On this day 9 April death of Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Frank Lloyd Wright – Phil Ochs – Brook Benton – Richard Condon – Willie Stargell – Sidney Lumet

Frank Lloyd Wright
in 1954

On this day in 1959, architect and interior designer Frank Lloyd Wright died in Phoenix, Arizona at the age of 91. Born Frank Lincoln Wright on June 8, 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin. Wright designed more than 1,000 structures, 532 of which were completed. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater (1935), which is in my opinion, the best all-time work of American architecture”. His creative period spanned more than 70 years.

Wright was the pioneer of what came to be called the Prairie School movement of architecture and he also developed the concept of the Usonian home in Broadacre City, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States. In addition to his houses, Wright designed original and innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, museums and other structures. He often designed interior elements for these buildings as well, including furniture and stained glass. Wright wrote 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as “the greatest American architect of all time”.

Wright’s home in Oak Park, Illinois

On June 1, 1889, Wright married his first wife, Catherine Lee “Kitty” Tobin (1871–1959). The two had met around a year earlier.

The Walter Gale House (1893) is Queen Anne in style yet features window bands and a cantilevered porch roof which hint at Wright’s developing aesthetics

William H. Winslow House (1893) in River Forest, Illinois

Nathan G. Moore House (1895), Oak Park, Illinois

Wright’s studio (1898) viewed from Chicago Avenue

Arthur Heurtley House (1902), Oak Park, IL

Darwin D. Martin House (1904), Buffalo, New York

Hillside Home School, 1902, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin

in 1926

Aerial photo of Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin

Wright developed a reputation in Oak Park as a man-about-town. His family had grown to six children, but Wright was not parental and he relied on his wife Catherine to care for them. In 1903, Wright designed a house for Edwin Cheney, a neighbor in Oak Park, and immediately took a liking to Cheney’s wife, Mamah. Mamah Cheney was a modern woman with interests outside the home. She was an early feminist and Wright viewed her as his intellectual equal. The two fell in love, and they became the talk of the town, as they often could be seen taking rides in Wright’s automobile through Oak Park. Wright’s wife, Kitty, sure that this attachment would fade as others had, refused to grant him a divorce. Mamah had to live in Europe for two years in order to obtain a divorce from Edwin on the grounds of desertion.

In 1909, even before the Robie House was completed, Wright and Mamah Cheney met up in Europe, leaving their spouses and children behind.

Wright published a portfolio of his work with Berlin publisher Ernst Wasmuth. The resulting two volumes, titled Studies and Executed Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, were published in 1911 in two editions, creating the first major exposure of Wright’s work in Europe. The work contained more than 100 lithographs of Wright’s designs and was commonly known as the Wasmuth Portfolio.

Wright remained in Europe for almost a year and set up home first in Florence, Italy — where he lived with his eldest son Lloyd — and later in Fiesole, Italy, where he lived with Mamah. During this time, Edwin Cheney granted Mamah a divorce, though Kitty still refused to grant one to her husband. After Wright returned to the United States in October 1910, he persuaded his mother to buy land for him in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The land, bought on April 10, 1911, was adjacent to land held by his mother’s family, the Lloyd-Joneses. Wright began to build himself a new home, which he called Taliesin. The recurring theme of Taliesin also came from his mother’s side: Taliesin in Welsh mythology was a poet, magician, and priest. The family motto, “Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd” (“The Truth Against the World”), was taken from the Welsh poet Iolo Morganwg, who also had a son named Taliesin. The motto is still used today as the cry of the druids and chief bard of the Eisteddfod in Wales.

On August 15, 1914, while Wright was working in Chicago, Julian Carlton, a male servant from Barbados who had been hired several months earlier, set fire to the living quarters of Taliesin and murdered seven people with an axe as the fire burned. The dead included Mamah; her two children, John and Martha Cheney; a gardener (David Lindblom); a draftsman (Emil Brodelle); a workman (Thomas Brunker); and another workman’s son (Ernest Weston). Two people survived the mayhem, one of whom, William Weston, helped to put out the fire that almost completely consumed the residential wing of the house. Carlton swallowed hydrochloric acid immediately following the attack in an attempt to kill himself. He was nearly lynched on the spot, but was taken to the Dodgeville jail. Carlton died from starvation seven weeks after the attack, despite medical attention.

In 1922, Kitty Wright finally granted Wright a divorce. Under the terms of the divorce, Wright was required to wait one year before he could marry his then-mistress, Maude “Miriam” Noel. Wright wed Miriam in November 1923, but her addiction to morphine led to the failure of the marriage in less than one year. In 1924, after the separation but while still married, Wright met Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich Hinzenburg at a Petrograd Ballet performance in Chicago. They moved in together at Taliesin in 1925, and soon Olgivanna was pregnant with their daughter, Iovanna, born on December 2, 1925.

On April 20, 1925, another fire destroyed the bungalow at Taliesin. Crossed wires from a newly installed telephone system were deemed to be responsible for the blaze, which destroyed a collection of Japanese prints that Wright estimated to be worth $250,000 to $500,000. Wright rebuilt the living quarters, naming the home “Taliesin III”.

In 1926, Olga’s ex-husband, Vlademar Hinzenburg, sought custody of his daughter, Svetlana. In October 1926, Wright and Olgivanna were accused of violating the Mann Act and arrested in Tonka Bay, Minnesota. The charges were later dropped.

Wright and Miriam Noel’s divorce was finalized in 1927, and once again, Wright was required to wait for one year before remarrying. Wright and Olgivanna married in 1928.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City (1959)

Fallingwater, Mill Run, Pennsylvania (1937)

Taliesin West, Wright’s winter home and studio complex in Scottsdale, Arizona, was a laboratory for Wright from 1937 to his death in 1959. Now the home of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and archives, it continues today as the site of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

Wright’s Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma

An open office area in Wright’s Johnson Wax headquarters complex, Racine,Wisconsin, (1939)

Charles Weltzheimer Residence(1948) in Oberlin, Ohio Main article: Usonia

Wright-designed window in Robie House, Chicago (1906)

The Final Footprint

On April 4, 1959, Wright was hospitalized for abdominal pains and was operated on April 6. He seemed to be recovering but he died quietly on April 9. Olgivanna’s dying wish had been that Wright, she, and her daughter by her first marriage all be cremated and interred together in a memorial garden being built at Taliesin West. According to his own wishes, Wright’s body had lain in the Lloyd-Jones cemetery, next to the Unity Chapel, near Taliesin in Wisconsin. Although Olgivanna had taken no legal steps to move Wright’s remains and against the wishes of other family members as well as the Wisconsin legislature, in 1985 Wright’s remains were removed from his grave by members of the Taliesin Fellowship, cremated and sent to Scottsdale where they were later interred in the memorial garden. The original grave site in Wisconsin, now empty, is still marked with Wright’s name.

Imperial Hotel, Tokyo (1923)

The Robie House on the University of Chicago campus

Frank W. Thomas House (1901), 210 Forest Avenue, Oak Park, IL

Taliesin West Panorama from the “prow” looking at the “ship”

Gammage Auditorium viewed from one of the pedestrian ramps