Frank Lloyd Wright, the Architect of Fallingwater

Frank Lloyd Wright, the Architect of Fallingwater
An Architectural Appreciation by
Article Four

For the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, Daniel Burnham, dean of the Chicago school of architects, was chosen to head the event. He chose Beaux Arts classic revival as the style for the buildings despite the fact that Chicago architects, following the great fire of ’71, were well on their way to creating a new architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright and his employer of the time, Louis Sullivan, agreed that Burnham’s choice had set American architecture back by fifty years.

At the time of that fair, iron had been used in commercial buildings. There was wrought iron and cast iron. There was Bessemer steel. But it was not fire proof and so its use would not prevent another Great Fire. Cement had been in use since the days of the Romans; but it too had its weaknesses. It occurred to another Chicago architect, William Lebaron Jenney, that if he could unite the two, the cement might make the steel fireproof. And so he invented ferrocement, or reinforced concrete. An engineer turned architect, he erected the first building with reinforced concrete, the Leitier II Building, 1895, on Congress Parkway and State Street. For years it was the Sears store: today it is a university.

Reinforced concrete united the best qualities of both materials and mitigated their weaknesses. The steel frame of a ten-story building could be erected in ten days, compared to the two years it took to erect the Allegheny County Court House. A steel frame building had one-third the weight of a stone building of comparable size. But most importantly, the engineering possibilities of reinforced concrete meant that buildings no longer had to be boxes.

Following the fair, and recognizing Frank Lloyd Wright’s budding natural talents, Daniel Burnham offered him a complete four-year education at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Without hesitation, Wright declined: it was his intention to create an American architecture. Reinforced concrete had now made that possible.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s career is divided into an apprenticeship and development period, and three twenty-year periods of creativity, each capped with a masterpiece. He apprenticed with Louis Sullivan. He worked with him on major Chicago buildings, among them the Auditorium Theatre and the Charnley House. In addition, Sullivan would direct his clients who wanted residential work to Wright, saying that he, Sullivan, would keep an eye on him. But Sullivan was interested only in the commercial projects. It wasn’t until clients began to come to the office requesting the services of Wright, that Sullivan realized the situation had gone beyond his intentions.

During this time Wright lived in suburban Oak Park and had designed and built a house for himself and twenty-seven other houses there in which he brought to full realization the Prairie style. All of those houses can be seen there today. In 1909 he completed Unity Temple, in Oak Park, and The Robie House, now absorbed onto the campus of The University of Chicago. That was his development period. In 1919 Wright capped his early years with The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. In the 1922 earthquake, it was the only building left standing in that city. That building established his international reputation.

In 1935, at the age of 68, Wright completed Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, a house cantilevered off a rock out over a waterfall. Almost all architectural authorities consider this the greatest building erected in the twentieth century. Then, when most men would have retired, Wright entered into his last and most creative twenty-year period. He worked non-stop during these years designing, building, and teaching. In 1959, at the age of 90, he died just before the completion of The Guggenheim Museum in New York City, his final great masterpiece: it appears to rise in defiance of gravity.

Almost 60 of his buildings are listed as National Historic Landmarks. They are authentic historic architecture, innovative in both their techniques and their designs. The American Institute of Architects has identified seventeen of his buildings which it insists must be considered American Treasures.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s achievement lies in his reconceptualizing a building. A home was not a box to be divided into smaller boxes but a place of security, privacy, comfort, and beauty. He first ascertained who would live in the house and what their needs were. He then looked at the building site. He reserved the best of the site as the view from the house.

Where possible, he eliminated post and beam construction, walls, windows, and doors. There were no basements, the houses did not sit up on cement pedestals; they were built on a platform that sat on the ground. Wright viewed man as a creature of the earth and he wanted man not to lose his sense of contact with the nurturing earth. The houses are never at the top of the hill, but below the crest and embraced by the land. They employed natural materials, wood and stone.

The interior space was open and embracing at the same time. There were no blank walls on which to hang pictures or other ornamentation, it was not a space that could be decorated and redecorated: the house was organic; every aspect of it flowed from its concept. Every detail was taken into consideration, carpets, furniture, china, heating and lighting.

In his commercial buildings form followed function. The structure was placed so that those inside had light and air: the building did not cast its shadow on the neighbors and rob them of their share of the light and air. In both his residential and commercial buildings he insisted that the building must stand as an artwork: his buildings are not merely pictorial; they have a sculptural integrity.

Frank Lloyd Wright grew up on his grandfather’s farm near Spring Green, Wisconsin. It became his home, Taliesin. His grandfather had emigrated from Wales. Wright understood first hand the possibilities of the idea of America. He loved this country dearly and felt that it would only be at its best when it would realize its democratic ideals. The American experience was always one of the first considerations of his work. He created a truly American architecture and made modern architecture truly modern.

His influence in the world of architecture has been tremendous: no other American artist in any discipline has ever achieved his stature in the eyes of the world. In March of this year the Pritzger Prize for Architecture, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, was awarded to the British architect, Richard Rodgers. In his statement to the press he included this comment: “Frank Lloyd Wright is my god.” Fifty years after his death, Frank Lloyd Wright continues to strongly influence the modern creative world.

Postscript: There are seven examples of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in Pennsylvania. A Pennsylvania PBS video on the designing and making of Fallingwater is available at The Pike County Public Library. The house is open to view, as is the neighboring house, Wright’s Kentuck Knob.

Published in The Pike County Dispatch