Frank Lloyd Wright and His Manner of Thought

2. The Prairie and the World

36 2 The Prai­ rie and the World as the twen­ ti­ eth cen­ tury gets under­ way, Frank Lloyd ­ Wright’s fam­ ily motto of “Truth ­ against the World” takes on a pros­ pec­ tive di­ men­ sion. As his first ­ decade of prac­ tice dem­ on­ strated,­ Wright had no trou­ ble what­ soever in­ no­ vat­ ing ­ within es­ tab­ lished­ nineteenth-century forms, ­ whether Queen Anne, Shin­ gle, or Co­ lo­ nial Re­ vi­ val—or, for that mat­ ter, the per­ en­ nial fa­ vor­ ite of ­ wealthy law­ yers and fi­ nan­ ciers, the Tudor ­ half-timber. But in 1901 he re­ or­ ien­ tates to the fu­ ture, de­ vel­ op­ ing an archi­ tec­ ture that not only gives Mid­ west Amer­ ica its first to­ tally orig­ i­ nal style but wins its maker an inter­ na­ tional rep­ u­ ta­ tion. In Amer­ ica, Eu­ rope, and even­ tu­ ally Japan his work would be seen as truly rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ary. Un­ like “The Archi­ tect and the Ma­ chine,” pre­ pared for lis­ ten­ ers at Hull House this same year, three im­ por­ tant es­ says pub­ lished in 1901 in The Brick­ builder (later ­ called The Archi­ tec­ tu­ ral ­ Record) and The ­ Ladies’ Home Jour­ nal look for­ ward ­ rather than back. And what a re­ mark­ able fu­ ture they fore­ see. ­ Wright’s move from the local lec­ ture plat­ form to the na­ tional press may have been en­ a­ bled by what biog­ ra­ pher Rob­ ert Twom­ bly (1979) calls the “ter­ rific boost” (37) given to his ca­ reer by fel­ low archi­ tect Rob­ ert C. Spen­ cer, Jr., who in June of 1900 pub­ lished an il­ lus­ trated essay on ­ Wright’s work for The Archi­ tec­ tu­ ral Re­ view. A Stein­ way Hall neigh­ bor and, ac­ cord­ ing to H. Allen ­ Brooks (1972), the per­ son who had “sup­ planted Cecil Cor­ win as ­ Wright’s best ­ friend” (28), Spen­ cer­ praised ele­ ments that ­ Wright would soon be fore­ ground­ ing in his own es­ says: the quiet sim­ plic­ ity of fam­ ily life that re­ sults from the ­ threedimensional open­ ing of space, the nat­ u­ ral ­ growth of de­ sign ele­ ments in a man­ ner iden­ tified as “or­ ganic,” and the be­ lief that any or­ na­ men­ ta­ tion The Prairie and the World 37 be of the sur­ face and not on it. With the con­ fi­ dence that this essay ­ surely in­ spired, Frank Lloyd ­ Wright could now ex­ pound to a large read­ er­ ship just what he in­ tends for both com­ mer­ cial and do­ mes­ tic archi­ tec­ ture. In “The Vil­ lage Bank Se­ ries” ­ Wright ­ presents his con­ cept of what small town banks ­ should be. Louis Sul­ li­ van would de­ sign them as jewel boxes, but the ­ younger archi­ tect here pro­ poses some­ thing else: a com­ bi­ na­ tion of strong­ box and tem­ ple to the God of Money. It is in the no­ tion “tem­ ple” that ­ Wright shows how his think­ ing has de­ vel­ oped. Al­ though not stem­ ming from re­ li­ gion, the de­ sire of bank­ ers to have a sig­ nif­i­ cant and there­ fore mon­ u­ men­ tal build­ ing leads to un­ for­ tu­ nate as­ so­ ci­ a­ tions with mau­ so­ leums, most of which are nei­ ther sig­ nif­i­ cant nor mon­ u­ men­ tal: ­ rather, they sug­ gest a me­ mo­ rial, where mem­ o­ ries of life and hopes for the after­ life are en­ shrined. ­ Wright by ­ contrast gives his bank­ ers a tem­ ple to the God of Money. This par­ tic­ u­ lar bank was never built, but a real tem­ ple was: the struc­ ture ­ Wright would de­ sign in 1904 for his own Uni­ tar­ ian con­ gre­ ga­ tion in Oak Park, Unity Tem­ ple. Here the solid cubic shape and great inter­ ior open­ ness serve re­ li­ gion even bet­ ter, at the same time mak­ ing peo­ ple feel as they would have hoped for a place of fi­ nan­ cial ­ safety, that this place is here to stay. Use­ ful space and happy oc­ cu­ pancy typ­ ify an­ other new build­ ing, the head­ quar...