FREE ESSAY ON FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Frank Lloyd Wright
Rebel in Concrete
Period 7 
March 22, 1999
The Life of Frank Lloyd Wright
Before Frank Lloyd Wright was born his mother knew he was going to be a world renowned
architect. In his nursery, she hung prints of well known cathedrals of Europe on the
walls. Frank Lloyd Wright was born on June 8 ,1869. He was always very close to his
mother, and when his father left Frank went off to work to help his mother raise the
other children. Frank's father also had a large impact on his son's life. Able to play a
dozen instruments, he taught Frank to play the piano, the violin and the cello. He also
taught Frank the importance of the acoustics, the way the sound vibrates off
obstructions, such as walls in a building. 
In the summer, Frank would go to Wisconsin to work on his uncles' farms. They would wake
up at four every morning to feed the animal s and milk the cows. At first Frank hated it,
he even ran a way a few times. After a while he began to enjoy the hard work and the
money that he made. The thing Frank enjoyed most about living in the valley with his
relatives was that every Sunday after one of his uncles did the sermon at the local
Unitarian church, for they were all ministers, they would go deep into the woods and find
a stream and they would have a picnic. After they ate the whole family would sing, play
instruments or play games. They would even go swimming in the stream. 
Frank moved to Chicago when he was eighteen, against both his mother's and uncle's
advice. They thought he would waste his money on extravagant things. After looking for a
job for a week he finally went to Silsbee, an architect that was working on a new church
for his uncle. Silsbee hired him for eight dollars a week. Shortly after starting Frank
felt that he was doing work that was false, it didn't come from his heart. He had heard
that Adler and Sullivan, an architectural agency in Chicago, had an opening. He headed
over there and Sullivan turned him down telling him that he needed to do his own work.
Later that week Frank went back with his own drawings and Sullivan hired him. Frank
wanted to marry a girl by the name of Catherine Tobin. After getting a five year contract
at Sullivan and Adler, Frank asked Sullivan for a loan to build a house so that he could
get married. He built the house in a development called Oak Park. 
Wright decided to start his own business with an old friend, Cecil Corwin, from Silsbee's
office. He began to design houses and he also added on to his own home. He built a
playroom for his children and a drawing room for his business. His aunt's, from the
valley, wanted him to design a windmill for them that would stand out, Frank succeeded.
You could see the windmill for miles around. 
At a dinner party Frank was offered four years of study at the Beaux Arts in Paris, two
years in Rome and a job when he returned. His family would also be taken care of. Frank
refused this offer, because he didn't want to build classical buildings, he wanted to
build using a new innovative style. Not long after Wright was building houses for
himself, his partner, Cecil decided to go east and pursue a different vocation. Wright
missed him and finally moved into a loft that another friend rented. 
Wright's stubbornness often scared away clients that wanted classical Greek style houses,
but Frank usually won clients over with his sincerity. Frank got a contract to build a
factory building in Buffalo, New York. Frank wanted to build around the function of the
building. He even added a set of open air stair cases that would allow air intake for the
ventilation systems as well as a way of communicating. Frank went to Buffalo for the
interview and persuaded the owner to give extra money for the stair cases. He got the job
and hired a builder that he had worked with at Adler and Sullivans. Frank also made the
building fireproof by making the furniture steel and magnesite. 
Next Wright built a temple that was unique because it had no spire. When presenting his
design to the board they told him that it was ludicrous. Though enough of the members
voted for the design that Wright was hired. A man named Wasmuth wanted to do a
publication of Wright's works in Europe. Wright decided that since his marriage was
falling apart he would leave for Germany to supervise the publication. After arriving in
Germany Wright found that European architects loved his work. 
After coming home from Europe, Wright decided to build on a piece of land his mother gave
him only a few miles from Spring Green, Wisconsin. He was going to build a house with a
workshop attached. He would call it Taliesin after a man From King Arthur's Round Table.
Taliesin means "glowing brow." At Taliesin he would work away from the city and be in the
valley where he grew up. 
Next he got a contract to build an orchestra hall in Chicago. For this project Wright
brought in his son, John. One thing that held up construction was that many people
thought that the acoustics would be bad but in the end Wright won them over and
construction continued. The worker's union held up construction many times almost pushing
back the date of completion. After much opposition the building was finished. While
Wright was in Chicago a servant had set Taliesin on fire, killing many of Wright's
apprentices and servants. In 1915, Taliesin II was finished and with much the same design
as the first you could see for miles around. Wright was asked to design the Imperial
Hotel in Japan after Taliesin II had been finished. He accepted and he received a formal
invitation to come to Japan. 
In Japan, Wright faced many problems. One was that the ground where the hotel was
supposed to be built was eight feet of soil and then mud. Also the problem of frequent
earthquakes and the resulting fires posed a threat to the hotel. Wright had to invent a
support system to keep the building up during earthquakes. He devised a cantilevered
method so that each building was on it's own support system and they were linked
together. This left the hotel to lay on top of the soil but not attached to it. Now the
hotel could move freely around and earthquakes would have no effect on it. Wright also
used lead pipes, with easy bends in the pipes so that the earthquakes wouldn't break
them, for plumbing. There was also a large pool in front of the hotel that could be used
for water if the hotel caught fire after an earthquake. Wright did have problems with
converting western techniques to those that the natives knew. Also, Frank had to conduct
many tests in order to use new techniques that he had developed. 
While Wright was in Japan he walked the streets and entertained in his spare time. He had
a hobby of collecting Japanese prints, when making a trip to the United States he would
bring his new prints home with him. On a trip home Howard Mansfield, a treasurer at the
Metropolitan Museum in New York, asked if Wright could get some original prints for him.
Wright made it known in Japan that he wanted original prints and he soon got them and
went back to give them to Mansfield. After Mansfield had inspected them and they found
that they were fake, Wright was so embarrassed that he invited Mansfield to come to
Taliesin II and pick some from Wright's own collection. 
In September 1923, Wright got a telegram telling him that Tokyo had it's worst earthquake
in history. He later got word that the Imperial Hotel was standing and was housing
hundreds of homeless people, and the only thing that was wrong was that a few stone
statues from the gardens had sunk into the ground. Wright had done it, he had constructed
an earthquake proof structure. 
Wright later started a school for apprentices where they taught not only the principles
of architecture but also the principle's of life. In the summer the school was in
Wisconsin, at Taliesin II. In the winter, the school was in Arizona, in a house called
Taliesin West. At Taliesin west there was a great room that could seat eighty people. The
walls and ceilings were open and at night tarps were pulled down over them to keep out
the cold. At both houses apprentices kept themselves busy by making minor repairs on the
house, the studio or build new buildings. As well as farm work, house work and whatever
else came along. They fixed broken pipes, and during the depression in the 1930's, they
cut their own wood and quarried their own stone. They also grew their own produce that
they stored in a root cellar for winter or times when food supply was short. At first the
tuition was only six hundred dollars, which included room and board. After the first year
though the tuition went up to around eight hundred dollars because the apprentices were
fed well and they were supplied with all of the things they needed to build and design.
Wright believed that each apprentice should be able to express themselves, so he let each
apprentice decorate their own room at the beginning of each year. 
Wright designed many buildings that were never built, some have even been built since his
death. He died on April 9, 1959. 
Frank Lloyd Wright through the Eyes of Aylesa Forsee 
Aylesa Forsee writes mainly of Wright's life as an architect and only briefly mentions
his private life, in the book Frank Lloyd Wright: A Rebel in Concrete . She writes of him
"laughing as his children laugh" during the holidays, and him taking "personal exile" and
leaving his first wife to go to Germany. The last sentence of the book, reads "Wright's
genius will never die." She also never mentions any of his mistresses, whom I have found
a lot of information about while doing other research. For these reasons I feel that she
is lavish in her opinions of him, in other words biased towards him and his work as well
as his beliefs. She makes him out to be a great man whose work should have been accepted
and commended long before it was, when actually in the era that he lived the people were
not looking for innovative "new" ideas that he was designing them. Also, Wright was
designing houses that were too expensive for people during the depression causing him to
resort to more conventional, inexpensive housing. 
Some major successes that the author really highlights are the Imperial Hotel in Japan,
Wright's job at Adler and Sullivan, the school that Wright started for young architects
and the Solomon Guggenheim museum in New York City. Some major failures that the author
writes about are Wright's failed marriages and houses that he designed but were never
built. The author doesn't go into much detail about either of these topics. The author
focuses mostly on Wright's major successes in life such as the Imperial Hotel, the
Guggenheim Museum and the apprentice school that he started. 
A former teacher, Aylesa Forsee wrote Frank Lloyd Wright: A Rebel in Concrete because she
wanted to challenge the minds of teenagers, and so that they would have a role model who
followed his dreams. 
Interview
Q Why did you want to be an architect?
During my research I encountered many different stories of his life and I would like to
know the real story. 
Q Why did you rebuild Taliesin II after the first had burned down, and with almost the
same building designs? 
This has been bothering me since I first read the book. If he lost so many people and
things of sentimental value why would you rebuild something with almost the exact same
design?
Q What advice would you give to aspiring young artists?
He was a stubborn man who was very determined in bringing about a revolution of
architecture, I would really like to know what kept him going after all of the set
backs.
Q If you could do one thing differently what would it be?
He did so many things that I would have regretted, maybe he would have been more or less
lenient when designing a house, or built it more to the owner's taste.
Q The Wright Association is now selling blueprints of houses that you designed but were
never built. The pottery-house was one of them, and the same blue print was sold twice.
In this case what would you have done? Would have allowed both houses to be built or not
and why?
Many people at the association wondered what Wright would have done, they allowed both
houses to be built because it was their mistake.
Q Why did you open the school in Wisconsin?
It was controversial when Wright started the school because he wanted it recognized as an
institution of learning and the American Architects Society refused to except the school
as an institute of learning. 
Q Why did you build the main area of the Guggenheim Museum as a ramp, seeing that you
design everything for practical use?
When you go into the Guggenheim you take an elevator or escalator to the top and then you
walk down the ramp. 
I chose to analyze Falling Water at Bull Run, Pennsylvania.
Falling Water was built for Edgar Kauffman in 1935. Wright went to see the land before he
designed the house. He tied the house into the natural surroundings of the area using
flat rock for the walls and textured cement. There are balconies over the waterfall to
tie in the waterfall with the house. The furniture was designed by Wright to tie in the
whole house which is a big open space centered around the fire place which has a huge
river rock for a hearth. 
I chose to Analyze the Decaro house in Oak Park, Illinois.
The Decaro house was a house that Wright built against his own reasoning. Afterwards he
wished he hadn't built it in the first place because it didn't come from his heart. The
house is built squarely like the Unity Temple also in Oak Park, Illinois. Like Wright's
other work it was built for use and all extra ornamentation that had no purpose was left
out. Wright probably, as he did with other houses, designed the furniture and the china
and even the clothes of the woman who owned it so that when entertaining she would blend
in with the house. Both houses had an impact on society not really alone but if you put
together all of Wright's work on the whole it was controversial and lots of people didn't
like his style. Artists and European architects loved his work and worshipped him as a
person, but many American architects were still building classical Greek and Roman
accented houses. Wright was ahead of his time. 
Endnotes
Bibliography
1. Forsee, Aylesa. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Rebel in Concrete. C. 1959 Macrae Smith Company,
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
2. Gill, Brendan. Many Masks, C.1987 G. P. Putnam and Sons (New York, New York)
3. http://www.swcp.com/FLW/gallery/page001.html
4. Wright Site (http://www.wrightplus.org)