Facts about Frank Lloyd Wright
Excerpts taken from the book "Basic Frank Lloyd Wright" written by Henry J. Michel.
Other Wright related information available at www.geocities.com/SoHo/1469/flw.html
- Frank Lloyd Wright was born as Frank Lincoln Wright in Richland Center in southwestern Wisconsin, on June 8, 1867.
- Frank Lloyd Wright's mother secured for him a set of the Friedrich Froeble toys (or "gifts" as the German exponent of child development methods and coiner of the term kindergarten referred to them), having seen them at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876. Wright relates that he recalls playing with those blocks and other materials designed to give a child an appreciation of shape, texture, color and other tactile and visual properties. (Page 20)
- Wright's family moved repeatedly during his young years which may have blunted his liking for formal schooling. Wright had little formal schooling in the arts or the sciences that comprise the profession of architecture. (Page 9)
- Wright's early style and body of work was so distinct it had its own name: Prairie Style. The design was known for its low-pitched hip roof that spread over wide eaves. The long bands of windows opened the house to the outside and added to its horizontal lines. (Page 15)
- Wright's Usonian homes were designed to create a house the typical middle class American family could afford. These one-floor homes, often in an L-shape plan, were without basement or attic. In the late 1940s as the country worked to solve the post-war housing shortage, homes of this nature were prevalent, and were marketed as ranch style homes. (Page 48)
- During his career, Wright designed a number of buildings in the skyscraper category but only one was built. His one realized high-rise, the Price Tower, is included in the group of seventeen of his designs specifically honored by the American Institute of Architects. Its main support structure is the central core. The floors are cantilevered out from it to the exterior walls, like branches on a giant fir tree.
- Construction of the Price Tower was completed in 1956. Wright died in 1959 after a brief illness and was just two months shy of his ninety-second birthday.