Frank Lloyd Wright's Forgotten House: How an Omission Transformed the Architect's Legacy
Frank Lloyd Wright's Forgotten House: How an Omission Transformed the Architect's Legacy
by Nicholas D. Hayes
University of Wisconsin Press, 2021 Cloth: 978-0-299-33180-1 | eISBN: 978-0-299-33183-2 Library of Congress Classification NA737.W7H39 2021 Dewey Decimal Classification 720.92
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
While the grandiosity of Fallingwater and elegance of Taliesin are recognized universally, Frank Lloyd Wright’s first foray into affordable housing is frequently overlooked. Although Wright began work on his American System-Built Homes (ASBH, 1911–17) with great energy, the project fell apart following wartime shortages and disputes between the architect and his developer. While continuing to advocate for the design of affordable small homes, Wright never spoke publicly of ASBH. As a result, the heritage of many Wright-designed homes was forgotten.
When Nicholas and Angela Hayes became stewards of the unassuming Elizabeth Murphy House near Milwaukee, they began to unearth evidence that ultimately revealed a one-hundred-year-old fiasco fueled by competing ambitions and conflicting visions of America. The couple’s forensic pursuit of the truth untangled the ways Wright’s ASBH experiment led to the architect’s most productive, creative period. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Forgotten House includes a wealth of drawings and photographs, many of which have never been previously published. Historians, architecture buffs, and Wrightophiles alike will be fascinated by this untold history that fills a crucial gap in the architect’s oeuvre.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Nicholas D. Hayes leads innovation at a water technology company and is the award-winning author of Saving Sailing. A columnist for Sailing Magazine, he lives in Shorewood, Wisconsin.
REVIEWS
“Hayes shines a welcome light on a shadowy period in the life of an American luminary. His story is filled with intrigue, conflict, and, always, the protean creativity of Frank Lloyd Wright at his most democratic.”—John Gurda, author of The Making of Milwaukee
“Beautifully written. A significant contribution to the field, this volume provides a useful unpacking of one of the largest and not yet thoroughly studied projects of the architect’s career. Hayes’s description of this early independent building program in line with Wright’s overall aesthetic aims are on point.”—Michael Desmond, Louisiana State University School of Architecture
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Foreword
People to Know
Part One. How to Find a House by Frank Lloyd Wright
1. The Announcement
2. Hidden in Plain Sight
3. Wright’s America
4. The Americans
5. The Tour
6. The System
7. The Timeline
Part Two. How to Lose a House by Frank Lloyd Wright
8. The Afterthought
9. The Delay
10. The Finding
11. The Scare
12. The Records
13.
The Unraveling
14. The Exception
15. The Flip
Part Three. How to Build an Architectural Legacy
16. The Miss
17. The Overlap
18. The Pickup
19. The Silence
20. The Submission
21. The Legacy
22. The Man with the Hat
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Chronology, 1914–19
Notes
Index
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