By Alexandra Pecci
Correspondent

When die-hard Frank Lloyd Wright fans make pilgrimages to the houses he designed, snapping photos can provide the ultimate souvenirs.

“You can really take almost any perspective of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs and sort of frame them artfully, and that view itself becomes a piece of art that you can take away,” says Jane Seney, educator for tour and docent programs at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester.

The Currier owns the Isadore J. and Lucille Zimmerman House, the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in New England that’s open to the public, and for the next three months, visitors have the opportunity to spend an extended amount of time taking photos of its exterior after touring it.

“You get to spend an additional half hour outside the house, photographing any part of the house that you’re interested in,” Seney says. “This is something that real Frank Lloyd Wright fans love to do.”

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the house for Dr. and Mrs. Zimmerman of Manchester in the late 1940s and ‘50s in his Usonian style, creating a building that’s at once utilitarian and artful. There’s no attic, basement or garage, but “the details of the house were what made it really sort of exquisite and wonderful to be in,” Seney says.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed every aspect of the house — from the gardens and the furniture down to the mailbox, which “introduces” visitors to the house because it’s made out of the same materials. The Zimmermans wanted Frank Lloyd Wright’s sensibilities reflected on the inside of their home, too.

“They were really sort of taken with his philosophical approach to architecture and even his approach to interior design and the way that he had decorated his home,” Seney says. They draped animal skins over their furniture like he did and commissioned items they’d seen in his home, like lamps and a quartet music stand for their own.

After spending their lives as patrons of the Currier, the Zimmermans left the property to the museum in 1988. The museum spent two years restoring the home before opening it for tours.

“One of the things that really aided them in the restoration was all the pictures that the Zimmermans had taken of their home through the 36 years that they lived there,” Seney says. She calls the Zimmermans “wonderful and enthusiastic amateur photographers,” who kept boxes and boxes of photos that they took of each other, some staged and posed, others candid family shots. Some of those photos are highlighted over the next few months during the tour of the house’s interior, a nod to the special photographer’s tour.

Seney says the idea for the photographer’s tour actually grew from the Zimmerman House’s docents, who themselves often travel to see the other Frank Lloyd Wright sites and bring back photos. People come to Manchester from all over the world to see the house, so the museum wanted to build the opportunity to photograph it right into the tour.

“More and more on the tours that we run here we get people coming from further and further away,” Seney say. “They always want to have more time at the house to photograph.”

If you go
What: Photographer’s Tours
Where: Zimmerman House, Manchester
When: Photographer’s tours are Saturdays from now until June at 10:30 a.m.; Regular tours are Mondays at 2 p.m., Thursdays at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m., Fridays at 2 p.m., Saturdays at 1 p.m., and Sundays at 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
How: Photographer’s tours cost $25, regular tours cost $20. Price includes general admission to the Currier.
Note: Tours begin at the Currier Museum. A short bus ride brings you to the house, which is only accessible through the guided tour.  Contact the Currier online or by phone at least week in advance to make your tour reservations.
Learn more: www.currier.org or 603-669-6144, ext. 108