Showing posts with label Frank Lloyd Wright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frank Lloyd Wright. Show all posts

Friday, April 8, 2016

Remembering An Architectural Legend: Frank Lloyd Wright


Frank Lloyd Wright
He was considered the greatest architect of the 20th century with his organic American Modernistic style.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born on June 8, 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin. Wright’s mother, Anna was a teacher. She purchased a set of Froebel educational blocks for Frank at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Wright was entranced with the geometrically shaped blocks and spent hours building forms with the cubes, spheres and triangle-shaped blocks; blocks he said influenced his approach to design.

Joseph Sillsbee
Chicago architect Joseph Silsbee hired Wright as a draftsman in 1887. Wright described Silsbee’s work as “gracefully picturesque.”  But when he learned that the firm of Adler and Sullivan was hiring, Wright applied and was taken on as an official apprentice of the firm.

Louis Sullivan
Louis Sullivan became a mentor to Wright, and he quickly learned how to design public and commercial buildings in the Prairie-style, following the famous Sullivan motto, “form follows function.”

Wright’s only problem at the firm was his constant debt. He wanted the finer things in life, even if he couldn’t afford them. Sullivan was constantly loaning Wright money but he never seemed to get “caught up.”

Catherine Tobin Wright
Wright married Catherine “Kitty” Tobin in 1889, and Sullivan loaned him enough money to build a house in the suburb of Oak Park. (Sullivan also gave Wright a five-year employment contract.) But money was still tight.

In order to make more money, Wright began to take on independent commissions without the firm’s knowledge. He continued to design his “bootleg” Prairie houses until 1893 when Sullivan recognized one them as something Wright had designed. The two suffered a major rift because of this breach of contract, and did not speak again for over 12 years.

Wright's Arts and Crafts Interior
Wright left the company and decided to start his own firm. He shared space with three other young architects, all of them designing in the Arts and Crafts style. Between 1894 and 1910, Wright’s firm trained several of the main Prairie School architects.



Oak Park House of FLW
Robie House in Chicago








By 1901, Wright had built 50 structures, many of them homes located in Oak Park, Illinois. Wright’s “Prairie Houses” were becoming popular with their low, horizontal base topped with sloping roofs, and long windows that let in nature. Wright’s interiors encompassed wide-open spaces emulating nature with a nod toward Japanese architecture. Wright’s work spread to include houses and buildings in New York State, Pennsylvania, and throughout the Midwest.

Mamah Cheney
In 1903 as he was designing a house for a neighbor, Wright became involved with the neighbor’s wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Kitty Wright was sure that this infatuation would fade, so she refused to grant Wright a divorce.

Taliesin
Six years later, in 1909, Wright and Mamah moved to Europe together, deserting their spouses and children back in Chicago. Wright returned to the U.S. in the autumn of 1910 and purchased land in Spring Green, Wisconsin, adjacent to land owned by his mother’s family. There he built a home for Mamah, which he called Taliesin, “Truth Against the World” in Welsh.

Taliesin Murders
But disaster struck in August, 1914 when a disgruntled servant murdered Mamah, her two children, and four others at the home before setting fire to it. Wright was away at the time.

Olga Hinzeburg
Eight years later, Kitty Wright granted Frank a divorce, and in 1924, Wright began another wild affair with Olga Hinzeburg. They moved together back to a newly built Taliesin. After more marriage ups and downs, and another fire at Taliesin, Olga and Wright were married in 1928, and Taliesin III was built from the ashes of the second house.


Fallingwater
Taliesin West
During the 1920s, Wright designed his textile concrete block houses in California. And during the 1930s, he honed his organic style creating three of his well-known masterpieces; Graycliff near Buffalo, New York; Fallingwater near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Taliesin West, the Wright complex near Scottsdale, Arizona.







Usonian House
Guggenheim Museum
Wright continued to blaze new design trails well into his 70s and 80s with his Usonian Houses of the late 1930s and '40s, along with major buildings such as the Johnson Wax Headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan.



Wright's First Grave
Frank Lloyd Wright died on April 9, 1959 after intestinal surgery in Phoenix, Arizona. He was 91 years old. Wright was buried in the Lloyd-Jones family cemetery in Spring Green, Wisconsin. But his burial was to be as complex as his life had been.





Wright and Olga
Twenty-five years after his death, his wife Olga requested that Wright’s remains be dug up and cremated along with her and her daughter’s. This was done, and the cremains were interred in the memorial garden at Taliesin West.

~ Joy

Friday, June 8, 2012

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Cemetery Designs

 
Frank Lloyd Wright
Today marks what would have been the 145th birthday of American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.  Wright is known for what he termed ‘organic architecture,’ which later developed into his Prairie Style.
Falling Water

During Wright’s 72 years as an architect, he designed over 1,000 buildings and structures, and actually built around 500 of them. Wright is known for such architectural gems as Falling Water in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Belvidere, Illinois

Buffalo, New York
But what people don’t usually realize is that Frank Lloyd Wright also designed a memorial chapel for a cemetery that is built in Illinois; and a very modern mausoleum that can be found in a cemetery in New York.

 

Pettit Chapel:
Front of Pettit Chapel
The Pettit Chapel is located in Belvidere Cemetery in Belvidere, Illinois.  Wright designed the chapel after Emma Glasner Pettit approached him with the request.  She wanted an indoor setting where friends and family could gather to pay their respects to her husband, William Pettit.  Pettit had been a doctor in Cedar Falls, Iowa and had built the largest medical practice in the state during the late 1890’s.  When he died of a heart attack in 1899, his body was taken back to Belvidere, Illinois, his hometown.  Crowds of people from Cedar Falls wanted to attend the funeral in Belvidere.  So many, in fact, that a special train had to be chartered so that all who wanted to attend, could.

T Shaped Chapel
Low Prairie Style Architecture
It was 1906 when the Belvider Cemetery Association approved the request and design for the memorial chapel, and building began in 1907.  The T-shaped chapel cost around $3,000 to build.  The Pettit Chapel was the only structure Wright designed for a cemetery and one of the earliest of his Prairie Style buildings.


Low Overhanging Roof
Inside the Chapel
Wright designed the chapel with a fireplace inside, and a porch with a low overhanging roof, typical of his buildings to come.  Art glass windows were used, along with wood trim.  The exterior was covered in a stucco finish.  The chapel was used for funerals in the cemetery until the 1920’s.  In 1978, the Pettit Chapel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  The chapel has undergone restoration twice since 1907, once in 1977, and again in 2003.

Pettit Chapel in Cemetery
Wright's Organic Style
The Pettit Chapel may be seen during regular cemetery hours.  It is still used for weddings, funerals, meetings and luncheons. For more information contact the Belvidere Cemetery at (815) 547-7642 or visit http://www.belviderecemetery.com.

Blue Sky Mausoleum:

Blue Sky Mausoleum
Another of Wright’s architectural designs for a cemetery can be found at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York.  This one-of-a-kind, organic design is known as the Blue Sky Mausoleum.  Best described as an outdoor mausoleum, the blueprint shows no walls or roof. 


Wright's Sketch
It was during the late 1920’s when Darwin Martin, of the Larkin Soap Company, contacted Frank Lloyd Wright about designing a family mausoleum for him.  Martin wanted it built in Forest Lawn Cemetery, in Buffalo.  Wright drew up a sketch, but Martin never had the mausoleum built. A year later, he lost his fortune in the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and with the start of the Great Depression, the plans for the mausoleum were put away.

View From Across Lake
It was not until October 2004 that the Blue Sky Mausoleum was finally constructed.  In the mid-90’s, Fred Whaley Jr., President of the Forest Lawn Cemetery, discovered that Frank Lloyd Wright had designed a mausoleum for his cemetery.  After several years of fund raising, the needed $500,000 was raised and the cemetery had the memorial built according to Wright’s drawings from 75 years before. 

Benches and Crypts at Top
Crafted from white granite and concrete, twenty-four crypts rise gently from the edge of a lake up a hill, with steps going up the center.   Benches protrude from a vertical marker at the top. Green trees provide the walls and the sky is the ceiling.

View with Lake
According to Wright’s notes, “This is a burial facing the open sky – a dignified great headstone commune to all.”  Designed in stepping terraces, it offers an organic compromise between the grave and a mausoleum.

 
Forest Lawn Cemetery
Since the mausoleum did not get built for the Martin family, it now offers a unique opportunity. The crypts are available for sale to the public by contacting the cemetery. This is the only Frank Lloyd Wright structure that you can elect to be buried in.  Forest Lawn Cemetery also offers tours of the mausoleum.  For more information call (716) 885-1600 or visit www.forest-lawn.com. 

Frank Lloyd Wright
Cemeteries are truly amazing places to visit.  Especially when you find not only architectural gems, but also masterpieces designed by architectural giants!

~ Joy