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FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT: BIOGRAPHY (1867-1959). THE VALLEY. Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin (18 miles northwest of Spring Green) on ...
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT: BIOGRAPHY (1867-1959) THE VALLEY Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin (18 miles northwest of Spring Green) on June 8,1867. He died in Phoenix, Arizona on April 9,1959 at the age of 91. Wright was the son of William Carey Wright, a preacher and musician, and Anna Lloyd Jones, a teacher. Her large Welsh family of farmers, teachers and ministers settled the Wisconsin river valley near Spring Green, Wisconsin that Wright ultimately chose as the place for his home, Taliesin. Wright lived a portion of his early life in Madison, Wisconsin (about 40 miles east of Spring Green). For much of his youth, he spent summers on his uncle James’ farm in the valley. Wright considered the valley his home. During these summers in the Wisconsin countryside, he learned to look at the patterns and rhythms found in nature, a theme he would return to again and again in his work. THE EARLY YEARS In 1887, after spending two years studying engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Wright, then age 20, left Madison for Chicago to pursue a career in architecture. After several months with the firm of J. Lyman Silsbee, he took a job with Adler and Sullivan and worked directly for Louis Sullivan for nearly six years. In 1890, Wright married Catherine Lee Tobin with whom he had four sons and two daughters. In 1893, Wright and Sullivan parted ways and Wright began his own practice, first in Chicago and later from his home in Oak Park, Illinois. RETURNING TO THE VALLEY In 1910, Wright left Oak Park. He spent a year in Europe and then returned to the land of his Welsh ancestors and began construction of Taliesin, the building that became his principal residence for the rest of his life. Here he planned to make a home for himself and Mamah Borthwick Cheney, an Oak Park woman with whom he had fallen in love. Wright resumed his architectural practice from his new studio at Taliesin. In 1914, while Wright was in Chicago overseeing construction of a project, a servant set fire to the living quarters of Taliesin and killed Borthwick Cheney, her two children and four of Wright’s draftsmen. Wright was stunned by the tragedy. He translated his grief into the rebuilding of his home, sometimes referred to as Taliesin II. Wright spent the next six years (1916-1922) working on one of his most renowned commissions, the Imperial Hotel in Japan. The hotel, acclaimed for its earthquake-proof supporting structure, was one of the few buildings left standing after the Great Kanto quake of 1923. That same year, Wright married a second time to a sculptress named Miriam Noel.

In 1924, Wright met Olga Lazovich Hinzenberg (known as Olgivanna) who would become his third wife. The next year, tragedy struck again, when the living quarters at Taliesin were destroyed by fire, this time as a result of faulty wiring. Again, Wright rebuilt; the latest incarnation sometimes referred to as Taliesin III. In 1928, following his divorce from Miriam Noel, Wright married Olgivanna Hinzenberg. The newly married couple made their first trip to Arizona where Wright began work on the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. He also built a simple desert camp called “Ocatillo” which became the forerunner of Taliesin West, his famous Arizona home. During the Great Depression, Frank Lloyd Wright received few architectural commissions. Never idle, Wright, then in his mid-sixties, turned to writing and produced An Autobiography and The Disappearing City both of which influenced generations of young architects. Wright received numerous letters from individuals interested in studying with him. In 1932, Frank and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright founded the Taliesin Fellowship, a school that provided training in architecture using a holistic, “learn by doing” approach that stressed appreciation of all the arts and often included students building structures at the Taliesin property. The school continues today as the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Its members, both faculty and apprentices, are still known informally as the Taliesin Fellowship and reside summers at Taliesin. Hillside Home School, a building Wright designed in 1902 for his aunts’ boarding school in the valley, became the Taliesin Fellowship’s central campus. With the inspiration and help of a young and eager group of apprentices, Wright remodeled and expanded the school, adding a 5,000-square-foot drafting studio, converting the gymnasium into a theater and adding housing for the new apprentices. A COMEBACK Despite these activities, Wright was considered the old man of architecture, someone whose best work was behind him. But in 1935, Wright, then nearly 70, proved the naysayers wrong by staging a remarkable professional renaissance. That year, Wright received several important and well-publicized commissions: Fallingwater, the home in rural Pennsylvania for Edgar Kaufmann, Sr.; the Johnson Wax Administration Building in Racine, Wisconsin; and Jacobs I, in Madison, Wisconsin, Wright’s first “Usonian” home (affordable, yet beautiful homes for individuals of modest means). By 1938, Wright’s star had risen so high, he was featured on the cover of Time magazine. His office was flooded with a tidal wave of work that only slowed with the onset of World War II. During this surge of creativity, Wright began construction of his Arizona home, Taliesin West. As with Taliesin in Wisconsin, Taliesin West remained in a constant state of evolution as Wright experimented and changed it through the years. In the final decades of his life, Wright began to receive awards and accolades from around the world including the American Institute of Architects’ gold medal. His work was exhibited

both in this country and abroad. And he kept writing, producing The Natural House and The Living City. Commissions continued to pour into his studio. Of the more than 1,100 projects Wright designed through his life, one-third were built during the last decade including the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Marin County Civic Center in California. At the end of his career, Wright had more commissions than at any other time in his life. THE LEGACY Wright’s architecture has stood the test of time. More than one-third of his buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places or are part of National Register Historic Districts. Fourteen of his buildings are National Historic Landmarks, the highest honor bestowed on historic properties by the federal government. His Wisconsin home, Taliesin, became a National Historic Landmark in 1976. The private, non-profit Taliesin Preservation, Inc. works in partnership with the owners of the Taliesin estate, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, to preserve this important site. Taliesin Preservation offers tours of the property from May through October. For information about tours call (877) 588-7900. More about Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin and the work of Taliesin Preservation is available at www.taliesinpreservation.org.