The blog of University of Wisconsin — Madison Archives has posted a photo of the handwritten note at appeared on Frank Lloyd Wright’s progress report from 1887. The note reads: “Failed to appear in class”.
Jan 262012
Jan 232012
News of another single-site book: Beth Sholom Synagogue: Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern Religious Architecture by Joseph M. Siry.
It’s both hefty (736 pages) and expensive ($65), but , according to this review in The Jewish Daily Forward, comprehensive (mostly, the review points out that Wright’s possible anti-Semitism is ignored) and carefully builds up the context for one of Wright’s last commissions:
Following a brief introduction, Siry spends the first half of his book laying out the larger biographical and architectural contexts for Wright’s design. He explains how the architect’s Unitarian religious background led him to develop a respectful attitude toward Judaism. He discusses how Wright’s experience working at the Chicago firm of Adler Sullivan exposed him to innovative synagogue designs at the turn of the century, most notably the comparatively modern Kehilath Anshe Ma’ariv, which opened in 1891.
And he shows how the architect’s designs for a series of Christian churches and chapels between the late 1920s and early ’40s helped Wright develop his own unique solution to the central architectural question of how to make a modern construction that would signify a denominational ideal.
The author, Joseph Siry, is an architectural historian and professor at Wesleyan University. He’s previously written books on Unity Temple, the Auditorium Building and the Carson, Pirie Scott Building.
The weblog Not PC has unearthed a YouTube video of a 1992 tour of the Jacobs House II, one of Wright’s Solar Hemicycles, lead by Karen Jacobs herself. The audio is a bit sketchy; just boost the volume and you’ll be fine.
Be sure to notice two notable features: the extraordinary masonry and the ceiling heights. The ceilings are an essential element of the solar hemicycle — Wright used them of moderate the temperature in side the house, allowing sun-warmed air to flow through the structure.
Jan 112012
(via io9)
Radical Cartography has posted images from the Statistical Atlas of the United States, published in 1875 and based on information from the 1870 census — the first census to include Wright in the data. You can click on the images on Radical Cartography’s site for larger, readable views, or you can download a higher resolution version. The entire volume, 170 pages, can be viewed at the Library of Congress’ site.
Most of the maps are not particularly interesting (like “Annual Mean of Barometer and Total Movement of Air with Resultants”), but others provide fascinating details about 1870s America.This map of percentages of foreign parentage, illustrates one of the profound differences between the north and the south, and the region around the Great Lakes in particular. Or look at the region where Wright was born on the “Illiteracy of the Population” map. Even better, look at the “Chart Showing the Ratio of Church Accommodation“, broken down by state (I had no idea there were so many Congregationalists in Wisconsin — perhaps it was my co-religionists who taught Wright how to be pigheaded).
Follow the link even if you aren’t interested in 1870s Wisconsin — the maps are beautiful, and strikingly informative. Definitely worth spending a few minutes of your productivity on.
Director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy and Crimes of the Heart) will direct a Frank Lloyd Wright biopic, tentatively titled Taliesin. Nicholas Meyer, author of The Sever Percent Solution and screenwriter of The Informant! and director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one”.) is writing the script.
“It’s a very good script,” Beresford told The Hollywood Reporter. “It doesn’t cover his whole life, just a small section of it, and it doesn’t whitewash him into some sort of saint.”
Beresford, who directed the best picture Oscar winner Driving Miss Daisy (1990) and was nominated for best director for Tender Mercies (1983), says he sparked to telling the tale of the private life of one of the greatest architects ever. “There’s a documentary by Ken Burns [the 1998 film, Frank Lloyd Wright] that’s quite good, but it’s odd that there’s never been a [feature] film about him,” Beresford said.
Producers J. Todd Harris, of Branded Pictures Entertainment, and Chicago-based Ed Bachrach, of Kartemquin Films, sent Beresford the script. They are currently raising money for the project, and Beresford has recently been scouting locations in and around Chicago.
Svetlana Stalin has died. Daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, she was briefly married to Wes Peters, one of the first apprentices at Taliesin; Peters had previously married to Frank Lloyd Wright’s adopted daughter Svetlana who died in an automobile accident. Peters and Stalin met through Olgivanna Wright.
she seemed to find new vibrancy in 1970, when she married William Wesley Peters. Mr. Peters had been chief apprentice to the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and, for a time, the husband of Wright’s adopted daughter.
Wright’s widow, Olgivanna Wright, encouraged the Peters-Alliluyeva marriage, even though the adopted daughter was Mrs. Wright’s biological daughter from a previous marriage. That daughter was also named Svetlana, and Mrs. Wright saw mystical meaning in the match.
The couple lived with Mrs. Wright and others at Taliesin West, the architect’s famous desert compound in Scottsdale, Ariz. There, Ms. Peters began chafing at the strict communal lifestyle enforced by Mrs. Wright, finding her as authoritarian as her father. Mr. Peters, meanwhile, objected to his wife’s buying a house in a nearby resort area, declaring he didn’t want “a two-bit suburban life.”
Within two years, they separated. Ms. Peters was granted custody of their 8-month-old daughter, Olga. They divorced in 1973.
Nov 222011
WGRZ in Buffalo has a story on the tantalizing possibility that important pieces of Wright’s Larkin Administration Building are waiting to be discovered under a park in Buffalo.
When the Larkin was demolished, the debris was used to fill in an old canal and a park was built — it’s assumed that potentially important pieces could be found at the site. Carved epigrams, ornamentation, even parts of a fountain and large stone reception desk may lie beneath the park grounds.
The plan seems aspirational — the news story says nothing about the feasibility of the plan. Modern archaeology is expensive, and modern digs (even the well-funded ones of classical sites) use technology to identify a small area to study. I think excavating an entire park and sifting through tons of mostly uninteresting debris would be prohibitively expensive. Love to be wrong, though
Two original Wright-designed windows from the Lake Geneva Hotel have had a semi-homecoming — long held in storage at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning they have now been installed in the Lake Geneva Public Library.
The Lake Geneva Public Library was built in the 1950 by a Wright student, draftsman and friend, James Dresser (Wright gave hs daughter Barbara away at her wedding, and once publicly praised Dresser’s design for the library).
The University still has other windows from the hotel, including the better-known tulip design.
The Lake Geneva Hotel was designed in 1911, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s projects with Arthur Richards (projects that included the American System-Built homes) and was demolished in 1970. This site has a number of images from the length of the hotel’s life.
[Long-time readers will have seen this link before (more than once), but it is, by far, the best thing I've ever unearthed]
The video I linked to earlier this week on Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church reminded me of this audio of an interview (originally aired on WDUQ, Pittsburg public radio) of legendary Wright apprentice Edgar Tafel and Franklin Toker, author of Fallingwater Rising. In it, Toker advances his theory that Wright had done at least some of the design before hand, that the story that he quickly sketched it out in front of apprentices as Kaufman, Sr. approached Taliesin was mistaken. Tafel quickly slaps Toker’s theory down, mocking it. It’s a classic.
Even better, if you listen through to the end, Tafel sings the Taliesin fight song. Just great.
Oct 062011
A rare version of Wright’s Wasmuth Porfolio will be on display Sunday, October 9 through Tuesday, October 11 at the Oak Park Public Library. It is the library’s own copy, last exhibited in 1996.
The book will be displayed in the art gallery on the second floor. Gallery hours are 1PM-6PM Sunday and 9AM-9PM Monday and Tuesday.
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