[Found via ArchitectureChicago Plus]
The alumni magazine for Yale had a very good profile of Vincent Scully, one of the (or maybe just the) most influential art historians.
Scully was a client of Wright’s (though his house was never built — too expensive) and among his students is Neil Levine, himself an important Wright scholar.
The article is terrific, and if you are not familiar with Scully, it is well worth the time to read — he is a fantastically entertaining character.
They decided to build a home outside New Haven. Scully went to Frank Lloyd Wright for the plan. He was caught up, at the time, in the heroic idea of the modernist architect driven by his artistic vision, and Wright seemed like the most heroic of them all. But Scully being Scully, he also noted borrowings in some of Wright’s early designs. “I asked him what he thought about Bruce Price — didn’t he
like that work he’d done at Tuxedo Park? He looked at me.
He knew exactly what I was talking about. He said, ‘Son, architecture began when I began building houses out there on the prairie.’” Scully cackles softly at the memory. “What a confidence man, what a crook! He was great, really.” In the end, Wright’s plan proved too expensive for a junior faculty member to build. Scully paid the fee, and then designed his own glass-walled house in the woods.