Ask the Architect

What made Frank Lloyd Wright tick?

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Q. Our son just started college and has a class in architectural history. Can you give us an architect’s perspective of Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect who designed the Guggenheim Museum and some other amazing buildings?

A. I could tell you all kinds of facts about FLW, from the way he used materials in ways that started new trends in modern architecture to the structural mastery incorporated in unusual ways for the times. He designed open-plan homes with low, sweeping roofs that had broad overhangs four to eight feet out from the walls at a time when Victorian homes were the norm. He was a true innovator.

But to really explore the architect, you have to explore what made him tick, and his life story is unusual, dark and strange in many ways. He ran away with two clients’ wives while still married with six children. While he was in Germany having an affair, his wife was killed by the maid and butler, along with five others, at a dinner party she was hosting, and some still speculate that Frank had something to do with it. He never paid taxes, and started a “fellowship” in which his wealthy students labored to build his studio and home, for free, while getting “experience.” His third wife, Olgilvanna, was a cultish figure who practiced modern dance with a twist on devil worship, and both of them were alleged to have either molested or had relations with almost every student who worked for Wright. FLW was publicly supportive of Hitler, and went bankrupt several times during his career.

The Guggenheim Museum shape was born of a “think-fast” moment when Wright procrastinated about what to present to Solomon Guggenheim, who phoned to say that after several months of waiting, he was on his way over to see what was being designed. According to the book “Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship,” by Harold Zellman and Roger Friedland, Wright took a model of a ziggurat (a pointed, funerary drive-up mausoleum monument for a shah he would never see built) and turned the model over, added a low structure to form an entry, and painted the upside-down mountain form white. It was still drying when Guggenheim arrived. Guggenheim approved the design, but it took more than 10 years of submission after submission to get New York City to approve the structural design.

Wright was never a degreed or licensed architect or engineer, and several engineers were hired to try to work out the problems before the building was approved. When he designed the glass and concrete roof of the headquarters for Johnson Wax in Racine, Wis., CEO Sam Johnson called, complaining that there was a leak right over his desk. “So move your desk!” Wright replied. I doubt we could get away with that today. He had an interesting life, one worth scholarly investigation to understand just what spurred his creativity. Good luck to your son!

© 2016 Monte Leeper. Readers are encouraged to send questions to yourhousedr@aol.com, with “Herald question” in the subject line, or to Herald Homes, 2 Endo Blvd., Garden City, NY 11530, Attn: Monte Leeper, architect.