Books
WRIGHT IS EVERYWHERE
The Illinois architect remains influential 40 years after his death
Review essay by Lee Bey
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S LIVING SPACE
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND MIDWAY GARDENS
because, like a Sinatra with a drafting pencil, he did it his own way
Northern Illinois University Press
Paul Samuel Kruty, 1998
University of Illinois Press
A man and his wife stopped by Ed
and Diana Baehrend's newly
restored Oak Park home not too long
ago. As the wife sat on a patio chair, the
man busied himself with scraping the
home's brick exterior and collecting the
red, dusty shavings.
It was a rude thing for an invited guest
to do, but the architect and his wife
weren't invited. A self-guided (and
unauthorized) tour led them to the
Baehrend's upstairs patio.
"I say, 'Excuse me, but are you staying
for dinner?'" Diana Baehrend remembers. "I see the husband and he's literally
pasted to the side of the home. He tells
me he's from Morocco and he's an
architect whose specialty is brickwork
and masonry. How can we chase someone like that out of our yard?"
The average homeowner would find a
way. But then again, the Baehrends
don't live in an average home. Built in
1902, the couple's low, wide home hugs
the ground like a panther. Underneath
its wide, hip roof sits a sparkling line of
leaded glass windows designed to catch
the setting sun. It's a masterpiece of
residential architecture, covered in
textured brick and designed by Frank
Lloyd Wright. The Baehrends bought
the house in 1997.
Given the home's pedigree, it's no
wonder the Moroccans chanced an
unauthorized visit to the Baehrend's
patio. Though the house sits on a street
with six other Wright creations
including Wright's home and studio,
which is open for tours — the Baehrends
have endured a conga line of interlopers,
sneaks and window-peekers, all trying to
steal an up-close look at a Wright home.
"There is definitely a mania there,"
Diana Baehrend says. "I can see from
one summer to the next that more
people are looking at [the home].
Wright is everywhere."
Wright died April 9, 1959. The four
decades that passed are time enough to
dull the shine and fleck the gold leaf off
most historical icons, but not Wright.
There is an insatiable interest in the
architect. Tourists flood the streets of
Oak Park to see Wright's hand in nearly
two dozen homes. His Dana-Thomas
House in Springfield is among the state's
top tourist attractions. Modern-day
builders vainly attempt to copy his
architectural style.
Bookstore shelves are swollen with
nearly 400 Wright biographies and
dissections of his work and genius.
Among the latest is Frank Lloyd
Wright's Living Space by Gail Satler,
which looks at Wright's novel use of
space to create rooms that flow together.
It is almost as if Wright never died.
But why is Wright's fame on the
increase? Last year's expansive Ken
Burns documentary on PBS certainly
helped, but the answer is larger than
that.
Wright --- arrogant, abrasive, talented,
stubborn and vain --- fits an American
ideal of the trailblazer: the lone genius
who single-handedly paved the way for
others. He's Frank Sinatra with a drafting pencil: Wright did it his way.
It's a quality that is all the more
endearing in light of what passes for
high-end residential construction these
days. The classes of people who hired
Wright — or other quality architects of
the time, including Walter Burley
Griffin, Talmadge & Watson and
George W. Maher — now seem satisfied
with building graceless, steroidal three-
story homes with cathedral ceilings and
skylight-perforated roofs.
Compare Wright's Robie House in
Chicago or the Ward Willits House in
Highland Park with the latest direct- from-the-contractors'-catalog McMansion and Wright's genius is all the more
apparent ---- and missed.
"Wright's houses are fresh and vital
and designed to really trigger human
emotion," says Timothy Samuelson,
curator of architecture for the Chicago
32 / October 1999 Illinois Issues
Historical Society. "And human
emotions haven't changed that much.
They're the same in 2000 as they were
in 1900."
What did Wright do that was so
important?
Early in his career, he helped perfect an American architecture. His
Prairie School homes did not look
to the Old World as a model and
helped shatter the prevailing notion
that fine architecture must bow to
Victorian, Greek and Roman
revivalist styles. It was a gospel that
Wright's mentor, Louis Sullivan
first preached. Sullivan excoriated
the European revivalist City Beautiful movement that came out of the
1893 World's Fair in Chicago. When
Sullivan said Americans needed an
American architecture, Wright was
among those who heeded the call.
Ironically, Wright helped break
Europe of its ties to Old World
architecture. When Berlin publisher
Ernst Wasmuth published a portfolio of Wright's work in 1910 and
1911, young European architects
such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
and Le Corbusier began to rethink
their own work. European modernism, which influenced postwar
American architecture, actually
owes a debt to Wright.
Wright did not invent the Prairie
School — indeed, he wasn't that fond
of the title — but his work represents
the best examples of it. Wright's
homes were ones in which great spaces
opened up to other great spaces without being separated by hallways and
doors. He even designed houses to
take advantage of nature and the
movements of the sun, not just skate the perimeters of zoning ordinances.
To Wright, a building's form was an
outgrowth of its function, not of
ornament and design appendages. It
was another lesson that Sullivan
taught Wright. And to make the
building function, Wright would also
design furniture, urns, curtains and
fixtures. For the Avery Coonley Estate
in suburban Riverside, Wright even
designed dresses for Coonley's wife to
wear in the house.
"That is part of the story that often
gets lost," says Samuelson, a Sullivan
expert. "The whole process out of
which Sullivan created buildings
and out of which Wright created
buildings — is that if you have a
knowledge of the practice of architecture, knowledge of the site and of
the technology available to you, a
knowledge of the functions that are
supposed to take place in a building,
you would then be able to synthesize
this completely in your mind and
create a building. Even before you set
pen to paper. And both men were
able to do this."
Wright also developed greater,
though lesser heralded projects. He
designed houses with carports as early
as 1909, foreseeing the future impact
of the automobile. Just before World
War I, he joined a builder to create a
brief, early stab at high-quality prefabricated housing. The American System-Built homes were not in the same
league as the domiciles he constructed
for rich clients, but they were neat two-
story gems with clever design, art
glass, brick fireplaces and nice woodwork. His Usonian homes, first built
in 1939, were efficient, attractive housing. With low, flat roofs, open kitchens
Frank Lloyd Wright's Living Space
Frank Lloyd Wright and
50 Favorite Rooms by
Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography
Illinois Issues October 1999 / 33
and centrally located fireplaces, the
Usonian was the postwar American
suburban house — 20 years ahead of its
time. "As time would change, technology would change and he would
evolve personally," Samuelson says of
Wright. "Every building that's created
is as fresh as the new sunrise. He very
seldom would fall into formula."
But Wright was far more than a residential architect. He designed futuristic office complexes, such as the still
stunning Johnson Wax Building in
Racine, Wise.
"Every time I see that building, I'm
blown away by it," says author John
Zukowsky, architecture curator for the
Art Institute of Chicago.
Wright took the old beer-hall
concept and created the late, great
Midway Gardens entertainment spot
just west of the University of
Chicago. The short-lived Shangri-la is
remembered and vividly shown in
Frank Lloyd Wright and Midway
Gardens, by University of Illinois
architecture professor Paul Samuel
Kruty.
Wright's Unity Temple in Oak Park
is heralded across the globe because it
is shorn of all the "religious" design
trappings that are usually found in
worship spaces. Instead, it applies
perspective and shadow to create a
reverent, sanctified place.
In a career that stretched from the
gaslight era to the Nuclear Age, Wright
constantly reinvented himself. He was
more than just the Prairie School
architect or the man who created the
famous Fallingwater home in Bear Run,
Pa., or the Guggenheim Museum in
New York. All those things and more,
Wright lived a tempestuous life marked
by scandal, triumph, bankruptcy and
victory. There was so much tumult, in
fact, the FBI kept a voluminous file on
Wright throughout most of his life.
This mixture of history, beauty and
genius adds to the appeal of the
Arthur Heurtley home, owned by the
Baehrends.
"Were we Wrightophiles —
absolutely crazed? No," Diana
Baehrend says. "But we like Prairie
[School], clean style, minimalist.
That's the style we were comfortable
with. We've always appreciated
Wright."
The husband-and-wife investment
bankers left few areas of the home
untouched in a massive restoration
effort that included demolishing non-
original walls and recreating Wright's
color scheme. The Baehrends are
looking to track down the home's
original furniture.
Is it worth the trouble?
"You are in such a fine piece of
architecture and anywhere you sit in
the house is enlightening," Diana
Baehrend says. "We get excited about
going home," Ed Baehrend adds.
Zukowsky says Wright's fame is not
likely to wane. "People will talk of
Wright years from now, just as they
discuss Leonardo da Vinci and the
Mona Lisa," he says. "There will
always be discussions and reinterpretation of his work, because that's
what happens with great work."
Lee Bey, architecture critic for the
Chicago Sun-Times, has written
extensively about Wright. 34 / October 1999 Illinois Issues
For more information
By Gail Satler
University of Illinois Press. 1999
Explores Frank Lloyd Wright's artistic perspective,
detailing his vision of architectural presence. Satler
concludes that while Wright's contemporaries focused
on three dimensions, his innovative designs developed
a fourth. According to Satler, Wright perceived space
as a living reality with social implications that responded to the people within it. This study expands upon
previous research by examining two architectural
works Wright regarded as significant that nevertheless
remain relatively neglected by recent scholarship: the
Larkin Building and Unity Temple.
Midway Gardens
By Paul Samuel Kruty
University of Illinois Press, 1998
Focuses on a singular work of Wright's, the
demolished Midway Gardens, as a pivotal point in the
architect's career. Constructed in 1914 as an open-air
concert garden on the southern edge of downtown
Chicago. Midway Gardens marked a change in
Wright's approach to his craft. Kruty contends
Wright's design unified art with architecture by
devising a more ornamental style that characterized his
work for the next 15 years. This analysis examines the
concepts behind Midway Gardens, as well as the
pervasiveness of its influence on architecture.
Frank Lloyd Wright
By Diane Maddex
Smithmark Publishing, 1998
Demonstrates the evolution of Wright's
architectural style by chronicling 50 designs,
spanning the entire length of his career. Maddex's
collection of photographs includes representations of
his earliest work, the 1906 Robie House, through his
later efforts, the posthumously completed New York
Guggenheim Museum. Accompanying each photograph is a synopsis depicting the clients who engaged
Wright's talents, as well as Wright's creative intention
for each project.
By Meryle Secrest
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Details Wright's family history, personal adventures
and charismatic associates through primary sources
and interviews with those who knew the man. Secrest,
granted access to extensive archival material, including Wright's letters, photographs, drawings and
books, portrays Wright's character in context of the
world around him. This is the biography Wright
experts at the state's Dana-Thomas House Historic
Site in Springfield recommend to visitors who are
looking for additional information on the architect.