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Home , Frank Lloyd Wright, Lloyd Wright, Walter Burley Griffin, Wasmuth Portfolio

A Collaborative Endeavor: Frank ’s Oak Park Studio

The Oak Park Studio years (1898 – 1909) were an incredibly prolific period in ’s career, with more than a third of his life’s work produced at the site. Major buildings of the Prairie style, including the Larkin Administration Building (1903), (1905), and the Frederick C. Robie

House (1910), were all designed at the Studio.

A group of talented young and draftsmen, drawn to the Studio by Wright’s vision, contributed to the legacy of Wright’s practice. These included Marion Mahony (1871 – 1962), the first practicing woman in Illinois, (1876 – 1937), William Drummond (1876 – 1946),

Francis Barry Byrne (1883 – 1967), Charles E. White (1876 – 1936), John S. Van Bergen (1885 – 1969), and (1871 – 1955). More than 20 architects are documented as having worked at

Wright’s Studio. They often came and went with no official record of their name, contribution or length of stay.

The staff joined the Studio with varying degrees of experience. During the early years of business, the principle staff members, Mahony, Drummond and Griffin, were academically trained and professionally licensed architects. Wright thrived on interaction and these skilled practitioners were instrumental to him as he worked to master his vision for a new American .

A gifted artist and draftsman, Marion Mahony joined Wright’s practice in 1895, working intermittently at the Studio until it closed in 1909. As Wright’s architecture matured, Mahony developed a unique graphic style that would come to define and publicize Wright’s Prairie style nationally and internationally. The architect Barry Byrne, who worked as a draftsman in the Studio from 1902 to 1908, wrote of her talents, “[she] had unusually fine compositional and linear ability, with a drawing ‘touch’ that met with Mr. Wright’s highly critical approval.” Many of Mahony’s renderings served as the basis for plates in Wright’s (Berlin, 1910), a substantial monograph of his buildings and projects.

From 1901 to 1906, Walter Burley Griffin worked as the studio’s office manager. A degreed and licensed architect with extensive experience in landscape architecture, Griffin was a strong addition to Wright’s practice. Barry Byrne recalled “an almost constant dialogue” between Wright and Griffin, “which they both enjoyed and, I’m sure it profited both in clarifying such architectural issues as the work in the office presented.” In later years, with his vocabulary of design for the Prairie House fully realized, Wright would rely on less experienced staff, with less imposing personalities.

Against the stimulating backdrop of one of Wright’s most striking early buildings, the Studio staff engaged in lively critiques of each other’s work, interacted with artists and craftsmen, and debated art, architecture and politics. Charles E. White, who worked as a draftsman at the Studio between 1903 and

1906, wrote of his experiences, “my environment is changing my character from day to day, architecturally as well as in other ways…”

Working in Wright’s Studio was a life-changing experience for many of his staff. Careers were defined, friendships made and lost, and future spouses met and courted. The years spent with Wright would have a lasting impact upon his staff. After leaving his employ, many of the individuals who worked at the

Studio would play a critical role in the development and dissemination of the Prairie style of architecture.

The Studio drafting room, ca. 1899 Collection of the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust

Larkin Company Administration Building, 1903, Buffalo, NY Collection of the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust

Marion Mahony in an undated photograph Courtesy of State Library of New South

Walter Burley Griffin, 1912 Courtesy of State Library of

William Drummond, 1915 Oak Park River Forest Historical Society

Francis Barry Byrne

Marion Mahony, presentation drawing of the K. C. DeRhodes house, 1906 Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library,