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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.”
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Oak Park House of FLW |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Fallingwater |
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| 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.
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| Usonian House |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
