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Texas Historical Commission will probe disputed historical marker in Bandera County

By , Staff Writer
Susan and Jody Jenkins show their 1940's Frank Lloyd Wright designed pilots lounge at the Flying L Guest Ranch on September 14, 2016.
Susan and Jody Jenkins show their 1940's Frank Lloyd Wright designed pilots lounge at the Flying L Guest Ranch on September 14, 2016.TOM REEL, STAFF / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

BANDERA — The Texas Historical Commission plans to take a closer look at whether Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings at the Flying L Guest Ranch, as asserted on a state historical marker dedicated here last month.

The agency announced the review last week amid continuing criticism from the famed architect’s admirers, who say there’s insufficient proof to credit him with crafting the pilot’s lounge and nine guest villas at the resort south of town, which opened in 1947 to considerable fanfare as the nation’s first fly-in dude ranch.

“We will square it away and find out what the truth of it is, because we view those markers as a very concrete expression of the state’s history,” commission spokesman Chris Florance said. “We want them to be accurate.”

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Bob Brinkman, a member of the state agency’s marker staff who similarly pledged to investigate the matter months ago, did not return repeated calls on the subject. The commission has few investigators and relies largely on local sponsors of proposed markers to research and substantiate historical claims.

Brinkman had advised ranch owners Susan and Jody Jenkins in October to delay the dedication planned that month to allow time for additional research. Florance said the commission received no additional information from local sponsors and had not contacted critics who have dismissed the marker’s claims, initially in a Texas Architect magazine piece on Oct. 5.

“It wasn’t controversial to us. They had their documentation,” Florance said of the initial application for the marker. “We didn’t start hearing the feedback until the marker and text were approved.”

He said the agency has options if it finds the marker contains “a significant inaccuracy.”

“We’ll either make an amendment to it or add some sort of interpretative plaque, or can have the marker completely redone,” Florance said.

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The Texas Architect article credited the former San Antonio firm Smith, Pitts & MacPherson with designing the pilot’s lounge for the resort.

The sharpest digs came from Wright scholar and author William A. Storrer, a visiting professor of architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, who terms the purported Wright link “laughable.”

Interviewed last fall, he faulted the state agency for not consulting him, nor the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, before approving the marker last January.

“I would be pleased to talk with the commission if that would help,” Storrer said by email Friday. “I must be convinced by the evidence, which should include plans signed by Wright, correspondence by Wright about the project, a photo of Wright at the project site, or any other hard evidence.”

To claim a Wright connection without that evidence is “a travesty based on greed, for profits in showing the place,” Storrer said.

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The Jenkinses said they remained confident of Wright’s role based on the buildings’ designs, the recollections of locals and documents unearthed by their research.

Susan Jenkins said Wednesday she was certain of it, proffering two 1963 newspaper reports on a change in ranch management as evidence of work there by Wright, who died in 1959.

“Another outstanding feature of the ranch is its deluxe guest units, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright,” read an article in the Bandera Bulletin. A similar report appeared in the San Antonio Express-News.

The couple proceeded with the Dec. 29 dedication ceremony in part so that outgoing county commissioners involved in the project could attend before leaving office this month. Bandera County Historical Commission members also stand by the marker’s claim that Jack Lapham, a retired oilman and Army Air Corps colonel, hired Wright to design resort buildings.

“As far as I’m concerned, Wright did it,” said Roy Dugosh, chair of the local commission. “Experts are wrong all the time.”

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The marker says Lapham, who died in 1956, spared no expense on his 542-acre Flying L Dude Ranch, also getting Stanley Marcus, of Neiman Marcus retail fame, to conduct a fashion show at its opening, featured in Life Magazine.

The Life article didn’t mention Wright, though. And critics note a 1947 news article linking Smith, Pitts, and MacPherson to the Flying L pilot’s lounge and comments found online attributed to the late Harry L. Geron, who worked for the San Antonio firm, recalling Lapham hiring it for “quonset style” Flying L buildings.

The ranch’s air strip was long ago replaced by a golf course. Last year the Bandera Economic Development Corp. allocated $10,000 to the Jenkinses to establish a museum in the former pilot’s lounge with exhibits on ranch history and the claimed link to Wright.

Susan Jenkins said she’ll soon seek $50,000 more from the BEDC to fund the transformation of the now-celebrated quonset style lounge, which for decades was used for storage before it was cleaned out and converted into a cafe-bar.

Adding such an attraction would “bring a different species of tourists here,” said BEDC Board President Art Crawford.

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Elenora Goodley, a local commission member, also has high hopes for the attraction, telling the dedication crowd, “It’s Bandera’s answer to the Alamo.”

She rejected the doubts on Wright’s role as self-inflicted ignorance, noting the critics haven’t bothered to come inspect the buildings.

“They don’t want to admit they missed them. That’s what it’s all about,” said Goodley, who quoted Brinkman as verbally authorizing the dedication event to proceed.

A spokesman for the Wright Foundation in Arizona declined comment except to say it had no records of him designing the buildings in Bandera County.

Nor is proof found in Wright archives maintained by Columbia University, noted Paul Ringstrom, an aficionado of Wright, in a Sept. 28 email to Brinkman.

“Many buildings that were designed by Mr. Wright’s apprentices have been mistaken as the work of the master,” wrote Ringstrom, an Iowa resident who worked at the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy in Chicago.

zeke@express-news.net

Zeke has primarily covered the Texas Hill Country since joining the San Antonio Express-News in 1996.