Donald Langmead

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT: A Bio-Bibliography Donald Langmead PRAEGER FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT Recent Titles in Bio-Bibliographies in Art and Architecture Paul Gauguin: A Bio-Bibliography Russell T. Clement Henri Matisse: A Bio-Bibliography Russell T. Clement Georges Braque: A Bio-Bibliography Russell T. Clement Willem Marinus Dudok, A Dutch Modernist: A Bio-Bibliography Donald Langmead J.J.P Oud and the International Style: A Bio-Bibliography Donald Langmead FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT A Bio-Bibliography Donald Langmead Bio-Bibliographies in Art and Architecture, Number 6 Westport, Connecticut London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Langmead, Donald. Frank Lloyd Wright : a bio-bibliography / Donald Langmead. p. cm.—(Bio-bibliographies in art and architecture, ISSN 1055-6826 ; no. 6) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0–313–31993–6 (alk. paper) 1. Wright, Frank Lloyd, 1867–1959—Bibliography. I. Title. II. Series. Z8986.3.L36 2003 [NA737.W7] 016.72'092—dc21 2003052890 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2003 by Donald Langmead All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003052890 ISBN: 0–313–31993–6 ISSN: 1055–6826 First published in 2003 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321 Contents Preface vii Abbreviations xiii Chronology 1 Annotated Bibliography 1886-1899 41 1900-1909 45 1910-1919 51 1920-1929 59 1930-1939 71 1940-1949 93 1950-1959 113 1960-1969 155 1970-1979 185 1980-1989 215 1990-1999 271 2000-2002 369 Index of Works 383 Index of Personal Names 401 Preface Introduction In the days when I was far more interested in comic strips than in architecture, a populist magazine, The Australasian Post, regularly published Al Capp's "Li'l Abner". Among the eccentric visitors to Dogpatch was an architect. All my searching has not relocated the strip, and I now forget the character's name. But I do remember that it sounded very like "Frank Lloyd Wright", and that the short figure in a cape and low-crowned hat was a creditable caricature of the Wisconsin architect. To have been relevant and recognizable in any comic strip, much less one that was syndicated internationally, Wright had to be, even in the 1950s, very well known. Indeed, Frank Lloyd Wright is probably the most famous of all modern architects. To resort to cliché, he was a legend in his own time. Many biographies of varying quality have been published since Wright's immodest An autobiography first appeared in 1932. Among the more recent major general works are Brendan Gill, Many masks. A life of Frank Lloyd Wright (1987); Meryle Secrest, Frank Lloyd Wright (1992) and Neil Levine's monumental The architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (1996). Others, such as Grant Carpenter Manson, Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910: The first golden age (1958) and Donald Leslie Johnson, Frank Lloyd Wright versus America. The 1930s (1990), have centered on periods within Wright's career. There have been juvenile biographies, too, including Wendy Buehr Murphy, Frank Lloyd Wright (1990), Alexander Boulton, Frank Lloyd Wright, architect: an illustrated biography (1993), and Susan Goldman Rubin, Frank Lloyd Wright (1994). In the light of so many publications, and because it is not our present purpose to re-examine the overabundant documentation, this volume does not include a biographical essay. Nevertheless, the following short curriculum vita is offered to provide a background to this bibliography. A rather more detailed chronology can be found in the following pages. viii Preface In a career spanning seventy-four years, Frank Lloyd Wright produced about 450 buildings and almost 550 unrealized architectural projects. He was born in 1867 at Richland Center, Wisconsin. An elementary schooling in that state and in Massachusetts was followed by a short-lived study of civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin, and a hands-on introduction to architecture. Moving to Chicago, Wright was employed in the office of architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee (1886-1887), then in the firm of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan (1887-1893). After that he established his own practice in Chicago and suburban Oak Park, Illinois (1893-1911). He entered an ephemeral partnership with Webster Tomlinson (1901-1902), and from time to time collaborated with a few other Chicago architects. After 1911 he worked from a home office, Taliesin, at Spring Green near Madison, Wisconsin, then for a while in Chicago and Tokyo (1914-1922) and in Los Angeles (1919-1924). In 1937 Wright opened another home office, Taliesin West, near Scottsdale, Arizona--his winter camp. He received many national and foreign honorary degrees, awards, and honors, including Gold Medals from the RIBA in 1941 and, belatedly, the AIA in 1949. In 1932 he initiated the apprenticeship program that he called the Taliesin Fellowship. Since his death in April 1959, also at Richland Center, Wright’s practice and the Fellowship (now an accredited school of architecture) have been continued by former employees. It is understating the case to say that the literature on (and by) Wright is copious. More than forty years after his death, historical and critical comment and debate are increasing, and controversy continues to surround him. The last major English-language bibliography was the 300-page Robert L. Sweeney, Frank Lloyd Wright: an annotated bibliography (Los Angeles: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1978). While it was a very useful piece of work—all the more admirable because it was compiled before the days of personal computers and on-line catalogues—there are many omissions (especially of foreign-language literature) and not a few errors. According to the US Library of Congress catalogue, subsequent English- language bibliographies have been short in length and often narrow in content, most being published by the former Vance Bibliographies of Monticello, Illinois. Augusto Rossari's Frank Lloyd Wright: bibliografia e opere (in Italian) was released by Alinea of Florence in 1992, and in 1999 the German-language Architekten—Frank Lloyd Wright: Literatur-dokumentation; eine Fachbiblio- grafie, the last of a five-part series, was published in Stuttgart. Sweeney's bibliography lists about 2,030 books and articles published until the end of 1977. Since that time, a further 1,500 primary works about Wright— excluding book reviews and correspondence about journal articles—have been published, more than 300 primary sources about (and a few by) Wright have appeared. The time is ripe for another bibliography. Sources The following document is not exhaustive. What bibliography is? However, it is the result of a careful search of the international literature and it Preface ix includes all major works on or by Wright. With the exception of a few key articles and reviews in quality publications, references to newspaper items are not included, because they are legion. The substructure of the bibliography was assembled by reference to Sweeney (of course) and major English-language guides such as the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, the Art Index, and the RIBA Architectural Periodicals Index, in their hard-copy earlier editions, then CD-ROM versions, and finally the frequently updated on-line versions. In addition, other on-line resources proved invaluable: The DADAbase of the New York Museum of Modern Art, ICONDA (International Construction Database), Art Abstracts and ARTbibliographies Modern, as well as any number of on-line catalogues of national Libraries—Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United States were consulted. These were all freely accessible through the ubiquitous National Information Standards Organization Z39.50 Information Retrieval Protocol. Finally, I also have had access to the catalogues of the world's universities, too numerous to name here. The importance of the non-English language literature should be noted. Wright's uniqueness and the prophetic quality of his work were identified and celebrated beyond America well before his compatriots recognized them At home, for many years he remained a more-or-less parochial mid-western architect, while in Europe he was eulogized with "We do not have his like here!" It is perhaps remarkable that the first foreign publication of his work, in 1900, was in Czechoslovakian. Ten years later the seminal folio Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Lloyd Wright was published in Berlin. In 1912 the Dutch followed, and Japanese and French architectural journals began to publish his work, in 1923 and 1924 respectively. The first Italian article appeared in 1935, but despite a late start, the Italian architectural press has given Wright more coverage than any other country's, other than the United States. Although Charles Robert Ashbee mentioned Wright in his Where the great city stands, published in London in 1917, the xenophobic British journals took little notice of the American until 1939. Structure of the bibliography Entries are chronologically arranged. Within the major divisions by decades, each year is divided into two sections: "books, monographs and catalogues" and "journals". Each section is set out alphabetically by the surname of the author (if known), while anonymous items are located at the end of the section, arranged alphabetically by title of book or journal. There is a continuous numbering sequence from 001 to the end, the entry numbers being cross-referenced to an index of individual works and an index of personal names. The format of each entry is normally as follows: author; title of book or article; bibliographical information; language and translation of title (if other than English); and an annotation that indicates textual content.

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