Stone, Water, and Mortarless Constructions: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Pre-Columbian Inca

STONE, WATER, AND MORTARLESS CONSTRUCTIONS: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND THE PRE-COLUMBIAN INCA Ruth Anne Phillips St. Mary’s College of Maryland R. Sarah Richardson Citigroup The affinities between a number of Frank Lloyd Wright designs and the architecture of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and Western El Salvador) cultures such as the Maya, Zapotec, and Teotihuacan have been well established in the literature on Wright.1 Scholars most often identify flat mansard roofs, small rectangular windows and doorways, textured and geometricized surface ornamentation , and the use of heavy, neutral-colored materials as the similarities between the architecture associated with these cultures and Wright’s own work. Overlooked, however, are the resemblances between a number of Wright designs and the architecture of the Pre-Columbian Andes, especially the Inca, in the use of trapezoidal openings, canted walls, mortarless masonry, and the incorporation of building with water and living rock.2 The omission of the Pre-Columbian Andes in the Wright discussion can be explained, at least in part, by the dearth of scholars focusing on PreColumbian Andean art and architecture. Furthermore, Wright’s approach to his sources is generally not straightforward; instead of precisely copying forms and motifs, he “digested” them.3 That is, rather than mimic the art and architecture he admired by incorporating exact features into his own designs, Wright internalized and often intellectualized his sources. This method often resulted in a design that “feels” Japanese, Pre-Columbian, or Native North American, for example, but eludes direct comparison and may or may not indicate specific influence. Wright, himself, was often frustrated by scholars’ attempts to assign explicit sources to his designs, noting repeatedly that “resemblances are mistaken for influences. Comparisons have been made odious where comparison should, except as insult, hardly exist.”4 To present a similar, yet more specific example, when discussing the inspiration for his home and studio in Scottsdale, Arizona—Taliesin West (1937–59)—Wright noted that his ideas originated from “the same source as the early American primitives,” adding, “there are certain resemblances , but not influences.”5 Whether general resemblance, as Wright insisted, or literal influence, as numerous scholars have asserted, is not, however, the focus of this article. Wright held broad interests in a range of cultural traditions, and he regularly denied the existence of any exact quotations from those traditions in his own work. Instead of parsing out the degrees of similarity C  2013 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 97 The Latin Americanist, December 2013 to or removal from source to appropriation by Wright, we aim to highlight the presence of Inca characteristics in a number of Wright designs. The purpose, then, is not to preclude previous scholarly claims for the presence of other traditions, but to add the Inca to this discussion so that we may more fully and accurately understand Wright’s architectural aesthetic. To begin, we provide a brief overview of the major and most common characteristics of Inca architecture, as it was understood during Wright’s time. This will set the stage for the reader to more fully grasp Wright’s knowledge of and admiration for Inca architecture through major literary and documentary sources as well as exhibits at world’s fairs and museums. For those not already familiar with Inca building forms and construction techniques, we also provide a brief overview of Inca architecture, as it was known during the years Wright was practicing. During these early decades of the twentieth century, when many architects in the United States, including Wright, were attempting to develop a uniquely American architectural aesthetic, a significant number took inspiration from indigenous American prototypes, which were viewed as ancestral and, therefore, belonging to the Americas. Our discussion of the resultant “Maya Revival,” or more accurately, “Neo-Prehispanic” style that flourished beginning in the late nineteenth century through circa 1940 places Wright within a context of his peers and helps gauge how Wright’s internalization of these architectural traditions compares to others at the time.6 Wright articulated, sometimes quite self-righteously, his opinions about what constituted “good” architecture. Inca architecture, in many ways, matched Wright’s convictions that building and landscape should be closely related...