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FLORIDA SOUTHERN
COLLEGE: E. T. ROUX 2017 (1941 -
S.252) |
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FLORIDA
SOUTHERN COLLEGE E. T. ROUX
LIBRARY EXTERIOR
2017
ANNIE PFEIFFER CHAPEL EXTERIOR
2017
ANNIE PFEIFFER
CHAPEL INTERIOR 2017
ADDITIONAL WRIGHT STUDIES |
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Florida Southern College, E. T. Roux
Library, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 - S.252). Set of 27
exterior photographs of the E. T. Roux Library, photographed
on April 4, 2017. On a trip to Florida, we took the
opportunity to visit and photograph the Florida Southern
College Campus. April 4 was a beautiful, sunny Florida
spring day. The second FSC building designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright in 1941, was the E.T. Roux Library. But due to the
war it was not completed until 1945. While students served
as construction workers at the Pfeiffer Chapel, the library
was unique as it was almost completely built by women. Due
to the war, many of the male students had enlisted in the
armed forces. The dedication ceremony was held on March 17,
1945. The library became one of the busiest places on the
campus.
Henry-Russell Hitchcock wrote: “The largest commission
Wright has undertaken since the Imperial Hotel twenty years
before, in the number of separate buildings and the
organization of the group plan the most elaborate and
complex that has ever come to execution, is Florida Southern
College in Lakeland, Florida. The project dates from 1938
and the first of the sixteen buildings planned were begun in
1940. The Annie Pfeiffer Memorial Chapel and three seminar
buildings have been completed; the library is now in
construction; so that the general character of the whole can
now be appreciated, although it will doubtless be many years
more before the whole group is completed...
“The separate buildings, woven together as one by the
covered esplanades, are chiefly constructed of cement
blocks, their delicately patterned surfaces contrasted with
smooth vertical concrete slabs. The scale of the blocks is
smaller than in the California work and the Arizona projects
of the twenties. The more frequent use of pierced blocks,
with the interstices sometimes filled with cast coloured
glass, gives a rather textile effect, light, cool and
serene, almost feminine in the manner of crisply starched
white hamburg lace. Since the natural environment is all a
matter of the flat planes of land and water in which the
quality of the light and of the air are the most important
elements, the architecture, unlike the houses in the wooded
North or on the rock-ribbed desert, makes no use of wood or
of natural stone. It is, indeed, a very unmaterial
architecture and yet not papery, since the blocks give a
certain visible thickness to the thin-spun, tenuously
interwoven planes, and the whole is penetrated by the air
and animated by the delicate pattern of the shadows cast by
the brilliant sun....” In The Nature of Materials, 1942,
p.99-100.
The E. T. Roux Library was one of three round structures on
campus. The others included the Ordway Industrial Arts
Building Theater and the Water Dome. There also is a
circular dome over the Planetarium in the Polk County
Science Building.
Roux Library’s construction predominantly utilizes
reinforced |
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concrete, combining both cast-in-place components and
masonry units. What truly sets the structure apart are the
concrete blocks designed by Wright, which feature intricate
recesses and tiny openings filled with colored glass cubes.
This creative detail bathes the interior in gentle, shifting
light, adding a unique ambiance to the library’s
environment. Notably, these signature blocks are
incorporated across all buildings on campus, establishing a
harmonious and cohesive aesthetic that ties the
architectural landscape together.
Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer wrote: “The plan of the Roux Library
derives from that of the Barnsdall Little Dipper
kinder-garten. The large circular terrace in the Barnsdall
opus here has been devoted to a reading room, labelled on
the plan as "study terraces"; the long
classroom-kindergarten area with its lovely lantern roof has
been made into a stack area, lit in this application of the
original by a lantern roof as well.
“The entrance to the library is in the center, on either
side. Students and visitors coming into the building are
thus right at the librarian's desk, with reading area on one
side, the stacks on the other. A series of open wells
provide light for the stacks, while a series of clerestory
windows give ample indirect light for the reading area.
“The concrete blocks of the building are a combination of
smooth blocks, textured ones, and blocks with perforations
for colored glass cubes. Roof and esplanade covers are
trimmed with copper. As with all the buildings at Florida
Southern, the Library is connected to the other buildings
with the esplanade.”
Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph, 1937-1941, Pfeiffer, 1986/1990, p .124.
Sometime between 1969 and 1970 the library was renamed the
Thad Buckner Building.
Textile block construction was used throughout the Frank
Lloyd Wright designed buildings at Florida Southern College
from 1938 - 1954, and again in 2013 in the FSC Usonian
House. Two “C” shaped channels can be found in this
fragment. The block’s pattern on the face of the block can
also be found. The aggregate mixture for the concrete block
would consist of soil and crushed stone from the building's
site, creating a light tan mix. Explore the campus and
you’ll discover textile blocks used throughout the Frank
Lloyd Wright designed buildings at Florida Southern College.
We
have assembled a set of 27 exterior photographs of the E. T.
Roux Library, photographed by Douglas M. Steiner on April 4,
2017. These photographs aim to capture and preserve a moment
in time, documenting the intricate details that contribute
to the overall design and reflecting the current condition
of the home. To expedite their addition to our website, we
have chosen to omit individual descriptions for each image.
Original 23 X 15 high res digital images. |
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| 1) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-1). |
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| 2) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-2). |
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| 3) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-3). |
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| 4) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-4). |
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| 5) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-5). |
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| 6) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-6). |
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| 7) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-7). |
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| 8) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-8). |
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| 9) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-9). |
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| 10) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-10). |
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| 11) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-11). |
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| 12) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-12). |
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| 13) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-13). |
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| 14) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-14). |
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| 15) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-15). |
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| 16) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-16). |
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| 17) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-17). |
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| 18) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-18). |
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| 19) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-19). |
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| 20) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-20). |
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| 21) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-21). |
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| 22) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-22). |
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| 23) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-23). |
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| 24) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-24). |
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| 25) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-25). |
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| 26) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-26). |
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| 27) Florida Southern College, E. T.
Roux Library Exterior, Lakeland, Florida, 2017 (1941 -
S.252). 23 X 15 high res digital image, photographed by
Douglas M. Steiner on April 4, 2017. Copyright 2026.
(ST#2017.63.0426-27). |
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