Remembering An Architectural Legend: Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright

He was considered the greatest architect of the 20^th 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

Louis Sullivan - America's Modern Architect

American Skyscrapers

Louis Sullivan

Known as the “Father of the Skyscraper”,  Louis Sullivan was one of the most influential architects in modern history. His designs were considered some of the best in American architecture.

Boston in the 1870's

Boston's Horticultural Hall

Louis Henry Sullivan was born on September 3, 1856 to Patrick and Andrienne (List) Sullivan in Boston.  He was raised on his grandparent’s farm in South Reading, Massachusetts - but Louis had an affinity for the city.  As a young teen, Sullivan was fascinated with buildings, how they were constructed, what materials were used, and why.

MIT Logo

Frank Furness

In 1871, Sullivan entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at the age of 16. He studied there for one year before moving to Philadelphia and landing a one-year job with architect Frank Furness.

Great Chicago Fire

Sullivan moved to Chicago in 1873 and became part of the design work force reconstructing the damaged city after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Dankmar Adler

In 1880, architect Dankmar Adler hired Sullivan as a draftsman and designer.  Three years later Adler made him a partner in the firm.  Adler and Sullivan began their partnership designing theatres. 

Adler was the partner who sought out and secured the large commissions; Sullivan was the architect who could design and create the visual unity necessary in tall buildings.

Auditorium Building

Auditorium Plans

But the commission that made their company famous was the Auditorium Building, built from 1886 to 1890.  Not only did it house a 4,200 seat theatre, but also a hotel, and offices located in the 17-story tower.  The building was so amazing, it helped the city of Chicago land the Columbian Exposition – the Chicago’s World Fair of 1893.

Wainwright Building

Carson Pirie Scott Department Store

Adler and Sullivan went on to design the Wainwright Building in St Louis, the Chicago Stock Exchange Building, the Guaranty Building, now known as the Prudential Building in Buffalo, New York, and the Carson Pirie Scott Department Store on State Street in Chicago – all within a period of five years.

Sullivan is known for coining the phrase “form follows function.” This means that the form (shape) of the building should be based on what the intended function (purpose) is. Sullivan first used the phrase in 1896 in his article for Lippincott’s Magazine entitled “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.”  It became the mantra of 20^th Century modern architecture and industrial design.

Steel Framework

Sullivan was the first architect to use steel frames in his skyscrapers. His American style of architecture simplified the look of modern buildings and created new techniques to lead the eye, and the population, upward. Sullivan believed that the use of steel in building construction was safe and economical. And with the continued growth of cities, vertical was the only way to expand buildings. The newly evolved high-speed elevators made such an idea a possibility.

Base Area

Sullivan understood the three parts that were fundamental to classical design - base, shaft, and capital.  His steel skyscrapers were divided into these three parts starting with a plain base that had plenty of large windows for the ground level shops.  Banks, stores, and other businesses that catered to foot traffic would occupy these street-level stores.

Vertical Shaft Area

The second design area (shaft) contained the offices. It was emphasized by vertical bands of masonry going up the corners of the building to emphasize its height. These tiers of offices could be built one upon another, with the individual offices being, as Sullivan described, "similar to a cell in a honeycomb."

Capital Area - Attic

 The final area was at the roofline where round windows were located.  This attic area was filled with the mechanics, pipes, and cables that came up through the building from the basement.

Details on Carson Store

Art Nouveau Details

While he felt that the practical construction of a building should be more important than the design elements, Sullivan did not object to ornamentation on buildings.  He was known to place Art Nouveau and Celtic Revival details fashioned from iron, stone, and terra cotta on his buildings.  The Art Nouveau vines located at the ground-floor level of building entrances became his signature mark.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Wright Design

Frank Lloyd Wright was Sullivan’s chief draftsman for six years and was intensely influenced by him.  It was Wright who took the phrase “form follows function” and adopted it as his architectural motto.  Wright used it as the backbone for his famous Prairie School architecture of the early 1900’s.

The Panic of 1893

In 1894, Alder and Sullivan dissolved their partnership.  After the Panic of 1893 when investors made a run on the gold in the U.S. Treasury, expansion and economic growth slowed down. Over 600 banks closed and 1,500 businesses failed during that time.  The U.S. economy would take four years to recover.

Van Allen Building

Peoples Savings and Loan

Sullivan received a few more large commissions, but without Adler seeking the business, the demand for Sullivan's designs began to disappear.   Slowly, he went into an emotional and physical decline.  Never again would Sullivan be commissioned to design a skyscraper.  Instead, he worked off and on, designing minor building in small Midwestern towns, and writing books.

On April 14, 1924, Louis Sullivan died alone and broke in a Chicago hotel room.  When former student, Frank Lloyd Wright heard this, he paid for Sullivan’s funeral.   Sullivan was buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago; near the modern mausoleums he had designed for Chicago’s wealthy families.  A small stone was placed at Sullivan’s grave, and later, a monument was erected nearby. 

Chicago Stock Exchange

Louis Sullivan

Sullivan’s architectural goal was to create, in his words, “… architecture that will soon become a fine art in the true, the best sense of the word, an art that will live because it will be of the people, for the people, and by the people.”

~ Joy