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Happy Birthday, Frank Lloyd Wright
By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 8, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 8, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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It's Frank Lloyd Wright's birthday today (thank you, Google, for the reminder), and Gothamist would like to take the time to think about the man. There was a time in Gothamist's life when we wished we could be Frank Lloyd Wright, because we were mesmerized after a visit to the Guggenheim Museum AND the This Old House where Bob Vila visited Taliesin West. Frank Lloyd Wright, a man of the Midwest, didn't really like New York City, as it was about grids and lines, so he broke that up with his circular plan for the Guggenheim. From the Guggenheim website's section about the building:
Wright made no secret of his disenchantment with Guggenheim's choice of New York for his museum: "I can think of several more desirable places in the world to build his great museum," Wright wrote in 1949 to Arthur Holden, "but we will have to try New York." To Wright, the city was overbuilt, overpopulated, and lacked architectural merit.
He died six months before it was completed, but the museum is a New York City icon.
You can visit the museum and walk along the curving ramps. Here's a nice PBS page about Wright, a virtual tour of his buildings, Meryle Secrest's biography, and a pop-up book of his buildings - and links to FLW via Google. Plus some more quotes from Wright about different cities:
- "It [New York City] is a great monument to the power of money and greed. ..a race for rent."
- "Tip the world on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles"
- "Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world."
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This Old House
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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