July 14 (Bloomberg) -- Along a curving street lined with handsome Queen Annes and well-tended Tudors, the Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, New York, shatters the genteel calm with its muscular power.

It's hard to believe a work of architecture so masterful had to be rescued from ruin. It took a 12-year restoration, now almost complete and costing close to $50 million, to reveal a glory not seen in decades.

The coiled energy of Frank Lloyd Wright's shifting, crisscrossing piers and roofs can't be confined by mere property lines. This house looks ready to sail into the endless space of the continent across waves of tall grass.

Wright built the house in 1905 for Darwin D. Martin, an executive at Larkin Soap Co., a mail-order house that grew rapidly using techniques an Internet entrepreneur would admire. The mercurial Wright, 36, was just hitting his stride when Martin, 38, asked him to design a starter house on one edge of the property.

Under a long hip roof, Wright anchored a T-shaped living, dining and library area with a massive fireplace. In elegantly merging these spaces, Wright was famously breaking down the upright boxy houses of the time into the low, restless proportions that hugged the flat land. Thrilled, Martin commissioned Wright to build the 15,000-square-foot main house, where Wright expanded the same arrangement in grand style, turning it all perpendicular to the first house.

Raw Power

Massive brick piers form recesses at the corners so the long, low hip roofs appear to float. Wright extends more interlocking piers, like great haunches, into the landscape. The house exerts a raw power that's unusual because he didn't use the decorative finials or lacy, embossed panels found in his other houses of the time.

The interior is still being restored, though Wright's characteristic expansiveness is clear in the primary living spaces that flow liquidly together and open up views in three directions. Wright's justly famous art-glass windows elegantly filter daylight.

Breaking down the rigid hierarchies of Victorian space resonated with Martin, who hoped this house would encourage the rich family life that was lacking in his own childhood. The house has an unusually direct, masculine style in its cream-colored walls and gold-flecked ceilings.

Pergola to Goddess

From the entryway, Wright flung an elaborate hip-roofed pergola -- a shaft of space 100 feet long -- culminating in a reproduction of an ancient statue of the goddess Nike framed by the tropical leaves of a plant conservatory. It ties together a carriage house and Martin's original house (now called Barton, where his sister ultimately lived).

Though the Martin house complex was among the most celebrated of Wright's early work, it was abandoned for some two decades after the death of Martin's widow, Isabelle, during the Great Depression. Part of the land was sold off, and the pergola and carriage house were sacrificed so that three crude apartment buildings could be wedged between the Martin and Barton houses.

Thanks to Martin, Wright was able to design Larkin Co.'s 1906 administrative building, a brooding temple that was arguably the most innovative business building of its time. It would certainly rank among the greatest buildings of the 20th century had it not been demolished in 1950.

Luckily, Martin's house didn't meet the same fate. Martin House Restoration Corp. was able to buy back the land, including a modest house built by Wright for the Martins' gardener.

Matching Bricks

Much of the cost of the 12-year restoration went for taking down the apartments and rebuilding the destroyed pergola and carriage house, working with Buffalo architecture firm Hamilton Houston Lownie. It took six years to develop bricks that would match the originals. It took three more years to duplicate the patina of new roof tiles. It is hard to imagine a more painstaking restoration.

The ensemble now can be appreciated for the first time in decades, and it was worth the effort. This is the most narcissistic of Wright houses -- and that's saying something. Wright used the windows, eves and piers to frame other elements of the house in perfectly composed abstractions.

A glass-walled visitor center by Manhattan architect Toshiko Mori is scheduled for completion by year-end. Her key gesture is to present the garden side of the house as if it's on exhibit. It's the perfect solution for a house so in love with itself.

Docent-led tours are available at Darwin D. Martin House, 125 Jewett Parkway, Buffalo, New York; +1-716-856-3858; http://www.darwinmartinhouse.org.

(James S. Russell is Bloomberg's U.S. architecture critic. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this story: James S. Russell in New York at jamesrussell@earthlink.net.

Last Updated: July 14, 2008 00:01 EDT