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Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright; June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was a famous American architect from the early 20th century. He designed all kinds of buildings including banks, holiday resorts, office buildings, churches, a synagogue, a gas station, a beer garden and an art museum.[3]

Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright portrait.jpg
Born
Frank Lincoln Wright

(1867-06-08)June 8, 1867
Richland Center, Wisconsin, U.S.[1]
DiedApril 9, 1959(1959-04-09) (aged 91)
Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.[2]
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison
OccupationArchitect
Spouse(s)
Catherine Wright
(m. 1889; div. 1922)

Maude Wright
(m. 1923; div. 1927)

Olga Lazović (m. 1928)
Children8
Parent(s)William Carey Wright
Anna Lloyd Jones
Signature
Frank Lloyd Wright signature.svg

Wright designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 532 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in peace with humanity and its environment. He called his belief organic architecture.[4] He used this technique for his design for Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture".[4] Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the image of the Usonian home, his one-of-a-kind vision for urban planning in the United States.

He began an American style of building design and is said to be one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century.[5]

Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin on June 8, 1867 to a farming family.[6]

His work includes original and creative examples of many building types. Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass. Wright authored 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe.

His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio. Already well known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time."[4]

Wright died on April 9, 1959 in Phoenix, Arizona from surgical complications.[7] He was 91 years old.[7]

Early life

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in the farming town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, United States, on June 8, 1867.[6] He was born Frank Lincoln Wright.[8] His father, William Carey Wright (1825–1904),[9] was a locally admired speaker, music teacher, sometimes a lawyer, and minister. William Wright had met and married Anna Lloyd Jones (1838/39 – 1923),[9] a county school teacher of Welsh descent, the previous year when he was employed as the superintendent of schools for Richland County.

The Wright family moved from Richland Center to Weymouth, Massachusetts.[9] Afterwards, The Wright Family struggled financially in Weymouth and returned to Spring Green, Wisconsin.[9] They settled in Madison.[9] Although William was a distant parent, he shared his love of music, especially the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, with his children.[10]

Wright attended a Madison High School, but there is no evidence he ever graduated. He was admitted to the University of Wisconsin–Madison as a special student in 1886.[9] There he joined Phi Delta Theta fraternity,[11] took classes part-time for two semesters, and worked with a professor of civil engineering, Allan D. Conover.[12] He moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1887.[9]

Early career

 
Wright's first well-known building, the Larkin Administration Building

Wright did not get along well with other draftsmen. He wrote that several violent events happened between them during the first years of his apprenticeship. Afterwards many other draftsmen showed very little respect for his employees as well.[13] In spite of this, "Sullivan took [Wright] under his wing and gave him great design responsibility." As an act of respect, Wright would later refer to Sullivan as Lieber Meister (German for "Dear Master").[14] Wright also formed a bond with office foreman Paul Mueller. Wright would later engage Mueller to build several of his public and commercial buildings between 1903 and 1923.[15]

As Wright began to work on residential projects for Adler & Sullivan.[16] Wright designed his houses on his own time. Sullivan knew nothing of Wright's works until 1893, when he recognized that one of the houses was a Frank Lloyd Wright design.[16] This particular house, built for Allison Harlan, was only blocks away from Sullivan's townhouse in the Chicago community of Kenwood.[16]

Many examples of his work are in Buffalo, New York as a result of friendship between Wright and Darwin D. Martin.[17] In 1902, the Larkin Company decided to build a new building. Wright came to Buffalo and designed not only the Larkin Administration Building (completed in 1904, demolished in 1950), but also homes for three of the company's executives including the Darwin D. Martin House in 1904.[17] Wright later built their summer home.[17] He also designed the Graycliff Estate, also designed for Darwin D. Martin and his wife, Isabelle.

1914 Taliesin murders

On August 15, 1914, while Wright was working in Chicago, Julian Carlton, a male servant from Barbados who had been hired several months earlier, set fire to the living room of Taliesin and murdered seven people with an axe as the fire burned.[18] The dead included Mamah; her two children, John and Martha; a gardener; a draftsman named Emil Brodelle; a worker; and another workman's son. Two people survived the mayhem. One of them helped to put out the fire that almost completely burned the residential wing of the house.

Right after the attack, Carlton tried to kill himself by drinking muriatic acid .[18] He was nearly lynched on the spot, but was taken to the Dodgeville jail.[18] Carlton died from starvation seven weeks after the attack, despite medical attention.[18]

Famous works

 
Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, the house over the waterfall.

Fallingwater

See also: Fallingwater

Frank Lloyd Wright designed a summer-house in 1935 for the Kaufmann family over a waterfall in Pennsylvania. He called the house "Fallingwater". Some people say it is the most famous private home in the world.[19]

The house actually sits low in the valley over the stream, but looks dramatic from further downstream.[20] It has large terraces, and some of them stick straight out and hang over the waterfall or the stream. There are windows and glass doors, with only narrow steel supports between them, wrapping all the way around the living room.

There are also windows going all the way from the floor to the ceiling in all three stories of the tower.[4][20]

Most of the house is made from stone. There are strong horizontal and vertical lines in the design of the house. It resembles the horizontal and vertical lines in the rock formations and other natural features.[20] The waterfall can be heard everywhere in the house. Wright wanted there to be a close connection between inside and outside, and for the house itself to be natural.[21]

In 1991, members of the American Institute of Architects named the Fallingwater house the "best all-time work of American architecture".[22]

Robie House

 
The Robie House
See also: Robie House

One famous house was called the Robie House. It had a maze like layout and geometric stained glass windows.[23] The Robie House was a unique house with odd shapes, colors and form. He finished making it in 1910, as a house for children. In fact, many children lived and played in that house with their families up until 1926 when it was closed for living in, and closed to the public. Many times, it was planned to be destroyed. However, twice, Wright saved his house from destruction because of the reasons he built it and all the memories of it that he loved so much. It is now being restored at a cost of $10 million.[24]

Johnson Wax Headquarters

See also: Johnson Wax Headquarters
 
The Johnson Wax Headquarters

Another famous building by Wright was called the Johnson Wax Headquarters.[25] The building has Wright's idea of the streamlined Art Moderne style popular in the 1930s. In a break with Wright's earlier Prairie School structures, the building features many circular forms and needed over 200 different curved "Cherokee red" bricks to create the sweeping curves of the inside and outside.[25]

The mortar between the bricks was created in traditional Wright-style to give the horizontality of the building.[25] The warm, reddish hue of the bricks was used in the polished concrete floor as well.[25] The white stone trim and white columns create a slight yet striking difference. All of the furniture, created by Steelcase, was designed for the building by Wright and it mirrored many of the building's unique design features.[25]

The entrance is in the structure, entering the building on one side with a covered carport on the other.[25] The carport is supported by short versions of the steel-reinforced (tree-like) concrete columns that appear in the Great Workroom.[25]

The Illinois

See also: The Illinois
 
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Wright proposed to build a skyscraper called The Illinois that would be the height of a distance of a mile.[26] It was intended to be constructed in Chicago, Illinois. It could have included 528 stories, with a gross area of 18,460,000 square feet (1,715,000 m2).[26] Wright stated that there would be parking for 15,000 cars and 150 helicopters.[26]

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

See also: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Wright worked on this project for 16 years (1943–1959) and is probably his most recognized masterpiece.[27] The building is on Fifth Avenue. Its interior is similar to the inside of a seashell.[27]

Its one of a kind central geometry was created to allow visitors to easily see Guggenheim's collection of his paintings by taking an elevator to the top-level and then viewing artworks by walking down the slowly descending, central spiral ramp, the floor of which is lodged with circular shapes and triangular light bulbs to complement the geometric nature of the building.[27]

However, when the museum was completed, some of Wright's design were ignored, such as his desire for the interior to be painted off-white.[27] Further, the Museum currently designs exhibits to be viewed by walking up the curved walkway without walking down from the top-level.[27]

Later career

Wright strongly believed in working alone.[28] He did not support the American Institute of Architects during his career, going so far as to call the organization "a harbor of refuge for the incompetent," and "a form of refined gangsterism."[28] When an the Institute called him "an old amateur" Wright later responded, "I am the oldest."[28] In 1940, Wright started the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. It was set up for educational purposes. It looks after two Wright buildings, Taliesin East in Wisconsin, and Taliesin West in Arizona. It has a library with more than 22,000 of Wright's drawings, and 300,000 documents. It is home to the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.[29]

Personal life

 
Wright in 1954

Frank Lloyd Wright was married three times and fathered seven children, four sons and three daughters. He also adopted Svetlana Milanoff, the daughter of his third wife, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright.[30] Wright once had an apprentice who was married to Joseph Stalin's daughter.[31]

His wives were:

  • Catherine "Kitty" (Tobin) Wright (1871–1959); social worker, socialite (married in June 1889; divorced November 1922)
  • Maude "Miriam" (Noel) Wright (1869–1930), artist (married in November 1923; divorced August 1927)
  • Olga Ivanovna "Olgivanna" (Lazovich Milanoff) Lloyd Wright (1897–1985), dancer and writer (married in August 1928)

The Oscar-winning actress Anne Baxter was Wright's granddaughter.[32]

Wright was a fan of Japanese Art and collected them throughout his career.[33] Wright continued to collect them until his death in 1959. He used prints to help him pay for loans. He often relyed upon his art business to help financially.[33]

Death

Wright died on April 9, 1959, while undergoing surgery in Phoenix, Arizona, to remove an intestinal obstruction.[7] His third wife, Olgivanna, ran the Fellowship after Wright's death, until her own death in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1985.[34]

 
Frank Lloyd Wright's postage stamp published in 1966

Later that year, it was learned that her dying wish had been that Wright, she, and her daughter by a first marriage all be cremated and relocated to Scottsdale.[34] By then, Wright's body had lain for over 25 years in the Lloyd-Jones cemetery, next to the Unity Chapel, near Taliesin, Wright's later-life home in Spring Green, Wisconsin.[34] Wright's remains were removed from his grave by members of the Taliesin Fellowship. Then, his remains were cremated and sent to Scottsdale where they were later interred in the memorial garden.[34]

Legacy

In 1966, the United States Postal Service honored Wright with a Prominent Americans series 2¢ postage stamp.[35] Several of Wright's buildings have been proposed by the United States to be UNESCO World Heritage sites.[36]

Shortly after his death, Simon & Garfunkel recorded So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright as a tribute to Wright.[37]

In 2000, Fallingwater was named "The Building of the 20th century" in "Top-Ten" poll taken by members attending the AIA annual convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[38] On that list, Wright was listed along with many of the USA's other greatest architects including Eero Saarinen, I. M. Pei, Louis Kahn, Philip Johnson and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. He was the only architect who had more than one building on the list. The other three buildings were the Guggenheim Museum, the Frederick C. Robie House and the Johnson Wax Headquarters.[39]

Frank Lloyd Wright Media

References

  1. ↑ "Wright on the Web: The Early Years". www.delmars.com. Archived from the original on July 28, 2012. Retrieved May 18, 2008.
  2. ↑ "Wright on the Web: The Fifties". www.delmars.com. Archived from the original on April 27, 2013. Retrieved May 18, 2008.
  3. ↑ "Frank Lloyd Wright . Life and Work". www.pbs.org. Retrieved May 18, 2009.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Brewster, Mike (July 28, 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 January 22, 2008. 
  5. ↑ "About Frank Lloyd Wright". www.wrightplus.org. Archived from the original on April 3, 2009. Retrieved May 18, 2008.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Frank Lloyd Wright biography". Browse biography.com. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "Frank Lloyd Wright Dies; Famed Architect Was 89". The New York Times. April 10, 1959. https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0608.html. Retrieved May 12, 2010. 
  8. ↑ "Frank Lincoln Wright. American Literature". Man Museum.com. Archived from the original on December 24, 2019. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 "Frank Lloyd Wright". Historic Madison, Inc. Archived from the original on April 3, 2013. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  10. ↑ "Biography of Frank Lloyd Wright". Peoplefam.com. Retrieved August 31, 2013.[dead link]
  11. ↑ "Phi Delta Theta list of Famous Phis". Phideltatheta.org. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  12. ↑ "Thomas Kellner-Photography in Art: Wright, Frank Lloyd". Thomas Kellner.com. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  13. ↑ Wright 2005, pp. 89–94.
  14. ↑ Tafel, Edgar (1985). Years With Frank lloyd Wright: Apprentice to Genius. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. p. 31. ISBN 0-486-24801-1.
  15. ↑ Saint, Andrew (May 2004). "Frank Lloyd Wright and Paul Mueller: the architect and his builder of choice" (PDF). Architectural Research Quarterly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 7 (2): 157–167. doi:10.1017/S1359135503002112. S2CID 108461943. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 4, 2016. Retrieved March 16, 2010.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 "Frank Lloyd Wright Works for Adler & Sullivan". World History Project.com. Archived from the original on July 16, 2014. Retrieved September 2, 2013.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 "Frank Lloyd Wright's Magnificent Darwin Martin House in Buffalo, NY". The Craftsman Bungalow. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 BBC News article: "Mystery of the murders at Taliesin".
  19. ↑ Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E. J. Kaufmann, and America's Most Extraordinary House, Franklin Toker, Knopf, 2003, ISBN 1400040264.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 "What is Fallingwater?". Fallingwater.com. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  21. ↑ "Fallingwater: Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece house above the waterfall". Wright House.com. Retrieved August 31, 2013..
  22. ↑ "The Fallingwater". CSUPomona.com. Archived from the original on June 2, 2011. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  23. ↑ "Stained-Glass Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright". Grainger Arts and Crafts Studio.com. Archived from the original on March 13, 2014. Retrieved September 2, 2013.
  24. ↑ "Robie House Restoration Project". www.wrightplus.org. Archived from the original on November 4, 2008. Retrieved May 18, 2008.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 25.3 25.4 25.5 25.6 "Administration and Research Tower, S.C. Johnson Company". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on April 3, 2009. Retrieved June 30, 2008.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 "Dubai Debt: What the Burj Khalifa—the tallest building in the world—owes to Frank Lloyd Wright". Slate.com. 13 January 2010. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 27.3 27.4 "Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum". Guggenheim.com. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 "Biography in Sound: Frank Lloyd Wright". Old Time Radio. Retrieved September 9, 2012.
  29. ↑ "About Us". www.franklloydwright.org. Archived from the original on September 16, 2009. Retrieved May 18, 2008.
  30. ↑ ascedia.com. "Taliesin Preservation, Inc. – Frank Lloyd Wright – FAQs". Taliesinpreservation.org. Archived from the original on June 10, 2008. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
  31. ↑ "Frank Lloyd Wright". www.steinerag.com. Retrieved July 21, 2013.
  32. ↑ "Anne Baxter genealogy". Ancestry.com. Archived from the original on April 3, 2015. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Reif, Rita (March 18, 2001). Frank Lloyd Wright's Love of Japanese Prints Helped Pay the Bills. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/18/arts/art-architecture-the-master-builder-whose-other-love-helped-pay-the-bills.html. 
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 34.2 34.3 Peterson, Iver (10 April 1985). "REBURIAL OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT TOUCHES OFF A STORMY DEBATE". New York Times.com. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/10/us/reburial-of-frank-lloyd-wright-touches-off-a-stormy-debate.html. Retrieved August 31, 2013. 
  35. ↑ "Frank Lloyd Wright Stamp". Miregestudio7.com. Retrieved September 2, 2013.
  36. ↑ "Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings - UNESCO World Heritage Site". UNESCO.org. Retrieved September 2, 2013.
  37. ↑ "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright". Allmusic. Retrieved July 18, 2011.[dead link][dead link]
  38. ↑ "Fallingwater". U-S History.com. Retrieved September 2, 2013.
  39. ↑ "Honoring Frank Lloyd Wright". AIA.org. Retrieved September 2, 2013.

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