Frank Lloyd Wright is recognized as “the greatest American architect of all time.” Before he was born in 1867, his pregnant mother said that Frank would grow up to create beautiful buildings. She encouraged her baby boy by hanging engravings of buildings in his crib and letting him play with special building blocks when he got older. Those blocks, Frank said, helped him to think about new ways to design buildings.

Frank moved to Chicago when it was still rebuilding from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He got married there and designed his own home. He worked as an apprentice for other architects. To support his growing family though, he took extra work designing houses. He was so successful that he started his own architecture firm in his home. His early designs revealed a unique talent. They celebrated the land around each house. Those homes were an inspiration to a group of architects called the Prairie School. Later Wright became a leader of that school.

Over the next 20 years, Wright became popular around the world. During this time, he developed his architectural philosophy. He believed that shapes found in the environment should be the basis of American architecture. A great example is the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. It resembles the structure of a shell or a snail.

Wright and his family eventually moved to a farm in Wisconsin where he had spent a lot of time as a young boy. There in Spring Green, he constructed Taliesin, a new home and studio. In 1932, Wright opened Taliesin up as an architectural school. Thirty apprentices came to live with him there. Through that Fellowship, Wright created his most famous masterpiece: Fallingwater. Fallingwater, or the Kaufman House, was built directly on top of a small waterfall in Pennsylvania.

When Wright grew too old to enjoy the winters in Wisconsin, he moved his family and school to Phoenix, Arizona where he built Taliesin West. Taliesin and Taliesin West were always under construction because Wright and his students continued to add to them and redesign them. He and his students always had good reasons to add to the houses, because the school continued to grow. So, bigger and better facilities were always needed.

On 1959 at age ninety-two, Wright died at his home in Phoenix, Arizona. Of the 1,141 buildings he designed, 532 were built. Wright’s name had become synonymous with great design, not only because they were beautiful to see but also because they were beautiful to experience.

Portrait drawn by yours truly

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