Frank Lloyd Wright ( Greatest Architect Series )

Biography

Early years


Frank Lloyd Wright was born in the farming town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, United States, in 1867. Originally named Frank Lincoln Wright, he changed his name after his parents' divorce to honor his mother's Welsh family, the Lloyd Joneses. His father, William Carey Wright (1825 – 1904) was a locally admired orator, music teacher, occasional lawyer and itinerant minister. William Wright had met and married Anna Lloyd Jones (1838/39 – 1923), a county school teacher, the previous year when he was employed as the superintendent of schools for Richland County. Originally from Massachusetts, William Wright had been a Baptist minister but he later joined his wife's family in the Unitarian faith. Anna was a member of the large, prosperous and well-known Lloyd Jones family of Unitarians, who had emigrated from Wales to southwestern Wisconsin. Both of Wright's parents were strong-willed individuals with idiosyncratic interests that they passed on to Frank. In his biography his mother declared, when she was expecting her first child, that he would grow up to build beautiful buildings. She decorated his nursery with engravings of English cathedrals torn from a periodical to encourage the infant's ambition. The family moved to Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1870 for William to minister a small congregation.

In 1876, Anna visited the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and saw an exhibit of educational blocks created by Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel. The blocks, known as Froebel Gifts, were the foundation of his innovative kindergarten curriculum. A trained teacher, Anna was excited by the program and bought a set of blocks for her family. Young Frank spent much time playing with the blocks. These were geometrically-shaped and could be assembled in various combinations to form three-dimensional compositions. Wright's 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

The Wright family struggled financially in Weymouth and returned to Spring Green, Wisconsin, where the supportive Lloyd Jones clan could help William find employment. They settled in Madison, where William taught music lessons and served as the secretary to the newly formed Unitarian society. Although William was a distant parent, he shared his love of music, especially the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, with his children.

Soon after Frank turned 14 — in 1881 — his parents separated. Anna had been unhappy for some time with William's inability to provide for his family and asked him to leave. The divorce was finalized in 1885 after William sued Anna for lack of physical affection. William left Wisconsin after the divorce and Wright claimed he never saw his father again.[2] At this time Frank's middle name was changed from Lincoln to Lloyd. As the only male left in the family, Frank assumed financial responsibility for his mother and two sisters.

Wright attended a Madison high school but there is no evidence he ever graduated.[3] He was admitted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a special student in 1886. There he joined Phi Delta Theta fraternity,[4] took classes part-time for two semesters, and worked with a professor of civil engineering, Allan D. Conover.[5] In 1887, Wright left the school without taking a degree (although he was granted an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University in 1955). He moved to Chicago which was still rebuilding from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and he joined the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Within a year, he left Silsbee to work for the firm of Adler & Sullivan as an apprentice to Louis Sullivan.[6]

In 1889, he married his first wife, Catherine Lee "Kitty" Tobin (1871-1959), purchased land in Oak Park, Illinois, and built his first home, and eventually his studio there. His mother, Anna, soon followed Wright to the city, where he purchased a home adjacent to his newly built residence for her. His marriage to Kitty Tobin, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, raised his social status, and he became more well known.

Beginning in 1890, he was assigned all residential design work for the firm. In 1893, Louis Sullivan discovered that Wright had been accepting private commissions. Sullivan felt betrayed that his favored employee had designed houses "behind his back," and he asked Wright to leave the firm. Constantly in need of funds to support his growing family, Wright designed the homes to supplement his meager income. Wright referred to these houses as his "bootleg" designs and the homes are located near the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, on Chicago Avenue in Oak Park. After leaving Sullivan, Wright established his own practice at his home.

This practice was a remarkable collection of creative architectural designers. By 1901, Wright had completed about 50 projects, including many houses in Oak Park. As his son John Lloyd Wright wrote,

“William Eugene Drummond, Francis Barry Byrne, Walter Burley Griffin, Albert Chase McArthur, Marion Mahony, Isabel Roberts and George Willis were the draftsmen. Five men, two women. They wore flowing ties, and smocks suitable to the realm. The men wore their hair like Papa, all except Albert, he didn’t have enough hair. They worshiped Papa! Papa liked them! I know that each one of them was then making valuable contributions to the pioneering of the modern American architecture for which my father gets the full glory, headaches and recognition today! ”[7]

Prairie House
Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, New York

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

The manipulation of interior space in residential and public buildings are hallmarks of his style. One such building is Unity Temple, the home of the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Oak Park. As a lifelong Unitarian and member of Unity Temple, Wright offered his services to the congregation after their church burned down in 1904. The community agreed to hire him and he worked on the building from 1905 to 1908. He believed that humanity should be central to all design.
Hillside Home School, 1902, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin

Many examples of this work are in Buffalo, New York as a result of friendship between Wright and Darwin D. Martin, an executive from the Larkin Soap Company. 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 homes for three of the company's executives:

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

The Westcott House was built in Springfield, Ohio, sometime between 1907 and 1908. It not only embodies Wright’s innovative Prairie Style design, but also reflects his passion for Japanese art and culture in design traits characteristic of traditional Japanese design. It is the only Prairie house built in Ohio, and represents an important evolution of Wright’s Prairie concept. The house has an extensive 98-foot pergola, capped with an intricate wooden trellis, connecting a detached carriage house and garage to the main house—features of only a few of Wright’s later Prairie Style designs.

It is not known exactly when Wright designed The Westcott House; it may have been several months before or more than a year after Wright returned from his first trip to Japan in 1905. Wright created two separate designs for the Westcott House; both are included in Studies and Executed Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, published by the distinguished Ernst Wasmuth (Germany, 1910-1911). This two-volume work contains more than 100 lithographs of Wright’s designs and is commonly known as the Wasmuth Portfolio.

Other Wright houses considered to be masterpieces of the late Prairie Period (1907–1909) are the Frederick Robie House in Chicago and the Avery and Queene Coonley House in Riverside, Illinois. The Robie House, with its soaring, cantilevered roof lines, supported by a 110-foot (34 m)-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". However, Wright's work was not known to European architects until the publication of the Wasmuth Portfolio.

Europe and personal troubles

Local gossips noticed Wright's flirtations, and he developed a reputation in Oak Park as a man-about-town. His family had grown to six children, and the brood required most of Catherine's attention. In 1903, Wright designed a house for Edwin Cheney, a neighbor in Oak Park, and immediately took a liking to Cheney's wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mamah Cheney was a modern woman with interests outside the home. She was an early feminist and Wright viewed her as his intellectual equal. The two fell in love, even though Wright had been married for almost 20 years. 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, sure that this attachment would fade as the others had, refused to grant him a divorce. Neither would Edwin Cheney grant one to Mamah. In 1909, even before the Robie House was completed, Wright and Mamah Cheney eloped to Europe; leaving their own spouses and children behind. The scandal that erupted virtually destroyed Wright's ability to practice architecture in the United States.

Scholars argue that he felt by 1907 that he had done everything he could do with the Prairie Style, particularly from the standpoint of the single family house. Wright was not getting larger commissions for commercial or public buildings, which frustrated him.

What drew Wright to Europe was the chance to publish a portfolio of his work with Ernst Wasmuth, who had agreed in 1909 to publish his work there.[8] This chance also allowed Wright to deepen his relationship with Mamah Cheney. Wright and Cheney left the United States separately in 1910, meeting in Berlin, where the offices of Wasmuth were located.

The resulting two volumes, known as the Wasmuth Portfolio, were published in 1910 and 1911 in two editions, creating the first major exposure of Wright's work in Europe.

Wright remained in Europe for one year (though Mamah Cheney returned to the United States a few times) and set up home in Fiesole, Italy. During this time, Edwin Cheney granted her a divorce, though Kitty still refused to grant one to her husband. After Wright's return to the United States in late 1910, Wright persuaded his mother to buy land for him in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The land, bought on April 10, 1911, was adjacent to land held by his mother's family, the Lloyd-Joneses. Wright began to build himself a new home, which he called Taliesin, by May 1911. The recurring theme of Taliesin also came from his mother's side: Taliesin in Welsh mythology was a poet, magician and super-hero. The family motto was Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd which means "The Truth Against the World"; it was created by Iolo Morgannwg who interestingly enough also had a son called Taliesin, and the motto is still used today as the cry of the druids and chief bard of the Eisteddfod in Wales.[9]

More personal turmoil

On August 15, 1914, while Wright was in Chicago completing a large project (Midway Gardens), Julian Carlton, a 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 included Mamah; her two children, John and Martha; a gardener; a draftsman; a workman; and the workman’s son. Two people survived the mayhem, one of whom helped to put out the fire that almost completely consumed the residential wing of the house.

In 1922, Wright's first wife, Kitty, granted him a divorce, and Wright was required to wait one year until he married his then-partner, Maude "Miriam" Noel. 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, but while still married, Wright met Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich Hinzenburg, at a Petrograd Ballet performance in Chicago. They moved in together at Taliesin in 1925, and soon Olgivanna's was pregnant with their daughter, Iovanna. (Iovanna was born December 2, 1925 and years later married and divorced Wright associate Arthur Pieper.)

On April 22, 1925, another fire destroyed the living quarters of Taliesin. This appears to have been the result of a faulty electrical system.[10] Wright rebuilt the living quarters again, naming the home "Taliesin III".

In 1926, Olga's ex-husband, Vlademar Hinzenburg, sought custody of his daughter, Svetlana. In Minnetonka, Minnesota, Wright and Olgivanna were accused of violating the Mann Act and arrested in October 1926 (the charges were later dropped).

Wright and Miriam Noel's divorce was finalized in 1927, and once again, Wright was required to wait for one year until marrying again. Wright and Olgivanna married in 1928.

campus
Taliesin West Panorama from the "prow" looking at the "ship"

* Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, Oak Park, Illinois, 1889-1909
* 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
* Burton J. Westcott Residence, Springfield, Ohio, 1908
* Frederick C. Robie Residence, Chicago, Illinois, 1909
* Taliesin I, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911
* Midway Gardens, Chicago, Illinois, 1913
* Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, Japan, 1923. Demolished, 1968; Entrance hall reconstructed in 1976 at Meiji Mura, near Nagoya, Japan
* Hollyhock House (Aline Barnsdall Residence), Los Angeles, California, 1919-21
* Ennis Residence, Los Angeles, California, 1923
* Graycliff (Darwin and Isabelle Martin summer estate, Buffalo, NY,1928
* Fallingwater (Kaufmann country home) Bear Run, Pennsylvania, 1935
* Johnson Wax Headquarters, Racine, Wisconsin, 1936
* Herbert F. Johnson Residence ("Wingspread"), Wind Point, WI, 1937
* Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona, 1937
* Usonian homes – Various locations, 1930's-1940's
* Bernard Schwartz House Two Rivers, Wisconsin, 1939
* Child of the Sun, Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida, 1941-1958
* First Unitarian Society of Madison, Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin, 1947
* Herman T. Mossberg Residence, South Bend, Indiana, 1948
* Thomas Keys Residence, Rochester, Minnesota, 1950
* Muirhead Farmhouse, Hampshire, Illinois, 1950
* Louis Penfield House, Willoughby Hills, Ohio, 1955
* 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)
* Samara (John E. Christian House), 1954, West Lafayette, Indiana
* Kentuck Knob, 1956, Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania
* The Illinois, mile-high tower in Chicago, 1956 (unbuilt)
* Frank S. Sander House Stamford, Connecticut
* Duncan House, Acme, Pennsylvania, 1957
* Gammage Auditorium, Tempe, Arizona, 1964

Cultural influence

* The design of the Vandamm House in the Hitchcock film North by Northwest is consciously based on Wright's architecture.[34]
* Simon and Garfunkel recorded a song called "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" on their 1970 album Bridge over Troubled Water. Art Garfunkel is a longtime fan of architecture; it has been said that Paul Simon wrote the song as a farewell to his musical partner, using Wright's name to stand for Garfunkel.[35]
* The architect hero Howard Roark of Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead is widely considered to have been based on Wright.[36]


References

Works Cited in Article

1. ^ a b Brewster, Mike (28 July 2004). "Frank Lloyd Wright: America's Architect". Business Week (The McGraw-Hill Companies). http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jul2004/nf20040728_3153_db078.htm. Retrieved on 22 January 2008.
2. ^ An Autobiography, by Frank Lloyd Wright, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York City, 1943, p. 51
3. ^ Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, by Meryle Secrest, University of Chicago Press, 1992, p.72
4. ^ Phi Delta Theta list of Famous Phis, accessed on May 26. 2008
5. ^ Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, by Meryle Secrest, p. 82
6. ^ Addison, Herb; et al. (2004). The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press. pp. 9. ISBN 0-312-31367-5.
7. ^ My Father: Frank Lloyd Wright, by John Lloyd Wright; 1992; page 35
8. ^ Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, by Meryle Secrest, Alfred A. Knopf, 1993, p. 202
9. ^ Home Country
10. ^ Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, by Meryle Secrest, p. 315–317
11. ^ First Unitarian Society - About the Meeting House
12. ^ Guggenheim Museum - History
13. ^ National Park Service - National Historic Landmarks Designated, April 13, 2007
14. ^ The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog, by William Allin Storrer, University of Chicago Press, 1992 (third edition)
15. ^ Preservation Online: Today's News Archives: Fire Guts Rare FLW House in Indiana
16. ^ Berstein, Fred A. "Near Nagoya, Architecture From When the East Looked West," New York Times. April 2, 2006.
17. ^ Monona Terrace Convention Center, history web page
18. ^ Frank Lloyd Wright Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe
19. ^ Right On - Late 1950s Frank Lloyd Wright design realised in Wicklow
20. ^ Wrightscapes: Frank Lloyd Wright's Landscape Designs, Charles E. and Berdeana Aguar, McGraw-Hill, 2002, p.344
21. ^ Wrightscapes:Frank Lloyd Wright's Landscape Designs, Charles E. and Berdeana Aguar, McGraw-Hill, 2002, p.51–54
22. ^ Wrightscapes:Frank Lloyd Wright's Landscape Designs, Charles E. and Berdeana Aguar, McGraw-Hill, 2002, p.56
23. ^ "Undoing the City: Frank Lloyd Wright's Planned Communities," American Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct., 1972), p. 544
24. ^ "Undoing the City: Frank Lloyd Wright's Planned Communities," American Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct., 1972), p. 542
25. ^ a b c d Cotter, Holland. "Seeking Japan's Prints, Out of Love and Need." New York Times. 6 April 2001.
26. ^ a b c d e Reif, Rita. "Frank Lloyd Wright's Love of Japanese Prints Helped Pay the Bills." New York Times. 18 March 2001.
27. ^ 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.
28. ^ Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, Meryle Secrest, University of Chicago Press, 1992.
29. ^ Frank Lloyd Wright's Glass Designs, Carla Lind, Pomegranate Artbooks/Archetype Press, 1995.
30. ^ "The Magic of America, Marion Mahony Griffin
31. ^ Frank Lloyd Wright houses for rent: Tech: mensvogue.com
32. ^ a b Mann, Leslie (1 February 2008). "Reflecting pools: Descendants follow in Frank Lloyd Wright's footsteps". Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/news/chi-cp_wright_re_02-10feb03,1,4161107.story. Retrieved on 28 March 2008.
33. ^ "The Short List". Chicago Magazine. November 2006. http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2006/Short-List-November-2006/. Retrieved on 10 March 2008.
34. ^ Sandy McLendon. "The Vandamm House in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest". jetsetmodern.com. http://www.jetsetmodern.com/modatmovies.htm. Retrieved on 17 April 2008.
35. ^ The Daily Aztec. Tempo. Christy Castellanos. Simon and Garfunkel. February 17, 2004.
36. ^ Hoppen, Donald W. (1998). The Seven Ages of Frank Lloyd Wright: The Creative Process, p. 112; Johnson, Donald Leslie. (1994). Frank Lloyd Wright versus America: The 1930s, p. 61