Frank Lloyd Wright
What failed
After 1922 commissions were scarce. Great projects were drawn and never built; Taliesin burned twice; the bank took the house and sold thousands of his Japanese prints to a single collector at a dollar each; and in 1932 the new modernist establishment demoted him to a historical footnote.
What happened next
He started a school partly for the income, wrote his autobiography, and at sixty-seven took a commission for a Pennsylvania weekend house. It was finished in 1937 and the Kaufmanns moved in that December. On 17 January 1938 he was on the cover of Time.
The point
He was not rediscovered because opinion drifted back his way. He was rediscovered because he built one building that made the argument he had been losing on paper for a decade.
The sequence
6 documented failures, shown with the successes in between. Every entry carries its own source — the wins are part of the record, and leaving them out is how these stories get distorted.
- 1914
Seven people, including Mamah Borthwick and her two children, are murdered at Taliesin and the house is burned.
- 1922-1934
Twelve years of scarce work.
- 1925
Taliesin burns a second time, destroying a print collection he valued in the hundreds of thousands.
- 1926
Arrested with his partner Olgivanna at Tonka Bay, Minnesota, accused of violating the Mann Act. The charges are later dropped.
- 1928
The bank takes Taliesin and sells his prints at a dollar apiece.
- 1932
MoMA demotes him to a precursor. He tells Philip Johnson he feels 'rather a man without a country, architecturally speaking'.
- 1934
Commissioned, at sixty-seven, for a weekend house in Pennsylvania.
- 1938
The cover of Time, an entire issue of Architectural Forum, and a show at the museum that had written him off.
Sources
- About Frank Lloyd Wright (Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation)
Wright had established an office in Los Angeles, but following his return from Japan in 1922 commissions were scarce, with the exception of the four textile block houses of 1923–1924 (Millard, Storer, Freeman and Ennis).
- How Fallingwater Gave Frank Lloyd Wright a Second Wind (Smithsonian)
I find myself rather a man without a country, architecturally speaking
- Timeline (Fallingwater)
Fallingwater's construction is completed. The Kaufmanns move in (December).
- Frank Lloyd Wright, Jan. 17, 1938 (TIME cover archive)
Frank Lloyd Wright | Jan. 17, 1938
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