The Wright Way

Yet over the years, Joan Smith -- who has served on several Wright-related boards, as well helped spearhead fundraising for Pope-Leighey's restoration -- often asked the Mardens if the many Wright scholars she knew could come and see the home. The Mardens always declined.

Smith believes the main reason was that the flotsam of their exotic lives -- fishing poles, treasures from their travels and thousands of books -- cluttered and threatened to overtake the 2,576-square-foot space. Clutter was antithetical to Wright's stern less-is-more principle, which often manifested itself in homes with a distinct lack of usable storage space, attics or basements.

"They never allowed [the house] to be publicized," Smith says. "He would say, 'I don't think I'm a good steward of the house.' At one time he had a big red canoe sitting on a table in the living room. This was the way they lived. He had things like the canoe and the egg" -- an egg of an extinct aepyornis that Luis Marden found in Madagascar -- "diving masks, books piled everywhere. He was in some way ashamed of the way they lived in the house."

But by 1998, after Luis had become debilitated with Parkinson's disease and moved into a nursing home, the couple began thinking about preserving the house.

Shortly thereafter, neighbors along Chain Bridge Road began buzzing about the large home that tech tycoon Kimsey was building adjacent to the Marden property. Now complete, the 21,000-square-foot home, "The Falls," is one of the largest private residences in Virginia.

Retired banker Eugene Smith, who is Joan Smith's husband and the executor of the Mardens' estate, thought the logical buyer would be Kimsey, who would likely be interested in preserving the land on either side of his own property. Eugene Smith ran into AOL vice chairman Ted Leonsis at a party and asked if he would find out whether Kimsey would be interested in buying the property. The reply came back immediately: He was.

Kimsey, who is 65, has been heavily involved in local philanthropic projects since he retired from AOL in 1996. He is a former Army Ranger who grew up in Arlington and served in Vietnam. He has given more than $35 million to charitable causes, including $10 million to the Kennedy Center. The maverick businessman also has traveled the world in support of Refugees International and the International Commission on Missing Persons, which he chairs. Last year he went to Baghdad to support a mission identifying bodies in mass graves from Saddam Hussein's regime.

Although he's been a big supporter of the performing arts -- he's on the executive committees of the Washington Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra -- Kimsey was not known around town as an art collector. "He owns no Pollocks. He's not a collector of contemporary American art. The greatest piece of sculpture he has is a Frank Lloyd Wright house," says his friend Bill Dunlap, a McLean artist.

Eugene Smith carefully constructed the deeding of the property to guarantee that the building could not be torn down, so razing it would not be an option -- however inviting the thought had been to Kimsey at first blush.

But how would Kimsey proceed? Would he restore the house in keeping with the original plans? Or would he renovate? Kimsey -- who says he at first did not appreciate what he wryly calls the "cult" of Wright's followers -- initially toyed with the idea of renovating the building and turning it into a guest house. Although the deed wouldn't let him make major changes to the exterior, he could have made wholesale alterations to the inside of the home if he chose.

In his office high above 17th Street NW overlooking the Old Executive Office Building, Kimsey sits ramrod-straight in a chair and remembers the first time he toured the Marden property, a phalanx of contractors and architects in his wake. "I'd say, 'Why don't we add a window here?' And there would be gasps and stunned silence. Or 'Why don't we turn the garage into an extra bedroom?' More gasps and stunned silence," he recounts in a growly way. But he has a twinkle in his eye, and one senses that he never really intended to do anything of the sort.

For one thing, he'd already fallen under Ethel Marden's spell.