Essay About Frank Lincoln Wright And William Carey Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright
Essay title: Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was born as Frank Lincoln Wright in Richland Center in
southwestern Wisconsin, on June 8, 1867. His father, William Carey Wright, was a musician
and a preacher. His mother, Anna Lloyd-Jones was a teacher(1 Compton). It is said that Anna
Lloyd-Jones placed pictures of great buildings in young Franks nursery as part of training him
up from the earliest possible moment as an architect. Wright spent some of his time growing up
at the farm owned by his uncles near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Frank Lloyd Wright was of
Welsh ethnic heritage, and was brought up in the Unitarian faith.
Wright briefly studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, after
which he moved to Chicago to work for a year in the architectural firm of J. Lyman Silsbee. In
1887, he hired on as a draftsman in the firm of Adler and Sullivan, run by Louis Sullivan (design)
and Dankmar Adler (engineering) at the time the firm was designing Chicagos Auditorium
Building(1 Compton). Wright eventually became the chief draftsman, and also the man in charge
of the firms residential designs. Under Sullivan, whom Wright called “Lieber Meister” (beloved
master), Wright began to develop his own architectural ideas. In 1889 he married his first wife,
Catherine Tobin. He also designed houses on his own toward the end, homes Wright called
“bootlegged” (2 Encarta) which were done against Alder and Sullivans policies concerning such
moonlighting. When Louis Sullivan found out about these homes, Wright was fired from the firm.
The bootlegged houses showed the start of Wrights low, sheltering rooflines, the prominence of
the central fireplace, and “the destruction of the box” open floorplans. The Adler and Sullivan
firm was just the right place to be for a young man aspiring to be a great architect, as it was at
the leading edge of American architecture at the time.
Wright started his own firm in 1893 after being fired from Adler and Sullivan, first
working out of the Schiller building (designed by Adler and Sullivan) and then out of a studio
which was built onto his home in Oak Park, an affluent suburb of Chicago which is located just
to the west of the center of the city.
Between 1893 and 1901, 49 buildings designed by Wright were built. During this
period he began to develop his ideas which would come together in his “Prairie House”
concept(1 Compton). Into 1909, he developed and refined the prairie style. Frank Lloyd
Wright founded the “prairie school” of architecture, and his art of this early productive period in
his life is also considered as part of the Arts and Crafts Movement
This very productive first phase in Wrights career ended in 1909, when he left his wife
and 5 children to go to Germany. He was joined there by Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the wife
of a former client and now his lover. From 1912-1914, Wright and Ms. Chaney lived together
at Taliesin, a home Wright had built at the site of his uncles farm near Spring Green. This period
ended when a crazed servant murdered Ms. Chaney and 6 others, also setting a fire that
destroyed much of Taliesin.
During the period from 1914-1932, a time of personal turmoil and change, Wright
rebuilt Taliesin, divorced Catherine, married and separated