The Fellowship

The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship

Roger Friedland, Harold Zellman

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780060988661
• eBook ISBN:
  9780061875267
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Architecture General

CITATIONS

Research for this book was based on hundreds of our original interviews; the correspondence files of Frank Lloyd Wright with his family, clients, and apprentices at the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives at Taliesin West, Arizona; and the oral histories executed primarily by archivist Indira Berndtson. Portions of the archives of William Marlin, one of Wright’s deceased biographers, were provided to us both by the Taliesin Archives and Scott Elliott, a dealer in Wright materials. Unless otherwise noted, all references to the Marlin papers are from the Taliesin Archives. We have also been granted access to the correspondence files of former apprentices and depositories at other universities in the United States and abroad. All correspondence to and from apprentice John Geiger is from his personal files. Unless otherwise noted, all other correspondence, documents, and interviews are from the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives and/or the Getty Research Institute and copyrighted by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. To conserve space, we have used the abbreviations FLW for Frank Lloyd Wright, OLW for Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, and ILW for Iovanna Lloyd Wright.

PROLOGUE: ROSA

“It’s a miracle …” This and all quotations in prologue from authors’ interview with Iovanna Lloyd Wright, January 21, 2000.

CHAPTER 1: THE ARCHITECT OF PROPHECY

3 “[T]he familiar strains …” We have drawn on various editions of Wright’s autobiography, particularly those of 1932 and 1943 and his unpublished drafts at the Getty Research Institute. In the 1932 edition, Wright leaves the impression that his mood resulted from remorse at abandoning his family. FLW, An Autobiography (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1932), 364. The importance of the “ideal” appears only in the 1943 edition (New York: Buell, Sloan and Pearce, 1943), 366. The capitalization of “Ideal” first appeared in the 1977 reissue purportedly based on Wright’s notes (New York: Horizon Press), 392.

4 “one of the truly great things …” FLW, “The Art and Craft of the Machine,” 1901, in Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, ed., Collected Writings, Volume 1, 1894–1930 (New York: Rizzoli in association with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, 1992), 60.

4 “Architecture is dead …” Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, translated by Alban Krailsheimer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 204.

5 Frank’s father … Further sources for Wright’s youth include Hope Rogers, Grandpa Wright (Vinton, Iowa: Inkspot Press, 1976); Elizabeth Wright Heller, The Story of My Life (Des Moines: State Historical Society of Iowa, unpublished ms, 1929); Maginel Wright Barney, The Valley of the God-Almighty Joneses (Spring Green, Wisconsin: Unity Chapel Publications, 1965); Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life, His Work, His Words (New York: Horizon, 1966); Meryle Secrest, Frank Lloyd Wright (New York: Knopf, 1993); Robert C. Twombly, Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and His Architecture (New York: Wiley Interscience, 1979); Brendan Gill, Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright (New York: Putnam, 1987).

8 Artistic genius, … Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” in Carl Bode, ed., The Portable Emerson (New York: Penguin, 1981), 145. On the Wrights’ Transcendentalism, see David Michael Hertz, Angels of Reality: Emersonian Unfoldings in Wright, Stevens and Ives (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993), and O. B. Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England (New York: Putnam, 1876).

9 … such sentimental architects … FLW, An Autobiography, 1932, 88, 240.

9 “erotic foolishness” FLW, An Autobiography, 1932, 183.

9 And Anna was humiliated … Anna Wright to FLW, May 28, 1887.

10 In adulthood … “There is a good deal of sadness back of all this bravado and though you may not know it, I too have fought a good fight.” FLW to Richard Lloyd Jones, December 5, 1928.

11 Anna responded … According to William’s divorce testimony, it was in March 1883 that his wife expelled him from her bed and told him she hated him. Circuit Clerk Files, William C. Wright vs. Anna L. Wright, cited in Thomas S. Hines, “Frank Lloyd Wright—the Madison Years,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 26, 1967, 227–33, 229.

12 But Frank must have made sure … OLW, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1966, 20. In his last book, A Testament (New York: Bramhall House, 1957), 17, in a section entitled “The Seed,” Wright linked his reading of Hugo’s Notre Dame to his pawning of “[m]y father’s Gibbon’s Rome and Plutarch’s Lives (see Alcibiades) and the mink cape collar my mother had sewed to my overcoat financed the enterprise.” In 1958, while showing the apprentices a copy of Grant Manson’s Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910: The First Golden Age, he ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue: Rosa
• I. Masters and Disciples
• II. Taking Root
• III. The Fellowship
• IV. Cult of Genius
• V. Behind the Lines
• VI. The Struggle Within
• VII. Losing Ground
• VIII. Olgivanna Unbound
• Acknowledgments
• Citations
• Index
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher