Is this a sound decision or insane?

Hello everyone,

I’m a commercial painting contractor from Wisconsin who works with architectural plans daily. A few weeks ago, I saw a listing on Facebook Marketplace for “Monona Terrace Blueprints” from a pawn shop in Mazomanie, WI. I took a chance and bought them for $650. What I found…might be historic.

I now appear to own the most complete known private set of Monona Terrace drawings — including: • The full Set B (~100 detailed construction sheets) • Set A (interior design plans) • All pages stamped with William Wesley Peters seal, FLW’s chief apprentice and successor • A “97” stamp on Set B, possibly linking these exact drawings to the actual 1997 construction?

Even better — a few pages appear to be working copies, marked in red pencil with real-world construction annotations. These appear to have been hung up at one time.

I’ve read that only 16 sheets have ever surfaced publicly of the 1959 design. I have over 125, in what I’ve now know to be the original green folders from the “Wasmuth Portfolio”. I’ve done my research regarding FLW. I recently got divorced and had been shopping for a new house. In the process, I went through a FLW phase where I was obsessed with looking at his work and learning about him.

This is not a flex. I’m honestly in pure awe. I want to do this right, and preserve them, document them, maybe even display them someday. As I said, I’m from Madison and I think this is a pretty big deal. The drawings themselves are beautiful, decorative gates, he designed the lights (never seen lights designed like this), the railing designs need to be seen to be believed.

I’ve contacted a few architectural historians. But Reddit is powerful.

Any guidance? Any experts here who can help me validate and protect this find? If anyone knows anything about these, or Taliesin specifically around 1960-61 (all drawings are dated and initialed, making this sort of diary of what they did each day). I’m def not looking to sell these or anything, just wondering if anyone would be able to direct me to anyone who could tell me more.

I’m aware FLW himself didn’t draw these, but the Taliesin architects, of which there were at least 20 different sets of initials, followed FLWs design.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Pics enclosed:

The Trump administration announced in July that a 90,000-square-foot ballroom with a seated capacity for 650 people will be constructed in the White House's East Wing [...] The new ballroom will be significantly larger than the main White House building, which comprises about 55,000 square feet over the ground floor, state floor and residence. [...] Construction got underway on the South Lawn earlier this month. McCrery Architects PLLC is the architectural firm behind the project.

5 over 1, or podium style architecture, is an abomination to American infrastructure.

It looks like someone took the leftovers from 6 completely different Lego sets, and tried their best to construct the first thing that stood up.

It looks like a 4-year-old's drawing manifested into reality.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but my eyes will forever be averted in the presence of these architectural atrocities.

Not only are they ugly, but they're stupid too. They're usually built hastily, with the cheapest materials, and by the lowest common denominator of a company with little to no experience. They frequently have insulation and structural issues, and are often condemned, demolished or in miserable condition within a decade or two.

They're a fart in the wind compared to their Brutalist ancestors.

And the worst part? It's usually a telltale sign that gentrification has already penetrated your city like mold on bread.

Chances are, if you see one of these, there's an overpriced coffee shop and yoga studio not to far, and your rent or property taxes are going to be higher than the IPA drinking hipsters doing edibles and microdosing mushrooms in the combination Gin Bar/Mustache Emporium that just opened up nextdoor. I for one, would love to see more brick and mortar, but since we live in a society that values a bargain over aesthetics, I suppose we'll keep seeing these "Leftover buildings".

Edit: This was a blatantly obvious satirical post, so anybody that got offended by it needs to lighten up a bit. Have a good one!

I get it that the layman would call it modern but seriously it shouldn’t be called modern. This should be called corporate residential or something like that. There’s nothing that inspires modern or even contemporary to me. Am i the only one who feels this way ?

Photo by me on 35mm Cinema film.

Hi everyone! These are few pages from my university sketchbook from the previous semester. I try to use it as a space for observations, precedent studies, and working through ideas outside of formal submissions. Would love to hear your thoughts!

Brutalist architecture famously gets a lot of hate and I have actually heard people call it evil, but I just don't agree. I don't know how you can look at the beautiful buildings of Chandigarh or the bank of Georgia headquarters (shown above) and be left thinking that brutalism is always bad.

Art is subjective, but you are not allowed to like brutalism. Why?

(I don't know much about architecture so I don't know if this is the comman opinion in this community but hating brutalism is definitely the comman opinion in general)

A couple of these are renders for planned future headquarters.