Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Wisconsin’s Master Architect with Sharon McMahon

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

In today’s episode, Sharon dives beyond the basics to talk about the life and career of a man with whom you may already be familiar: Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright’s legendary career spanned seventy years but his personal life is just as often talked about as his revolutionary building style. Learn a little more about his eccentricities, his love of fancy, expensive things, his scandalous romances, and even a word we use regularly today that didn’t exist before Frank made it up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my friends. Always excited to have you with me. And I'm going to give you a little content warning right off the top. This episode has some things that are very interesting, but are also about people who die. And so this episode might not be appropriate for young children. Just wanted to let you know, put your headphones on or listen to it when kids are not in the car. So today I want to chat with you about a very famous, world-famous Wisconsinite. You undoubtedly know who this person is, but I'm going to give you some brain tangles that you probably did not know. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. All right, I bet you know who world famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright is,

right? He designed over 1100 buildings in his lifetime. Almost 500 of them actually got made. And that is a huge legacy to leave the architectural world. Very few people get to say that they have revolutionized an entire field. That is such a rarity. Fun fact, there is a gas station designed by Frank Lloyd Wright near me. And his projects ranged from very simple, modest, middle-class homes to huge museums. He designed the Guggenheim to massive skyscrapers, and large hotels. He was a pioneer of a new sort of school of architecture in many ways. And you can actually look back to Frank Lloyd Wright's life before he was even born. He was born in 1867, by the way. Weird little eccentricity of Frank Lloyd Wright is that he constantly claimed that he was born two years

after he was actually born. So much so that it confused biographers, it confused people like the New York Times when they were going to print his obituary. So his father was a musician and a composer and a minister. And his mother was a well-known member of sort of a more prominent family in Wisconsin. And his uncle was the founder of a number of Unitarian churches in Wisconsin. And Frank Lloyd Wright was very fond of saying that his mother, Anna, declared that when he was still in the womb, that he would grow up to create beautiful things. that he would grow up to create beautiful things. And she really just invested in that premonition that she had by decorating his nursery with etchings of British cathedrals

that she tore out of a magazine. So she just had this feeling like someday this child will create beautiful things. And when Frank was nine, his mother, Anna, saw this exhibit of educational blocks, children's blocks that come in a variety of shapes like triangle, square, rectangle. And they were part of a children's educational curriculum. They were called Frobo blocks. And she really resonated with these blocks and gave a set to Frank. Anna, by the way, was a teacher. And it really is so interesting to me how this set of blocks impacted Frank's life. He talked about that set of blocks all the way into adulthood. He talked about how those blocks were

never far from his hands, far from his memory. He said, this is a direct quote, for several years, I sat at a little kindergarten tabletop and played with the cube, the sphere, and the triangle. These smooth wooden maple blocks all are in my fingers to this day. my fingers to this day. And by the way, another fun fact, Frank Lloyd Wright would later introduce some of these same types of toys to his own children. And his son, who also became an architect, his son, in fact, later on in life, obviously, invented Lincoln Logs. So his son was also very impacted by these three-dimensional shapes that you could build things out of. Isn't that cool? I bet you played with Lincoln Logs.

If you don't have any in your house, I bet you had Lincoln Logs, like in your preschool classroom. I know my kids definitely did. So his family moved around a lot when he was young. His family had issues with finances. They moved to various states where his father would get a job as a pastor. And they eventually came back to Wisconsin, where Anna, his mother's family, was from. His father taught music lessons and was the secretary of the newly formed Unitarian Society.

Unfortunately, Frank Lloyd Wright's parents divorced. And he was about 14 when his parents divorced. His father moved away, left Wisconsin. And Frank says he never saw him again. And Frank lived to be in his 90s. So to not see your father from the time you're 14 until you're in your 90s, that I'm certain had an impact on him and his life and career. Frank attended high school in Madison, Wisconsin. There's really no record of him ever having graduated. But nevertheless, he went on to college. He went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and also did not graduate. Eventually,

he used some of his family connections because, again, remember his mother was part of a well-known family and began working at a Chicago architectural firm. Architectural work was very plentiful in Chicago at the time because they were still constructing Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. That fire burned down over 17,000 structures in a three-mile radius. And so they hired Frank as a draftsman for a different architect. And Frank really started getting his feet wet in the architectural world. He starts designing some buildings and then moved on to another Chicago architectural firm. He was hired there as a draftsman, and he kind of developed this reputation for being a pain in the booty to work with. He had a bunch of conflicts with other draftsmen, but nevertheless, one of the firm's owners singled him out and said, I'm going to

mentor you because he recognized Frank's talent. So at age 23, this is again, is a man who has not finished college and potentially not even finished high school. He was promoted to head draftsman at this big architectural firm. He was handling all of the residential design work. He began working on commercial buildings and then would help people who owned these commercial buildings build their own homes. people who owned these commercial buildings build their own homes. So he began working on residential projects on his own after hours. And it was during this time that he met a lovely young woman named Kitty. They went to a costume party for Halloween. They met and fell in love and they got married when Kitty was 18. So Frank took out a bank loan and bought a house. And it was just a very, very modest home, a five-room home that they would renovate,

that would be their primary residence, and would be the home to the six children that he and Kitty went on to share. Kitty, by the way, was also a teacher. She started a kindergarten in one of the additions that Frank had designed for their house. And it was open to all the neighborhood children. And they used the same style of Frobo blocks that had had such a significant impact on Frank as a young man. Eventually, Frank's mother and his two unmarried sisters moved in next door. Kitty's parents lived less than a mile away, and the six Wright children loved being near all their extended family. One thing that consistently plagued the Wrights, however, was living beyond their means. They entertained freely. They had huge book collections. His wife Kitty had collected all of this Japanese artwork.

So Frank decided to start designing bootleg homes. He's trying to make extra money where he would design residences for people, like freelance design them, on the side for cash, like under the table, which was actually a very big no-no at the firm that he worked at. He was not supposed to be doing that. And his boss learned about his side hustle when he recognized a new house that was being built a few blocks from his own house. He was like, I recognize that composition. I recognize that balcony. That is very similar to work that Frank and I have done together. And his boss was absolutely furious. He felt like he'd been taken advantage of. He fired Frank Lloyd Wright. And they did not speak to each other for over 12 years, despite having been very, very close to each other prior to that.

So his firing from this architectural firm came at this pivotal moment in Frank's life where he was really wanting to explore his own architectural ideas. He ended up turning down another offer from a different architectural firm. He decides instead to open his own practice. And he had a little office. He started working on some houses. And eventually, he relocated to a little studio that he built next to his own home in 1898. By 1901, he had designed over 50 projects and had a team of seven people working for him. So in very short order, he began making his mark on the architectural world. It is also noteworthy that Frank had a number of women on his team. This was at the turn of the century, the 1890s, when women were not hired to be drafters at architectural firms. It was such a rarity for a woman to be hired in that field. But over the course of Frank's career,

he had hired over 100 female architects, designers, artisans, etc. that worked with him on a variety of projects, many of whom went on to have their own successful architectural careers. He joked many times that a girl is a fellow here, meaning that women in my workplace are given the same workloads, their ideas are regarded at the same level, and they have the same opportunities as the men in my firm. So in 1900, Frank's style had really made the transition from his previous style that he learned working at his other architectural firms to what is now referred to as prairie style. And this style is usually marked with sort of horizontal lines, flat roofs, broad overhanging eaves, natural materials,

an integration into the landscape, very little if any ornamentation. And he widely promoted this idea of organic architecture. He wanted buildings to look like they grew out of the landscape. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's my girl in the studio!

Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new office ladies, 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the office ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode.

Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to office ladies on the free od free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. In 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright traveled to Europe with a woman who was the wife of somebody he was working on a project for. And the purpose of his trip to Europe was to present this portfolio of his work to a Berlin publisher, which wanted to publish some volumes of his work. It had over 100 lithographs of his designs. And the other purpose of his trip to Europe was to have a romantic relationship with a woman named Martha, who went by the nickname Maymaw. Her name was Maymaw Chaney. And again, she was the wife of somebody else that he was doing some work for.

Frank's marriage to Kitty was kind of on the rocks, probably because he was having an affair with Maymaw. And when he returned home from Europe, like in 1910, he'd been gone for a while. He tried to reconcile with Kitty, but they ended up parting ways. So the year after that, he converted his studio to a home for Kitty and their six children and turned their original house into a rental apartment so that Kitty could have a means of income. And so he left Kitty with their six children in Illinois, and Frank and Mamaw moved to Spring Green, Wisconsin, where he built a new home and a new studio on family land. Again, remember I told you he came from a prominent family. So he gets this land from his family, builds this new home and studio, in part because he was being written about in the press so much. He was so well known at this

time and his affair with Maymaw was one of those subjects that was wildly discussed and speculated about. And he felt like by building this new home that was really set back on some acreage that they could exist away from the public eye, so to speak. So he builds this home in Spring Green, Wisconsin, that he names Taliesin, which is Welsh for shining brow. Now, mind you, neither Frank nor Maima were divorced. They were not divorced. Frank nor Mamaw were divorced. They were not divorced. They were just openly living together. And the community of Spring Green was not real happy about this. They were not happy about this famous man just openly living with his mistress when he had six children and his mistress also had children and neither of them were actually divorced. Locals referred to Taliesin as a love cottage or a castle of love.

Even some of Frank and Mayma's friends considered their relationship to be scandalous. Kitty refused to let Frank have a divorce. Eventually, Mayma was successful in divorcing her husband. The superintendent of the nearby schools near Taliesin said, the scandal is bound to have a demoralizing effect on the school children of the community. It is an outrage to allow boys and girls to grow up in the belief that a man and woman can disregard their marriage bonds. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this was not the smartest move by Frank. He told this to a reporter. Two women are necessary for a man of artistic mind. One to be the mother of his children and the other to be his mental companion,

his inspiration and soulmate. I'm going to say that was not your best move. That's not the vibe, Frank. Not wise. The scandal began to affect Frank's career. He was passed over for a bunch of projects, and he did not get his next commission for several years. And he did not get his next commission for several years. And the next commission that he received was to build the Chicago Midway Gardens. That was to begin in 1913. So Frank goes down to Chicago where he is overseeing the construction of Midway Gardens when something bad happened. In August of 1914, Mayma was living at Taliesin with her two children, eight-year-old Martha and 12-year-old John. Frank is away. They were just sitting down to eat lunch

when a man named Julian, who had been a handyman at Taliesin, entered the house. And he began attacking Maimau and her two children with a hatchet. He then, after killing Maimau and her children, coated the floors of the house in gasoline and set it on fire. And there were a bunch of people working in the house, draftsmen working, and the killer barricaded the doors to try to keep anyone from escaping. A few men did manage to escape and ran to get help, but by the time help arrived, the house was in flames. They had discovered the bodies of Maima and her children, as well as the bodies of two other workers and another 13-year-old boy. Another man who was the gardener initially escaped and later died as well.

So in total, seven people were killed at Taliesin that day, and the entire residential section of the house was destroyed by fire. In the hours that followed the attack, Julian, the handyman, was discovered barely conscious inside the basement of the house after swallowing hydrochloric acid. He did survive though and was taken to a jail where he died from starvation seven weeks later. And Julian the Handyman never really gave a motive for the attack, but people who knew him said that he had been growing increasingly paranoid and agitated. This was including his wife, who was like, he was not himself. They were set to move away from Taliesin. And in fact, were supposed to be taking a train back to Chicago that evening when he attacked May Ma and her children. So of course, Frank Lloyd Wright was devastated,

but he immediately began rebuilding Taliesin, including rebuilding the residential wing that had been burned down and immediately falling in love with another woman all within just a couple of months of the tragedy, a couple of months, he met this woman whose name was Miriam when she had written a condolence letter to him saying, I'm so sorry for your loss. And then they began corresponding with each other and they eventually got married nine years later after Kitty finally granted Frank a divorce, of course, bear in mind, divorce laws totally different back then. In 1917, the Emperor of Japan sent emissaries to Wright to invite him to design the new Imperial Hotel. And he spent the better part of six years in Japan overseeing this project,

which was plagued with one disaster after another, including earthquakes and fires. And spending so many years overseas dampened Frank's career in the United States, because he had just been out of the public eye for so many years. After he finally returned from Japan and was able to marry Miriam, that did not work out. They were separated within a year and some sources say that she had a morphine addiction. While they were still married, however, before he could divorce Miriam, he met another woman. Her name was Olga. And he would eventually marry her.

She would eventually become his third wife. The 1920s were not Frank's best decade. He had lots of issues with creditors. Taliesin got foreclosed on by the bank after a second fire that was due to faulty wiring. He finally got a divorce from Miriam. And he and his new wife-to-be, Olga, and their baby daughter, and also Olga's daughter, started spending their winters in Puerto Rico and California. And because Frank was continually having money problems, he wrote over 20 books to supplement his income. The books

ranged from like architecture books to Japanese art books to an autobiography to a children's book that was called My First Shapes with Frank Lloyd Wright. One of his best known projects, however, came in the 1930s. And he worked on several commissioned buildings. But Falling Water is, I bet, one of the ones that you associate with Frank. It was a residential house that was built over a three-foot waterfall, and it cost the family under $160,000 to build. That was a lot of money at the time. It doesn't sound like a lot now, but it was at the time. And it was one of the most expensive homes he had ever made, but it was rumored to have only taken him about three hours to design. That project,

by the way, famously plagued with design issues. In fact, they had to go in and redo huge sections of it to shore up some of the engineering. He wanted it to seem like this house just grew out of the middle of the forest over a waterfall. And it turns out that building a house over a waterfall leads to number one, structural issues, and number two, mold. Significant amounts of mold. They had to go back in and do a ton of mold abatement. Weird. Weird how that happened. He began designing these very modest homes that he called Usonian homes. He designed about 60 of them and they were just sort of small single-story dwellings. They never really had a garage or even really any storage. They were sort of L-shaped to fit around a garden terrace and they had a flat roof

and little exposure on the front side, but totally open on the back. By the way, fun fact, during this time period of Frank's work, he actually coined the term carport because he was not building garages with his very modest homes. He wanted a place for a car to be parked and he would design like a little covered place to park your car and he came up with the word carport. So between 1943 and 1959, Frank designed the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. It's probably his most recognized masterpiece. And during the five years of construction, he lived at the Plaza Hotel. He also built a winter home for himself in Scottsdale, Arizona called Taliesin West. And it was really a laboratory for his work until he died in 1959. It's now the home of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. And again,

when I mentioned that he died in 59, there was a lot of confusion over how old is he? It was recorded that he was 89, but in reality, the records reflect that he was 91 because he continuously lied about his age throughout his entire life. So I mentioned that he designed over 1,100 buildings in his lifetime. 460 of them were actually constructed. And of the 460 buildings that were actually constructed, about 100 of them have been torn down, have been lost to a fire, or some other kind of natural disaster. And so there is a little less than 400 remaining Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in the world. One of them is often used as a movie set in the state of

California. They filmed a bunch of movies there, like Rush Hour, The House on Haunted Hill, Twin Peaks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But Frank's career spanned over 70 years. His love life was fraught with actual peril that included the murder of his mistress and his mistress's children, estrangement from a number of his children because of his continued practices with women that he was having an affair with. One other thing that I found very interesting about Frank Lloyd Wright is that he hated other architects.

about Frank Lloyd Wright is that he hated other architects. He did not like the American Institute for Architects. Nevertheless, despite hating other architects, the AIA gave him a gold medal, like an award, despite the fact that he refused to join them. I mentioned that he was also into Japanese art collecting. During his career, he actually made more money as an art dealer than he did from operating his architectural practice. One other little fun fact I want to leave you with is that Frank was a car lover. In fact, he owned over 50 cars during his lifetime. That is a staggering number, by the way, given that he was born like 20 years before cars were even invented. That's a lot of cars to pack into a short period of time. And his love of cars actually impacted the design of his sort of magnum opus, the Guggenheim

Museum. The Guggenheim Museum has a ramp design, sort of the central ramp where you can walk down and see what is on display below you. And that ramp design was inspired by his love of cars. And it would be something that you could conceivably, at least theoretically, drive a car up. Frank Lloyd Wright also designed a house for Marilyn Monroe when she was married to Arthur Miller. Of his buildings that are still standing, UNESCO designated eight of them World Heritage Sites in 2019. Those are things like Falling Water, the Guggenheim Museum, the Unity Temple. And despite all of his personal tragedy and challenges, there's no doubt that he

is still among the best known architects of all time, having put his stamp and revolutionized an entire industry. That's it for today, everybody. I hope you learned something new about one of Wisconsin's native sons, Frank Lloyd Wright. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling

extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.