Frank Lloyd Wright and His Manner of Thought

Preface

ix Pref­ ace Al­ though Frank Lloyd ­ Wright is a tow­ er­ ing fig­ ure in ­ American cul­ ture,­ nearly all dis­ cus­ sion of him has con­ cerned his in­ no­ va­ tive archi­ tec­ tu­ ral de­ signs. This is not a book about archi­ tec­ ture. There is a wide­ spread feel­ ing that only archi­ tects, or at the very least archi­ tec­ tu­ ral his­ to­ rians, can write about the sub­ ject and I do not wish to chal­ lenge that no­ tion here. But given that it has been ­ mostly spe­ cial­ ists who have under­ taken the ex­ ist­ ing com­ men­ tar­ ies on ­ Wright, other as­ pects of his cul­ tural im­ por­ tance have yet to be stud­ ied. The fact that Frank Lloyd ­ Wright re­ sisted the emerg­ ing and then dom­ i­ nant archi­ tec­ ture of his time (first late Vic­ to­ rian, then mod­ ern), and that so many ad­ vo­ cates of these archi­ tec­ tures re­ sisted his ideas, ­ prompts an in­ ves­ ti­ ga­ tion of his man­ ner of­ thought—es­ pe­ cially be­ cause that man­ ner has be­ come char­ ac­ ter­ is­ tic of the era that suc­ ceeded him, and at odds with the mod­ ern­ ism with which he was so un­ com­ fort­ able. This is a book about Frank Lloyd ­ Wright, with an em­ pha­ sis on how his man­ ner of ­ thought con­ trib­ utes to ­ American cul­ ture. While sev­ eral hun­ dred books have been writ­ ten about his archi­ tec­ ture, no one has yet ap­ proached him in the way cul­ tural crit­ ics have dealt with sim­ i­ lar cen­ tral fig­ ures. ­ Wright dis­ trusted the lit­ er­ ary, com­ plain­ ing that in the four cen­ tu­ ries pre­ ced­ ing his work the book had re­ placed the ca­ the­ dral (and other archi­ tec­ tu­ ral mas­ ter­ pieces) as the key form of human value and ex­ pres­ sion. Yet he was very much a lit­ er­ ary man, styl­ ing him­ self so for the pop­ u­ lar media and con­ trib­ ut­ ing to his ­ profession’s jour­ nals, not to men­ tion writ­ ing many books of his own. His col­ lected works total more than one and a half mil­ lion words, were ­ widely read and com­ mented upon, and re­ main in print today. Like the canon of any im­ por­ tant­ writer, they are ­ worthy of study. Like the works of any gen­ ius, they tell us much about the cul­ ture to which he was a major con­ trib­ u­ tor. Frank Lloyd ­ Wright and His Man­ ner of ­ Thought ­ tracks the de­ vel­ op­ ment of ­ Wright’s think­ ing through­ out his ca­ reer, from his first ad­ dresses x Preface in 1894 to the last piece left on his desk in 1959. His work in archi­ tec­ ture is not­ able for this same pro­ duc­ tive ­ length, and in fact con­ sti­ tutes two ca­ reers, as after a dif­ fi­ cult time in the 1920s he quite lit­ er­ ally re­ in­ vented him­ self and was “re­ dis­ cov­ ered” by crit­ ics, cli­ ents, and the pub­ lic alike, pro­ pel­ ling him (with a newly ­ founded Ta­ lie­ sin Fel­ low­ ship) into an­ other quar­ ter cen­ tury of bold in­ no­ va­ tion and enor­ mous out­ put. Dur­ ing es­ pe­ cially lean years ­ Wright had writ­ ten in ear­ nest—at the time be­ cause it and the sale of Jap­ a­ nese ­ prints were his only ­ sources of in­ come. In­ retrospect those writ­ ings can be seen as ex­ am­ ina­ tions and endorse­ ments of prin­ ci­ ples dem­ on­ strated in his first ca­ reer and en­ vi­ sioned in his sec­ ond. By 1932, with the Ta­ lie­ sin Fel­ low­ ship op­ er­ at­ ing and his ideas for the per­ fect com­ mu­ nity of Broa­ da­ cre City com­ mit­ ted to paper, the basis of his think­ ing was ­ firmly es­ tab­ lished. Sub­ se­ quently more of his time went into build­ ing than writ­ ing; and al­ though he did write, often quite fa­ mously so, he could draw on pre­ vi­ ous ma­ te­ rial for re­ fine­ ment and pop­ u...