The Life of Frank Lloyd Wright

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 Corw...

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...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

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)