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The Annie Pfeiffer Chapel is being restored by Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker Architects (MCWB).

In central Florida, on the campus of Florida Southern College, stand no fewer than 11 Frank Lloyd Wright–designed buildings—the largest collection of the famed architect’s work gathered on one site. Built over nearly two decades, from 1941–1958, Child of the Sun—as the buildings are collectively known—was given landmark status in 2012. But restoration efforts, overseen by Albany-based Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker Architects (MCWB), were by that point already underway. In 2007, the firm completed the Water Dome, a wading pool animated by vaulted jets of water, which Wright had intended as the campus's centerpiece but never actually built.

Among the several key buildings MCWB was charged with restoring, none proved as difficult as the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel. The chapel features Wright’s distinctive textile block system, first used in 1923 on his famed John Storer House in Hollywood, California. Wright designed the blocks to reflect his concept of an “organic” architecture that appeared to arise naturally from its surroundings. At Florida Southern College, these modules are used most sculpturally at the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel; but a 1944 hurricane and a misguided 1981 restoration campaign—not to mention decades of exposure—have left much of the structure's blocks compromised. As MCWB soon discovered, the costs of replacing the thousands of elaborately patterned textile blocks used to construct the building would be enormous.....Continue Reading

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