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A Japanese Inspiration for Frank Lloyd Wright's Rigid-Core High-Rise Structures Author(S): M A Japanese Inspiration for Frank Lloyd Wright's Rigid-Core High-Rise Structures Author(s): M. F. Hearn Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 68-71 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/990547 Accessed: 25-04-2015 23:11 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and Society of Architectural Historians are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 140.105.48.199 on Sat, 25 Apr 2015 23:11:08 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Japanese Inspiration for Frank Lloyd Wright's Rigid-Core High-Rise Structures M. F. HEARN University of Pittsburgh FrankLloyd Wright'srigid-core high-rise structures, initiated with the earthquake-proof architecture2-a tree-like, high-rise structure projectfor the National Life InsuranceCompany building of 1924, with rigid core and cantilevered floors-in the project for the have theirclosest structural and iconographicalanalogue in one typeof National Life Insurance Company building in Chicago.3 Japanesepagoda, exemplifiedby that at Horyu-ji. This association In the conception of this skyscraper, Wright was prompted signalsa previouslyundetected instance ofJapanese influence on Wright's by the commission of his client, Alfred Mosser Johnson, pres- work. ident of the corporation, to create an earthquake-proof office building.4 Although Johnson's motive in doing so has never been it was in the interest of a life insurance THE PREMATURE NEWS that Frank Lloyd Wright's earth- divulged, clearly to and safer architectureeven if quake-proof Imperial Hotel had collapsed in the Tokyo earth- company employ promote pure- for the sake of For such a commission quake of September 1923 undoubtedly gladdened all who had ly public image. Wright, was a and he was determined to make the taken satisfaction eleven years earlier in the sinking of the "un- major opportunity, most of it. about his work and himself sinkable" Titanic on her maiden voyage: claims of invulnera- Feeling good (despite difficulties in his he rose to new bility to natural disastersfor the works of man inspired in many distracting private life), heights of inventiveness. He defined the for earth- a secret hope that such hubris would be punished by divine hadjust requirements construction in with wrath. Yet, as the confusion instigated by the catastrophe in quake-proof high-rise "Experimenting Japan subsided and communication with the outside world re- 2. claimedin the secondedition of the sumed, the world was astonished to learn that the hotel, riding AlthoughWright Autobiog- New York, 1943, 259, that he had the NationalLife on its concrete had not withstood the shock raphy, designed "pincushion," only InsuranceCompany building in 1920 and that he had had the scheme that devastated much of the city but had also escaped virtually in mind since 1917, this was almostcertainly a slip of the memoryin unscathed.' Overnight Wright became an international celeb- latelife: all earlierand later accounts of the building(except those based primarilyon the Autobiography)place the commissionand the rity, an architect of heroic stature. The obvious gratificationthat design in 1924. For this datesee especiallyFrank Lloyd Wright, Monograph, ed. such an incident would henceforth raised in provide anyone Y. Futagawaand B. B. Pfeiffer,12 vols., V, 1924-1936, Tokyo, 1985, him a heightened expectation of what the world owed him in 1. Indeed,the only knowncorrespondence with the client,A. M. John- son, is dated19 1924: see Frank Indexto theTaliesin the way of admiration and of what he owed the world in the July LloydWright, Correspondence,I, 24. Wright had alreadydesigned another of of inventive It is not that yet type way creativity. surprising,then, during earthquake-proofstructure, that of a gridof steel rodsembedded in the the subsequent year he devised yet another structuralsystem for masonryof textile blockwalls, in 1921 for the Doheny Ranch,which was not built; this systemmaterialized in 1923 in La Miniatura,the second house for Alice Millard;see Henry-RussellHitchcock, In the This papergrew out of a conversationwith my colleague,Sandy Kita, Natureof Materials:The Buildingsof FrankLloyd Wright, 1887-1941, a specialistin Japaneseart. I am indebtedto him for calling to my New York, 1942, 95. attentionthe "heartpillar" of theJapanese pagoda and the bibliograph- 3. Wright's detailedaccount of this commissionis in the second ical items on Japanesearchitecture. editionof An Autobiography,256-259. 1. Wright'sprincipal account of this eventis recordedin Architecture 4. The issueof earthquake-proofnessis only indirectlystated in the andModern Life, which he coauthoredwith BakerBrownell, New York, Autobiography,when Wrightrecalled that Johnson was interestedin the 1937, 134-136. For the actualcondition of the hotel afterthe earth- cantileverbecause the use of that structuralprinciple had broughtthe quake,which sustained"minor damage" rather than survivingwholly ImperialHotel throughthe earthquake(p. 254). At this point in his unscathedas Wright claimed,see the letterto the editorby RichardR. narrative,Wright was leadingup to a quotationof praisefrom Sullivan Bradshaw,headed "Dissent on Imperial,"in ArchitecturalRecord,CXXIX, for the design of the National Life Insurancebuilding as the artistic January1961, 10, 242. It has never been remarkedupon beforethat realizationof Sullivan'shigh hopesfor a modernarchitecture (p. 259). Wright had receivedletters from Endo Arata, dated 8 September1920 HenceWright had no reasonto emphasizeearthquake-proofness in that and 8 February1923, reportingthat the hotel had survivedwithout context. He referredto the building'searthquake-proofness in A Tes- notabledamage during less catastrophicearthquakes. See FrankLloyd tament,New York, 1957, when he comparedits structuralformat to Wright,an Indexto the TaliesinCorrespondence, ed. A. Alofsin, 5 vols., that of the PriceTower (p. 196) and of the PriceTower to the mile- New York, 1988, I, ChronologicalIndex, 1885-1946, 20. high "Illinois"project (p. 239). 68 JSAH L:68-71. MARCH 1991 This content downloaded from 140.105.48.199 on Sat, 25 Apr 2015 23:11:08 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HEARN: A JAPANESE INSPIRATION FOR WRIGHT 69 * 1 _ ' I - - - - . _1 JI ^- :I 'i o,:'.R, ". : RES - v ,] , VAT . _ , I =?., j L:',,, ,._.........................v . \ . *L ,r-r ;^_ .* _ _ -i--.r _ _ __ _ .,H -. - ----"ii,I ,-C- .P i -r -i :: r T O R E Si //fil_ . ,~ b " "i~ I .: A. s fi . ?: b~ 1-1 -=?PLrrrirrra5 _a; ?;d_1?1X1?w__ C R OSS SCTION THRO' ONE OF mA FOl R MAIN a FPAANK LLOYDFfR,<_t_Ov[= LRANSVERD AN( \WwRrr;tEWRIGHT^ RIGHT ARCHITECTME Fig. 1. Frank Lloyd Wright, Project for the National Life Insurance Company, 1924, showing the cross section through one of the four main transverseunits (Copyright ? The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation 1942). Human Lives," a pamphlet written in 1923 for the Fine Arts floorsof adjacentcores were to be connectedby a thin bridge- Society of Hollywood: "Tenuous flexibility is the chance for plate.Each core constituteda semi-independentstructure that life of any sound construction in an earthquake: flexibility of couldbe shakenwithout pulling on otherparts of the building. foundation, flexibility of superstructuresecured by continuous, The coresthemselves were to be rooteddeep in the earthso as lateral, binding integuments from side to side in the floor planes to give maximumstability to the verticaltrunk, in the manner of the structure, and balancing of all loads well over vertical of the tap root of a tree.6 supporting members by means of the cantilever."5 He already It is crucialto observethat Wright's designsfor high-rise knew, therefore, how he meant to proceed. buildingsprior to 1924 involvedstructural principles very dif- Wright's scheme for the National Life Insurance Company ferent from those employed in the National Life Insurance called for four parallel slab towers, set perpendicularto the street, Companyproject. The Romeo-Julietwindmill, designed in 1896 intersecting a megaslab, the whole sheathed in curtain walls of for his auntsNell andJane LloydJone, was composedof two glass and copper panels. Such an exterior treatment was possible intersectinghollow tubes, one lozenge-shapedand the other because the supporting structure was on the inside: each of the hexagonal,mounted on anoutward-sloping foundation of stone.7 slabs was composed of two rows of tree-like rigid cores with The SanFrancisco Call project of 1912, on the otherhand, was concrete floors cantilevered from them (Fig. 1). Corresponding 6. Wright explainedthis schemein the secondedition of the Au- 5. Cited in FrankLloyd Wrighton Architecture:Selected Writings, 1894- tobiography,256-259. 1940, ed. F. Gutheim, New York, 1941, 99. 7. Ibid., 134, 137. This content downloaded from 140.105.48.199 on Sat, 25 Apr 2015 23:11:08
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