Frank Lincoln Lloyd Wright (Birth Name – Frank Lincoln Wright)

Frank Lloyd Wright was born on June 6, 1867 in Richland, Wisconsin. His father, William Cary Wright, was a preacher and classical musician. His mother, Anna Lloyd Jones Wright, was a schoolteacher. Wright’s mother decided her first child would grow up to build beautiful buildings. After seeing an exhibit of educational blocks created by Friedrich Fröbel, she bought a set with which young Wright spent much time playing. "The poet's message at heart, I wanted to go to work for the great moderns, Adler and Sullivan: and finally I went, warned by the prophecy and equipped, in fact armed, with the Froebel kindergarten education I received as a child from my mother. The virtue of all this lay in the awakening of the child-mind to rhythmic structure in Nature -- giving the child a sense of innate cause-and-effect otherwise far beyond child-comprehension. I soon became susceptible to constructive pattern evolving in everything I saw. I learned to 'see' this way and when I did, I did not care to draw casual incidentals to Nature. I wanted to design." (Frank Lloyd Wright) [1]

Growing up with scholarly parents, Wright loved books. His favorite was Victor Hugo’s, Notre Dame de Paris. Wright took to heart Hugo’s pronouncement that the printing press killed architecture that until that time told the occupants a “story.” He committed himself to become the architect that would restore architecture place as the “Queen of the Arts” by designing the American house that spoke to the needs of the family that lived in them. [3]

Wright studied structural engineering at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Finding the university didn’t provide the architectural education he so desired, he left and went to Chicago to become an apprentice architect. He first worked for Joseph Lyman Silsbee. He then worked for Adler and Sullivan. Louis Sullivan, an exceptional organic architect, schooled Wright in architecture, poetry, philosophy and music. Wright called him lieber meister or “beloved master.” [2] In 1893, Wright left the firm when he had a falling out with Sullivan over moonlighting having designed several houses in Oak Park, where he designed his house and studio, and in other Chicago neighborhoods. During this period, he designed houses with high pitched roofs such as his Home and Studio (1889), the Thomas H. Gale House (1892) and the William H. Winslow House (1893) [3]

During the early period of his career, Wright developed the Prairie style using a unique vocabulary of shape, form and pattern for the flat expanses of the American prairie. This was an American style free of artificial detail developed in styles from Europe but instead had integrated details and were anchored to the ground plane with low-pitched over hanging roofs and an open floor plan. Some of his projects during this period were the H. Harley Bradley House (1900), Dana-Thomas House (1902) and the Fredrick C. Robie House (1906) and public works including the Unity Temple (1906) and the Hillside School (1902) for his aunts. [3]

Before designing the Edward Chaney House (1903) for Chaney and his wife, Mamah, Wright had an affair with her that eventually led to Wright leaving his wife and children in Oak Park. The couple first spent a year together in Italy before arriving back in Oak Park. Eventually they left their spouses and moved into a large villa designed by Wright adjacent to one of the Jones family farms in Wisconsin. He called his work, “Taliesin” after a priest, magician and poet in Welsh mythology whose name means Shining Brow. After completion, Mamah and her children moved in but were killed by a servant turned arsonist who set fire to the living quarters.

Wright didn’t receive a divorce from his first wife until 1922. By then, he was having an affair with Miriam Noel, and they married in 1923. The marriage was short lived because she was addicted to opium. Before he received a divorce from her, he was having an affair with his third and final wife, Olgivanna Lazovich Hizenburg who was still married at the time to an architect. They married in 1928, and she remained with him until his death in 1959.

In 1932, the Wrights started a school of architecture at Taliesin. One of the early apprentices was William Wesley Peters, who had studied architecture and engineering at MIT. He was a key player in most of Wright’s later works and married their daughter, Svetlana.

It was during this period of his career that Wright proposed a utopian city which he referred to as Broadacre City. It was composed of his new design for low cost, affordable housing he referred to as the Usonian House. These were constructed with open plans with small bedrooms so the maximum amount of space could be provided for the family room under visual command of the workspace or kitchen. A fireplace was the focal point of the plan and the family’s world. Many of these concepts formed the basis for modern housing in America.

In the thirties, Wright designed the most famous of private residences, Fallingwater, for Edgar J. Kaufman, Sr. at Bear Run, Pennsylvania. Cantilevered over a thirty-foot-high waterfall, it employs local natural materials to make it one with nature. He also designed Taliesin West at Scottsdale, Arizona as the site for the winter home for the Fellowship after his doctor recommended the dry climate for respiratory ailments. This collection of open-air structures still houses The School of Architecture at Taliesin today. Wright designed the Johnson Wax Headquarters Building in Racine, Wisconsin which was completed after World War II. Over a period from the 1940’s and to the 1950’s he designed his last major work, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which was still under construction when he died on April 9, 1959 at the age of 91.

In all, Wright designed over 400 structures of which over 300 were built. Most still survive today with notable exceptions being the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Midway Gardens and the Larkin Soap Company Office Building. He was married three times and fathered four sons and three daughters and had an adopted daughter. Several of his children and grandchildren became architects or were involved in the construction industry. He authored several works including his autobiography and gave speeches and offered exhibits on his theories of art and architectural design. He was an expert and dealer of Japanese art. He received awards from several countries and the British and American architectural societies. He is known as one of the greatest if not the greatest American architect. Eight of his works were recently inscribed on the list of world heritage sites by UNESCO. [2]

[1] “Frank Lloyd Wright,” Froebel Web website [2] Frank Lloyd Wright – Wikipedia [3] “The Fellowship” – Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman