while Wright was away in Germany and Italy, staying for about a year. That might explain how it got in the hands of Marion Mahony Griffin; her original presentation drawings for Villa Zila are in the archives of Northwestern University and other material in Palm Beach’s Flagler Museum while nothing proving Wright’s authorship has ever been found.
The Griffins might not have received the actual commission, but like a lot of Wright’s work post-1909, they were the ones who ended up completing the villa between 1910-13. Walter and Marion designed a building from scratch for clients who assumed they were getting a Wright original, which explains why the Koehnes always insisted their home was by Wright. Construction of the seasonal residence took place throughout 1913 and was supervised by local real estate developer & builder (and future Palm Beach mayor) Cooper C. Lightbown. As reported by the Palm Beach Daily News, Zila Koehne moved into her new “daringly modern home” in January 1914. It was the first private residence to be built on the Atlantic side of the narrow barrier island and located on the brand new Ocean Boulevard, just two blocks north of Palm Beach’s famed Worth Avenue. Just a decade earlier Henry Flagler, a Standard Oil tycoon, had established the “winter season” in the area with his Whitehall mansion. It’s no surprise the Koehnes, who were members of the social elite, would want to escape Chicago winters.
German-born William Louis Koehne owned a photography studio at the top of Chicago’s Monroe Building (he had previously worked out of the Bush Temple of Music at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Clark Street). The official photographer for the Armour Institute of Technology, Koehne also worked for anthropologist Frederick Starr, documenting the indigenous people of Mexico. With his wife Zila Patterson (who he married in 1895) and two children Perry and Jack, Koehne lived in a beautiful home at 917 West Castlewood Terrace in the Uptown neighborhood. A Mason and Shriner, it sounds like William was incredibly social as he belonged to a number of the city’s best clubs, including the Chicago Athletic and Germania Clubs as well as the Photographers Association of America. While his wife was described as a “charming hostess” always ready to entertain friends and visiting photographers into their home, either in Chicago or Palm Beach. According to the Chicago Examiner, William and his son Jack spent three months in the Bahamas and Palm Beach in 1913, a year before his new winter home with an attached two-story photography studio was completed.
The Koehnes were known for having a good time, occasionally shocking the “more staid representatives of society.” In 1921 Villa Zila was the location of a “monkey wedding,” which was described in the April 7th edition of the South Bend News-Times as a union between Lucille and Pedro Chico, who smoked several cigarettes during the ceremony and reception.
The Koehnes’ avant-garde lifestyle certainly matched their new modern home. Its strikingly radical form is a great example of the Griffins’ experimental designs after their marriage in 1911 and the announcement in May of 1912 that their entry for the new Australian capitol city of Canberra had won an international competition. The interior of the L-shaped floor plan (Walter had first created it for Wright’s Thomas House in 1901) was completely open, interrupted only by a double fireplace, while there was great contrast between the simplicity of the villa itself with the studio’s large windows of glass (notice the geometric muntins). There was a walkout terrace on the roof that allowed the family to take in views of the Atlantic Ocean. So many of the home’s details are striking, even today whether its the jutting window or the surface and massing of the overall design. Villa Zila was ahead of its time by twenty years as the residence looks right out of the International Style movement with its stark cubic forms, large areas of glass, trellised eaves, and cantilevered balcony.
After Zila’s death in 1932, William moved into a bungalow on the western edge of his property. It was briefly rented out to Florenz Ziegfeld and Billie Burke that same year. William and Zila’s son Jack, who later became the vice-president of his father’s photography studios, made local headlines in 1944 when he was arrested for stolen property, specifically tires stripped from a new car. After William remarried, he finally sold the home in 1945 to New York businessman Phillip Reid, who unsympathetically converted it into a motel called Shorwinds two years later. The alterations by local architect Belford Shoumate completely butchered the design, stripping the design of its unique qualities like the windows, balconies, and roof overhangs.
William Koehne continued to reside in Palm Beach, dying there at the age of 95 in 1965. Worse was to follow for his villa, which was little known to the public. In June of 1974 a 22-year-old college student named Marta Galicki temporarily saved the structure, stopping its demolition after she discovered its existence. Believing it to be a Wright design, the state historical sites intern got the developers Michael Burrows and Howard Kaplan to consider moving it but that was not to be. A six-story block of so-called “luxury” condominiums soon replaced this outstanding design, a great example of not just the Griffins’ mature work but also a precursor to modernist architecture in Florida. It’s interesting to point out that Hermann von Holst, the architect who took over Wright’s firm but hired the Griffins to actually complete the work, later moved to nearby Boca Raton in the 1920s. He designed many of the Spanish Revival residences in the town’s Floresta subdivision, including his own, which is now known as the Lavender House. While that survives, it’s a shame the Griffin’s progressive design for the Koehnes did not. It deserved a better fate. Not only was Villa Zila an architectural tour-de-force but it was probably one of the first buildings in Florida to be designed by a woman architect. Its demolition resulted in this ground-breaking modern design being forgotten, forever lost to history and negatively impacting the architectural legacy of the Griffins.