My Father Frank Lloyd Wright

Charming memoir, by his son, of Wright as genius, father, and family man. The book also includes the complete text of William C. Gannet's The House Beautiful, a work designed by Wright. 10 halftones.

On March 6, 1945, after hearing rumors that his son, John, was writing a book about their stormy past, Frank Lloyd Wright wrote a note asking him, "What is this talk of a book? Of all that I don't need and dread is more exploitation. Can't you drop it?" John assured his father that he would like the book and sent him a copy on its publication--March 29, 1946. A few days later, Frank Lloyd Wright returned it with numerous comments penciled in the margin, responding to what his son had written, and with a request that a new, second copy be sent to him. John complied with the request but first transcribed not only all his father's comments into the clean copy in black pencil but also his own answers to them in red pencil. He also transcribed all these comments into a third copy, again using colors to differentiate his comments from those of his father. This third copy is the basis for this new edition of John Lloyd Wright's book. The main text of this volume is a reprint of the 1946 edition along with marginal notes, comments, and corrections made by John Lloyd Wright and his father, as well as explanatory notes and an introduction by Narciso G. Menocal. In the postscript, Elizabeth Wright Ingraham, John Lloyd Wright's daughter, remembering her grandfather and father, says that in this edition "what was a son's book becomes a father and son book."

Born in Wisconsin in 1867, Frank Lloyd Wright became obsessed with a set of building blocks his mother had given to him on his ninth birthday. He grew up to become the father of organic architecture and the greatest American architect of all time, having designed more than 1,100 buildings during his lifetime. These included private homes – such as the stunning Fallingwater, churches, temples, a hotel, and the world-famous Guggenheim Museum in New York City. When asked how he could create so many designs, he answered, “I can’t get them out fast enough.” Frank Lloyd Wright was a man ahead of his time who could barely keep up with his own ideas!

"The mid-twentieth century was one of the most productive and inventive periods in Frank Lloyd Wright's career, producing such masterworks as the Guggenheim Museum, Price Tower, Fallingwater, the Usonian Houses, and the Lovness House, as well as a vast array of innovative furniture and object design. With a wide variety of shapes and forms-ranging from honeycombs to spirals-this period defies simplistic definition. Simplicity, democratic designs, and organic forms characterize Mid-Century Modern, and, mentoring such mid-century talents as Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler among others, Wright was one of its most influential proponents. Frank Lloyd Wright: Mid-Century Modern is a comprehensive examination of an under-explored period in Wright's career, a time dating from roughly 1935 to 1958, during which this master architect was at his most daring and innovative."--Jacket

Frank Lloyd Wright has long been known as a rank egotist who held in contempt almost everything aside from his own genius. Harder to detect, but no less real, is a Wright who fully understood, and suffered from, the choices he made. This is the Wright whom Paul Hendrickson reveals in this masterful biography: the Wright who was haunted by his father, about whom he told the greatest lie of his life. And this, we see, is the Wright of many other neglected aspects of his story: his close, and perhaps romantic, relationship with friend and early mentor Cecil Corwin; the eerie, unmistakable role of fires in his life; the connection between the 1921 Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the murder of his mistress, her two children, and four others at his beloved Wisconsin home. In showing us Wright’s facades along with their cracks, Hendrickson helps us form a fresh, deep, and more human understanding of the man. With prodigious research, unique vision, and his ability to make sense of a life in ways at once unexpected, poetic, and undeniably brilliant, he has given us the defining book on Wright.

Out of every score of books about Frank Lloyd Wright, generally just one is worth reading. The tale of the life of America's greatest architect-replete with Frank Lloyd Wright's finest moments and most fascinating anecdotes-unfolds as naturally as his architecture." "Who was Frank Lloyd Wright? What were his main ideas, and why do they still important today? This lively history chronicles the life, career, and occasionally prickly personality of an American innovator in ways that shed light on architecture not just in his day but also in ours."' This book is a great introduction for young readers to Frank Lloyd Wright and his vision for contemporary American architecture." Scroll up and get a copy to learn more

Weaves a narrative from Olgivanna's previously unpublished autobiography, together with vignettes from her other writings books, newspaper columns, and presentations.

A cultural icon who defined the twentieth-century American landscape, Frank Lloyd Wright has been studied from what seems to be every possible angle. While many books focus on his works, torrid personal life, or both, few solely consider his professional persona, as a man enmeshed in a web of prominent public figures and political ideas. In this new biography, Robert McCarter distills Wright’s life and work into a concise account that explores the beliefs and relationships so powerfully reflected in his architectural works. McCarter examines here how Wright aspired to influence America’s evolving democratic society by the challenges his buildings posed to traditional views of private and public space. He investigates Wright’s relationships with key leaders of art, industry, and society, and how their views came to have concrete significance in Wright’s work and writings. Wright argued that architecture should be the “background or framework” for daily life, not the “object,” and McCarter dissects how and why he aspired to this and other ideals, such as his belief in the ethical duty of architects to improve society and culture. A penetrating study of the foremost pioneer in modern architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright offers a fascinating biographical chronicle that reveals the principles and relationships at the base of Wright’s production.