Frank
Lloyd Wright, (1867-1959) generally regarded as America's
greatest architect, was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin,
which became the setting for Taliesin East, Wright's home
and architectural headquarters for many years. His mother,
Anna Lloyd Jones, one of three sisters who were educated
school teachers, had a dominating personality thus, determined
that her son, Frank, would be an architect.
His
father, William Wright, an idealistic, socially-reforming,
itinerant Baptist minister was a musically talented pianist
and singer, who left his family and dominating wife early
in young Frank's life. Responding to his mother's early
direction, Frank attended the engineering department
of the University of Wisconsin in nearby Madison for
under a year before going to Chicago in 1877 to begin
his career under Lyman Sylsbee, a talented architect
designing in the American Shingle Style. Five months
later, Wright worked in the office of Louis Sullivan,
the philosophic leader of the revolutionary cadre of
young Chicago architects, who accepted the challenge
to develop an American architecture not indebted to past
precedent and tradition.
Sullivan
had brought the skyscraper to a mature art form in Chicago,
its birthplace. Wright quickly rose in that important office
to become its manager and project director. Fired in 1893
and on his own, in 1895, Wright set up a studio in Oak
Park where by 1900, he and the young architects in Chicago,
had developed a coherent new style that began to be called,
"Prairie School".
As Wright's
career developed, a small group of prominent citizens in
Mason City, Iowa was interested in building a new bank
and hotel in the community. One of them, J.E.E. Markley
had two daughters who were attending the Hillside School
at Spring Green, Wisconsin that Wright designed in 1902.
The school impressed Markely thus, he selected Wright as
the architect for the new bank and hotel in Mason City, known as the Historic Park Inn Hotel.
While
in Mason City to develop the bank and hotel Markley's neighbor,
Dr. G.C. Stockman commissioned Wright to design a residential
home for his family, which was completed in 1908. The Frank
Lloyd Wright Stockman House was Wright's
first and only Prairie School style house designed in Iowa.
The plan that Dr. Stockman commissioned for was an adaptation
and variation of a $5,000 fireproof home designed by Wright
that appeared in the April 1907 issue of "Ladies Home Journal".
This residential design was created to address the housing
needs of the middle class. The plan showed a four-bedroom
house in which the largest possible living space was realized
by allowing living room, dining room and veranda to flow
together.
In 1910,
at age 43, Wright left Mason City before the Park Inn Hotel,
now his only remaining hotel which became the prototype
for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, and the City National
Bank's construction was about to begin. Wright went back
to Illinois, deserted his wife, six children and took off
for Europe with his next-door neighbor, Mamah Cheney, who
left her husband and two children to be with Wright. Wright's "elopement" to
Europe with Mamah, concluded his Mason City career.
It is
believed that while working in Mason City, Wright discussed
the possibility of designing other homes in the community.
Walter Burley Griffin and Barry Byrne eventually picked
up on Wright's ideas and started a new development. In
1912, Griffin's first two houses were completed, now recognized
as the Rock
Glen - Rock Crest National Historic District, which
is the largest grouping of homes, unified by a common natural
setting in the United States. Three more houses by Griffin,
one by Byrne, one jointly by Griffin and Byrne and one
by Einar Broaten followed them. In addition, William Drummond
designed the Curtis Yelland house while he was in Mason
City supervising the construction of the hotel and bank
complex started by Wright.
Griffin
would leave the United States during the development of
Rock Crest - Rock Glen area to supervise the lay out of
Canberra, to be Australia's new capital, which won the
international competition for its design. He left Barry
Byrne in charge of his practice in the Midwest and as his
possible successor.
Though
there were many exceptions, exterior characteristics of
the Prairie School house style included widely overhanging,
low-pitched hip roofs with clean roof edges and broad,
low, central chimneys; bands of windows tightly placed
beneath the soffits of the projecting hip-roof lines, with
an eye to making the hip roofs appear to hover over lower,
more substantial- appearing wall surfaces; taller central
house sections with lower projecting wings; multiple horizontal
trim bands and a prominent baseboard skirt, visually bringing
the entire structure strongly down to earth while making
invisible, its foundation and basement windows.
Their
inside flow of space emphasized the integration of the
significant living areas without intervening obstruction
while the design emphasized the horizontal, blunted the
distinction between inside and outside and continued Wright's
mission "to destroy the box".
In Mason
City, the Stockman House (1908) represents one of the first
times Wright achieved these important revolutionary goals
in a small, middle class home. Mason City's Historic Park Inn Hotel
(1909) is the only remaining hotel of the six Wright designed
and is the prototype for his world famous Imperial Hotel
in Tokyo (1914-1922) and the obvious forerunner of his
Midway Gardens in Chicago (1914). The City National Bank
(1910) in Mason City is considered to be the best of the
two banks designed by Wright.
Though
Wright's long, creative architectural career continued
unremittingly for another forty years, encompassing many
further, distinct periods of creativity, he would have
enjoyed a significant American and international reputation
had his career ended with the completion of his Prairie
School period.
View timeline of Frank Lloyd
Wright and the Prairie School Architects Who Impacted Mason
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