Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8 1867—April 9 1959) was one of the most prominent and influential architects during the first half of the 20th century. He developed a series of highly individual styles over his extraordinarily long architectural career (spanning the years 1887-1959) and influenced the entire course of American architecture and building. To this day, he remains probably America's most famous architect.

"The greatest artist this century has ever produced seems, at last, to be coming into his own...America's other great artists - our best painters, sculptors, composers - don't really rank with the tops of all time. They're just not Rembrandt, Michelangelo or Beethoven. Wright alone has that kind of standing...he's among the greatest architects who ever practiced."

-Robert Campbell, Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural journalist

Wright was also well known for his colorful personal life that frequently made headlines, notably for his three long relationships with Catherine Lee Tobin whom he married in 1889, Miriam Noel begining in 1922, and Olga Milanov Hinzenberg (Olgivanna) whom he married in 1928.

Biography

Early years

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in the agricultural town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, United States, on June 8, 1867, of Welsh descent just two years after the end of the American Civil War. He was brought up with strong Unitarian and transcendental principles. (Eventually, in 1905, he would design the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois.) As a child he spent a great deal of time playing with the kindergarten educational blocks by Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel (known as Froebel Gifts) given to him by his mother. These consisted of various geometrically shaped blocks that could be assembled in various combinations to form three-dimensional compositions. Wright in his autobiography talks about the influence of these exercises on his approach to design. Many of his buildings are notable for the geometrical clarity they exhibit.

Wright's home in Oak Park, Illinois

Wright began his formal education in 1885 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School for Engineering, where he was a member of a fraternity, Phi Delta Theta. He took classes part-time for two years while apprenticing under Allan Darst Conover, a local builder and professor of civil engineering. In 1887, Wright left the university without taking a degree (although he was granted an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the university in 1955) and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he joined the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Within the year, he had left Silsbee to work for the firm of Adler & Sullivan. Beginning in 1890, he was assigned all residential design work for the firm. In 1893, Wright was fired from Adler & Sullivan by Louis Sullivan himself, after Sullivan discovered that Wright had been accepting clients independently from the firm. Wright established his own practice and home in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, IL. By 1901, Wright's completed projects numbered approximately fifty, including many houses in his hometown. He married the daughter of a wealthy business man which brought him up higher in the social status and he became more well known.[1]

Prairie House

Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, New York

Between 1900 and 1917, his residential designs were "Prairie Houses" (extended low buildings with shallow, sloping roofs, clean sky lines, suppressed chimneys, overhangs and terraces, using unfinished materials), so-called because the design is considered to complement the land around Chicago. These houses are credited with being the first examples of the "open plan."

In fact, the manipulation of interior space in residential and public buildings, such as the Unitarian Unity Temple, in Oak Park, are hallmarks of his style.

Hillside Home School, 1902, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin

He believed that humanity should be central to all design. Many examples of this work can be found in Buffalo, New York, resulting from a friendship between Wright and an executive from the Larkin Soap Company, Darwin D. Martin. In 1902 the Larkin Company decided to build a new administration building.

Wright came to Buffalo and designed not only the first sketches for the Larkin Administration Building (completed in 1904, demolished in 1950), but also three homes for the company's executives:

• George Barton House, Buffalo NY, 1903
• Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo NY, 1904
• William Heath House, Buffalo NY, 1905
  • and later, the Graycliff estate, Derby, NY 1926

The houses considered the masterpieces of the late Prairie Period (1907–9) are the Frederick Robie House and the Avery and Queene Coonley House, both in Chicago. The Robie House, with its soaring, cantilevered roof lines, supported by a 110-foot-long channel of steel, is the most dramatic. Its living and dining areas form virtually one uninterrupted space. This building had a profound influence on young European architects after World War I and is sometimes called the "cornerstone of modernism." Wright's work, however, was not known to European architects until the publication of the Wasmuth Portfolio in 1910.

Europe and personal troubles

In 1904, Wright designed a house for a neighbor in Oak Park, Edwin Cheney, and immediately took a liking to Cheney's wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. The two fell in love, even though Wright had been married for over a decade. Often the two could be seen taking rides in Wright's automobile through Oak Park, and they became the talk of the town. Wright's wife, Kitty, would not grant him a divorce however, and at first, neither would Edwin Cheney grant one to Mamah. In 1909, even before the Robie House was actually completed, Wright and Mamah Cheney eloped to Europe. The scandal that erupted virtually destroyed Wright's ability to practice architecture in the United States.

Architectural historians have speculated on why Wright decided to turn his life upside-down. Scholars argue that he felt by 1907-8 that he had done everything he could do with the Prairie Style, particularly from the standpoint of the one-family house. To illustrate, one can ask the question, "How many different permutations of the Prairie Style residence can you do without eventually feeling like you are going nowhere?" Wright was not getting larger commissions for commercial or public buildings, which frustrated him as it would any highly skilled Architect.

Wright and Mamah Cheney traveled extensively throughout Europe. In 1910, during a stop in Berlin, Wright, with virtually all of his drawings, visited the publishing house of Ernst Wasmuth, who had agreed to publish his work there. In two volumes, the Wasmuth Portfolio was thus published, and created the first major exposure of Wright's work in Europe. The later Bauhaus movements founders claimed to have been inspired by these books into their work.

Wright remained in Europe for two years, though Mamah Cheney left for the United States a few times, and set up home in Fiesole, Italy. During this time, Edwin Cheney granted her a divorce, though Catherine Wright again refused to grant one to her husband. After Wright's return to the United States in 1911, he moved to Spring Green, Wisconsin, to land that was held by his mother's family, and began to build himself a new home, which he called Taliesin.

More personal turmoil

On August 15, 1914, while Wright was in Chicago completing a large project, Midway Gardens, Julian Carlton, a Barbadian male servant whom he had hired several months earlier, set fire to the living quarters of Taliesin and murdered seven people with an axe as the fire burned. The dead were: Mamah; her two children, John and Martha; a gardener; a draftsman; a workman; and the workman’s son. Two people survived the mêlée, one of whom helped to put out the fire that almost completely consumed the residential wing of the house.

In 1923, Wright's mother, Anna (Lloyd Jones) Wright, died. Wright wed Miriam Noel in November 1923, but her addiction to morphine led to the failure of the marriage in less than one year. In 1924, after the separation, Wright met Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich Hinzenburg, at a Petrograd Ballet performance in Chicago. They moved in together at Taliesin in 1925, but in 1926, Olga's ex-husband, Valdemar Hinzenburg, sought custody of his daughter, Svetlana. In Minnetonka, Minnesota, Wright and Olgivanna were accused of violating the Mann Act and arrested in October 1925. The charges were dropped in 1926. During this time period, Wright designed his last residential complex for Darwin D. and Isabelle Martin in the Buffalo, NY area, the Graycliff estate. Wright and Olgivanna married in 1928.

Notable projects after the Prairie Period

The iconic Kaufmann residence (Fallingwater) is now a museum

Fallingwater is one of the most famous of Frank Lloyd Wright's works

His most famous private residence was constructed from 1935 to 1939—Fallingwater—for Mr. and Mrs. E.J. Kaufmann Sr., at Bear Run, Pennsylvania. It was designed according to Wright's desire to place the occupants close to the natural surroundings, with a stream and waterfall running under part of the building. The construction is a series of cantilevered balconies and terraces, using limestone for all verticals and concrete for the horizontals. The house cost $155,000, including the architect's fee of $8,000. Kaufmann's own engineers argued that the design was not sound. They were overruled by Wright, but workmen secretly added extra steel to the horizontal concrete elements. There is a difference of opinion as to whether Wright's original design would have withstood the test of time. Most engineers have found that the workmens added steel was improperly placed dead weight that did nothing to help the structure. In 1994, Robert Silman and Associates examined the building and developed a plan to restore the structure. In the late 1990s, steel supports were added under the lowest cantilever until a detailed structural analysis could be done. In March 2002, post-tensioning of the lowest terrace was completed.

It was also in the 1930s that Wright first designed "Usonian" houses. Intended to be highly practical houses for middle-class clients, the designs were based on a simple, yet elegant geometry. He would later use similar elementary forms in his First Unitarian Meeting House built in Madison, Wisconsin, between 1947 and 1950.

Wright is responsible for a concept or a series of extremely original concepts of suburban development united under the term Broadacre City. He proposed the idea in his book The Disappearing City in 1932, and unveiled a very large (12 by 12 feet) model of this community of the future, showing it in several venues in the following years. He went on developing the idea until his death.

His 'Usonian' homes set a new style for suburban design that was followed by countless developers. Many features of modern American homes date back to Wright; open plans, slab-on-grade foundations, and simplified construction techniques that allowed more mechanization or at least efficiency in building are amongst his innovations.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Upper East Side, New York

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, is a building which occupied Wright for 16 years (1943–59) and is probably his most recognized masterpiece. The building rises as a warm beige spiral from its site on Fifth Avenue; its interior is similar to the inside of a seashell. Its unique central geometry was meant to allow visitors to experience Guggenheim's collection of nonobjective geometric paintings with ease by taking an elevator to the top level and then viewing artworks by walking down the slowly descending, central spiral ramp, which features a floor embedded with circular shapes and triangular light fixtures, in order to complement the geometric nature of the structure. Unfortunately, when the museum was completed, a number of important details of Wright's design were ignored, including his desire for the interior to be painted off-white. Furthermore, the Museum currently designs exhibits to be viewed by walking up the curved walkway rather than walking down from the top level.

Other Projects

Wright built 362 houses. About 300 survive as of 2005. Three have been lost to forces of nature: the waterfront house for W. L. Fuller in Pass Christian, Mississippi, which was destroyed by Hurricane Camille in August 1969, the Louis Sullivan Bungalow of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the James Charnley Bungalow of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, which was also gutted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Ennis House in California has also been damaged by earthquake and rain-induced ground movement.

One of his projects, Monona Terrace, originally designed in 1937 as City and County Offices for Madison, Wisconsin, was completed in 1997 on the original site, using a variation of Wright's final design for the exterior with the interior design altered by its new purpose as a convention center. The "as-built" design was carried out by Wright's apprentice Tony Puttnam. Monona Terrace was accompanied by controversy throughout the sixty years between the original design and the completion of the structure.

A lesser known project that never came to fruition was Wrights plan for Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe [2]. Few Tahoe Locals are even aware of the iconic American architects plan for their natural treasure.

Wright also built several houses in the Los Angeles area. These homes include:

Hollyhock House, Hollywood, CA (open to the public).

Ennis-Brown House (Los Feliz area of Los Angeles), presently undergoing renovation and closed to the public.

Freeman House (Westwood area of Los Angeles, closed to the public).

Anderton Court (Beverly Hills, CA--now shops, open to the public).

Millard House (Pasadena, CA--private residence).

Storer House (Hollywood, CA--private residence).

Sturgis House (Brentwood, CA-private residence).

Arch Oboler Gatehouse & Studio (Malibu, CA--private residence).

Death and legacy

Turmoil followed Wright even many years after his death on April 9, 1959. His third wife, Olgivanna continued to run the Fellowship after Wright's death, until her own death in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1985. In 1985, following the death of Olgivanna, it was learned that her dying wish had been that Wright, her daughter by a first marriage and herself all be cremated and relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona. During the nearly 30-year period prior to Olgivanna's death, Wright's body had lain interred in the Lloyd-Jones cemetery, next to the Unity Chapel, near Taliesin, Wright's later-life home in Wisconsin. (The Unity Chapel, designed by Joseph Silsbee, should not be confused with the much larger and vastly more famous Unity Temple, designed by Wright and located in Oak Park, IL. Wright was the draughtsman for the design of the Unity Chapel.) Olgivanna's plan to exhume her late-husband and cremate him, her daughter and herself called for a memorial garden, already in the works, to be finished and prepared for their remains. Despite the fact that the garden had yet to be finished, the remains were prepared and sent to Scottsdale where they waited in storage for an unidentified amount of time before being interred in the memorial area. Today, anyone who visits the small cemetery south of Spring Green, Wisconsin and a long stone's throw from Taliesin to look upon a gravestone marked with Wright's name will be visiting an empty grave.^[1]

Personal style and concepts

Wright practiced what is known as organic architecture, an architecture that evolves naturally out of the context, most importantly for him the relationship between the site and the building and the needs of the client. Houses in wooded regions, for instance, made heavy use of wood, desert houses had rambling floor plans and heavy use of stone, and houses in rocky areas such as Los Angeles were built mainly of cinder block. Wright's creations took his concern with organic architecture down to the smallest details. From his largest commercial commissions to the relatively modest Usonian houses, Wright conceived virtually every detail of both the external design and the internal fixtures, including furniture, carpets, windows, doors, tables and chairs, light fittings and decorative elements. He was one of the first architects to design and supply custom-made, purpose-built furniture and fittings that functioned as integrated parts of the whole design, and he often returned to earlier commissions to redesign internal fittings. His Prairie houses use themed, coordinated design elements (often based on plant forms) that are repeated in windows, carpets and other fittings. He made innovative use of new building materials such as precast concrete blocks, glass bricks and zinc cames (instead of the traditional lead) for his leadlight windows, and he famously used Pyrex glass tubing as a major element in the Johnson Wax Headquarters. Wright was also one of the first architects to design and install custom-made electric light fittings, including some of the very first electric floor lamps, and his very early use of the then-novel spherical glass lampshade (a design previously not possible due to the physical restrictions of gas lighting).

Wright-designed window in Robie House, Chicago (1906)

As Wright's career progressed, so as well did the mechanization of the glass industry. Wright fully embraced glass in his designs and found that it fit well into his philosophy of organic architecture. Glass allowed for interaction and viewing of the outdoors while still protecting from the elements. In 1928, Wright wrote an essay on glass in which he compared it to the mirrors of nature: lakes, rivers and ponds. One of Wright's earliest uses of glass in his works was to string panes of glass along whole walls in an attempt to create light screens to join together solid walls. By utilizing this large amount of glass, Wright sought to achieve a balance between the lightness and airiness of the glass and the solid, hard walls. Arguably, Wright's most well-known art glass is that of the Prairie style. The simple geometric shapes that yield to very ornate and intricate windows represent some of the most integral ornamentation of his career.^[2]

Often, Wright designed not only the buildings, but the furniture as well. Some of the built-in furniture remains, while other restorations have included replacement pieces created using his plans.

Wright responded to the transformation of domestic life that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century, when servants became a less prominent or completely absent feature of most American households, by developing homes with progressively more open plans. This allowed the woman of the house to work in her 'workplace', as he often called the kitchen, yet keep track of and be available for the children and/or guests in the dining room. Much of modern architecture, including the early work of Mies van der Rohe, can be traced back to Wright's innovative work.

Wright also designed his own clothing. His fashion sense was unique and he usually wore expensive suits, flowing neckties, and capes as well as driving a custom yellow raceabout in the Prairie years, a red Cord convertible in the 1930's, a famous customized 1940 Lincoln for many years, each of which earned him many speeding tickets.

Colleagues and Influences

Wright rarely acknowledged his influences, and routinely claimed his employees' work as his own design, but as with any architect, Wright worked in a collaborative process and drew his ideas from the work of others. In his earlier days Wright worked in some of the top architects of the Chicago school (architecture), including who he would later refer to as his 'Lieber Meister' (dear master) Louis Sullivan. In his Prairie School days, Wright's office was populated by many talented architects including Marion Mahoney and Walter Burley Griffin.

Rudolf Schindler worked for Wright on the Imperial hotel. His own work is often credited as influencing Wrights Usonian houses. Schindler's friend Richard Neutra also worked briefly for Wright and became an internationally successful architect.

Later in the Taliesin days, Wright employed many architects who would later become notable, such as John Lautner, E. Fay Jones and Paolo Soleri.

Bruce Goff never worked for Wright, but maintained correspondence with him and their works can be seen to parallel each other.

Recognition

1966 U.S. postage stamp honoring Frank Lloyd Wright

Wright was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1941.

In 1992 The Madison Opera in Madison, Wisconsin commissioned and premiered the opera Shining Brow, by composer Daron Hagen and librettist Paul Muldoon based on events early in Wright's life. The work has since received numerous revivals. In 2000, Work Song: Three Views of Frank Lloyd Wright, a play based on the relationship between the personal and working aspects of Wright's life, debuted at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.

Family

One of Wright's sons, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., known as Lloyd Wright, was also a notable architect in Los Angeles. Lloyd Wright's son, (and Wright's grandson) Eric Lloyd Wright, is currently an architect in Malibu, California where he has a practice of mostly residences, but also fine civic and commercial buildings.

Another son and architect, John Lloyd Wright, invented Lincoln Logs in 1918, and practiced extensively in the San Diego area.

The Oscar-winning actress Anne Baxter was his granddaughter.

Selected works

The Robie House on the University of Chicago campus

• Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, Oak Park, Illinois, 1889
• William Herman Winslow Residence, River Forest, Illinois, 1894
• Ward Winfield Willits Residence, and Gardener’s Cottage and Stables, Highland Park, Illinois, 1901
• Dana-Thomas House State Historic Site, Springfield, Illinois, 1902
• Larkin Administration Building, Buffalo, New York, 1903
• Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, New York, 1903-1905
• Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, 1904
• Frederick C. Robie Residence, Chicago, Illinois, 1906
• Taliesin I, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911
• Midway Gardens, Chicago, Illinois, 1913
• Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, Japan, 1915 demolished, 1968, lobby and pool reconstructed in 1976 in at Meiji Mura, near Nagoya, Japan
• Hollyhock House (Aline Barnsdall Residence), Los Angeles, California, 1917
• Ennis Residence, Los Angeles, California, 1923

Taliesin West Panorama from the "bow" looking at the "ship"

• Kaufmann Residence, Fallingwater, Bear Run, Pennsylvania, 1935
• Johnson Wax Headquarters, Racine, Wisconsin, 1936
• Herbert F. Johnson Residence ("Wingspread"), Wind Point, WI, 1937
• Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona, 1937
• Frank Lloyd Wright's Florida Southern College Works, 1940s
• First Unitarian Society, Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin, 1947
• Herman T. Mossberg Residence, South Bend, Indiana, 1948
• Thomas Keys Residence, Rochester, Minnesota, 1950
• Louis Penfield House, Willoughby Hills, Ohio, 1955

Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma

• Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, 1956
• Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, designed in 1956, completed in 1961
• Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, CA, 1957–66 (featured in the movies Gattaca & THX 1138)

• The Illinois, mile-high tower in Chicago, 1956 (unbuilt)

References

Works Cited in Article

1. ↑ Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, Meryle Secrest, University of Chicago Press, 1992.
2. ↑ Frank Lloyd Wright's Glass Designs, Carla Lind, Pomegranate Artbooks/Archetype Press, 1995.

Selected books and articles on Wright’s philosophy

• Frank Lloyd Wright, by Robert McCarter
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian Homes: Designs for Moderate Cost One-Family Homes, by John Sergeant
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian Homes (Wright at a Glance Series), by Carla Lind
• "In the Cause of Architecture," Architectural Record, March, 1908, by Frank Lloyd Wright. Published in Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings, vol. 1.
• Natural House, The, by Frank Lloyd Wright
• Truth Against the World: Frank Lloyd Wright Speaks for an Organic Architecture, ed. by Patrick Meehan
• Understanding Frank Lloyd Wright's Architecture, by Donald Hoffman
• Usonia : Frank Lloyd Wright's Design for America, Alvin Rosenbaum

Biographies on Wright

• Many Masks, by Brendan Gill
• Frank Lloyd Wright, by Ada Louise Huxtable
• Frank Lloyd Wright: a Biography, by Meryle Secrest
• Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and Architecture, by Robert Twombly
• The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship, by Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman

Selected survey books on Wright’s work

• Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, The, by Neil Levine
• Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog, The, by William Allin Storrer ISBN 0-226-77623-9
• Frank Lloyd Wright: America’s Master Architect, by Kathryn Smith
• Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect, by the Museum of Modern Art
• Frank Lloyd Wright Companion, The, by William Allin Storrer ISBN 0-226-77624-7
• Frank Lloyd Wright: Masterworks, by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer
• Wrightscapes: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Landscape Designs, by Charles and Berdeana Aguar
• Wright Space: Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright's Houses by Grant Hildebrand
• Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide, by Thomas A. Heinz ISBN 0-8101-2244-8
• Frank Lloyd Wright's Glass Designs, by Carla Lind

See also

• Frank Lloyd Wright buildings
• Wasmuth Portfolio

Trivia

• Simon and Garfunkel honored the architect in their song So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright on their album Bridge over Troubled Water (Track 5, length 3:47, released January 26, 1970, Columbia Records).

External links

• Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Official Website
• Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy
• Frank Lloyd Wright YouTube
• Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust - FLW Home and Studio
• Taliesin Preservation Commission
• Frank Lloyd Wright - PBS documentary by Ken Burns and resources
• Frank Lloyd Wright. Designs for an American Landscape 1922-1932
• Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings Recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey
• Complete list of Wright buildings
• Yesterday's News blog 1926 newspaper account of Wright's arrest in Minnesota
• Frank Lloyd Wright and Teco Pottery