by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: Being placed on the World Monuments Fund 2008 list of Most Endangered Sites may well be the best thing that’s happened to Florida Southern College (FSC) in the last 60 years. Located in Lakeland, Fla., FSC is the unheralded home to the largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in the world. Unfortunately, as has proven common with his buildings, Wright’s technology outpaced the knowledge of the day and resulted in a campus with serious structural flaws throughout. Now, with global attention focused on Wright’s forgotten campus, FSC is mounting a capital campaign to restore his 12 structures. On October 25, Wright’s newly restored Water Dome was rededicated.

The campus
In 1938, the president of Florida Southern sent a telegram to Wright asking him to build a “great education temple” on the college’s 100 acres. Wright accepted the commission and for a mere $13,000, designed 18 buildings to create what he—slighting Jefferson’s University of Virginia—called the “first uniquely American campus.” Because the college had grand ambitions on a pauper’s wallet, students were enlisted to help construct 12 of his 18 planned buildings. In fact, during World War II, women studying at the college by themselves completed the E.T. Roux Library. Although the dedication and determination of the FSC students of that time is admirable, the results of their unskilled labor, combined with Wright’s technical mistakes, have caused a perfect storm of systems breakdowns.

As technology has advanced, new HVAC has been added unsympathetically to Wright’s organic structures. His precast concrete blocks with hollow edges for rebar insertion have seriously deteriorated, in some places to the point where the rebar has returned to dust. Wright’s esplanades, a 1.5 mile network of covered walkways designed to connect the buildings and protect students from frequent afternoon showers, had begun to sag and shift dangerously. The esplanades have now been fully restored, the result of a $1.6 million grant from the State of Florida.

The Water Dome
Envisioned as a “fountain of knowledge,” the Water Dome was designed to be the centerpiece of the campus and homage to the journey undertaken by FSC students. Measuring 160 feet in diameter, FSC’s Water Dome is Wright’s largest constructed water feature. Built in 1948, the fountain design called for 74 high-powered water jets, but it never received the necessary plumbing. The Water Dome ran on a lone jet until 1968, when it was covered over in concrete. At a cost of $700,000, the newly rebuilt Water Dome now lives up to its ideal as the campus focal point and primary gathering place.

At the Water Dome premiere ceremony, FSC President Anne Kerr, PhD, said, “I am humbled by the awesome opportunity to serve as conservator for this spectacular legacy Wright left our college, our nation, and the world.”

What lies ahead
Now that the world is watching, Kerr hopes that Wright’s campus will have the opportunity to be fully restored. Currently working to raise funds to cover an anticipated $50 million cost, FSC is completing a comprehensive preservation plan with funding from the Getty Foundation. It is Kerr’s hope that, in addition to preserving Wright’s buildings, some of his unbuilt designs could also be erected on the campus. “That’s my dream: to at least do one of them,” she says.