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Documentary, Frank Lloyd Wright - Part 1- Ken Burns American Lives PBS
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00:00:00Transcription by CastingWords
00:00:30My father taught me that a symphony was an edifice of sound.
00:00:42And I learned pretty soon that it was built by the same kind of mind in much the same way that a building is built.
00:00:52And when that came to me, I used to sit and listen to Beethoven.
00:00:57He was a great architect.
00:01:01The two minds are quite similar because they arrange and build plot and plan in very much the same way.
00:01:10There's a wonderful passage from Emerson, which seems to me to come closer to capturing Frank Lloyd Wright than any other, in which he says,
00:01:21Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house a world, and beyond its world a heaven.
00:01:31Know then that the world exists for you.
00:01:34Build therefore your own world.
00:01:36And that vision of the romantic genius, the artist taking the world and reinventing it, making it in its own right,
00:01:46following that personal idiosyncratic vision, is utterly what Frank Lloyd Wright is about.
00:01:50The� nasty life, the artist takes an old time for him to flourish, andllover, and build a sense of the dream that I had to receive from scratch.
00:01:57The adult with his mother and his father Hobart
00:01:59In perpet eighteen life, the young man who hired son one of the father Big Heaven,
00:02:03and his grandfatherventional appointed the solo making thy soul,
00:02:04and his father's father Yin and grew Was bang for the love of his father of his father and young man.
00:02:06The theme of his father and family, after his father and storyNET back,
00:02:08The Est edge of his father and a man whooredGs,
00:02:10Were feeding him up his father.
00:02:11And there's so much to be the drama,
00:02:12And there's sort of going ape-hoo,
00:02:12It's spring-only and how we can share it on theumba,
00:02:13And there's the journey of that nature that he is doing.
00:03:14I'd like to have architecture that belonged, where you see it standing, and was a grace
00:03:23to the landscape instead of a disgrace, where everybody would have room, peace, comfort,
00:03:30and every establishment would be appropriate to every man.
00:03:34Frank Lloyd Wright was the greatest of all American architects.
00:03:41For more than 70 years, he showed his countrymen new ways to build their homes and see the world
00:03:50around them.
00:03:51He created some of the most monumental and some of the most intimate spaces in America.
00:03:59He designed everything, banks and businesses, resorts and churches, a filling station and
00:04:08a synagogue, a beer garden, and an art museum.
00:04:12Trying to find the genius of a man like that, that you realize is a genius when you're talking
00:04:20to him, and more of a genius as you get to know his work, is one of those things that
00:04:27probably doesn't go into words.
00:04:28It's probably a matter of how moved are you by his work and by his personality.
00:04:35In this case, both.
00:04:37I hated him, of course, but that's only normal when a man is so great that it's a combination
00:04:45of hatred, it's a combination of envy, and contempt, and misunderstanding, all of which gets mixed
00:04:55up with his genius.
00:04:58Wright was celebrated, then ridiculed and forgotten, then celebrated again, as no other American
00:05:07architect has ever been celebrated.
00:05:09One can look at him and be awed by the dimensions of this personality, and the achievement, because
00:05:18we are looking at something we very seldom see in real life, which is a genius.
00:05:26On the other hand, when you look at who he was as a human being, he was so at the mercy
00:05:33of his emotions that you think, he's at the other spectrum, he's barely a human being.
00:05:42Frank Lloyd Wright broke all the rules, in his art and in his life.
00:05:48He was controversial, notorious, utterly unpredictable.
00:05:55He boasted of his genius with an arrogance and bombast that outraged his enemies and bewildered
00:06:01his friends, risked his career in a series of scandalous affairs, and suffered terrible
00:06:08personal tragedy.
00:06:11But through it all, he never stopped dreaming of new ways to build.
00:06:17He was, one of his draftsmen remembered, 200 percent alive.
00:06:25He had to be on stage, and not only on stage, but he had to be in the center of the stage.
00:06:30And it was actually the case that when he would be described, as he often was, as the
00:06:36greatest living American architect, he would say, what's that about American?
00:06:39And he would say, what's that about living?
00:06:41He said, I am the greatest architect that has ever lived.
00:06:46Forget American, forget living.
00:06:48He knew, or thought he knew, or pretended that he knew where his place was going to be in
00:06:53the world.
00:06:53He was a hustler.
00:06:56He was a wild self-promoter.
00:06:58He exaggerated his life story, invented all kinds of details.
00:07:03But he was no less an artistic genius for having done this.
00:07:07He transformed our nature of, our sense of what architecture is and can be.
00:07:13He had this extraordinary reach and depth that affected all that would ever come after him.
00:07:23So what if he made up a few details in his autobiography?
00:07:26I mean, so what if he was desperate for publicity?
00:07:29So what if he lived this melodramatic life?
00:07:33He was a true artistic genius as well.
00:07:36And now to our story.
00:07:42Admirers of Frank Lloyd Wright hail him as a man 100 years ahead of his time.
00:07:47Now 88 years old, he's still designing homes and buildings, which are revolutionary, including
00:07:53plans for a mile-high skyscraper for which he's had no buyers yet.
00:07:57I understand that last week, in all seriousness, you said, if I had another 15 years to work,
00:08:04I could rebuild this entire country.
00:08:06I could change the nation.
00:08:07I did say that.
00:08:09And it's true.
00:08:11Having had now the experience going with a building of 769 buildings, it's quite easy for
00:08:20me to shake them out of my sleeve.
00:08:21And it's amazing what I could do for this country.
00:08:24I've been accused of saying I was the greatest architect in the world, and if I had said
00:08:30so, I don't think it would be very arrogant.
00:08:34He was born Frank Lincoln Wright in Richland Center, Wisconsin, on June 8, 1867, just two
00:08:54years after the end of the Civil War.
00:08:58Yours was a prophetic birth, his mother Anna told him.
00:09:01She believed her boy predestined to be a great man, a master builder, and she would teach
00:09:08him to believe it, too.
00:09:12His mother shaped him.
00:09:15When she became pregnant, she decided that it would be a boy and that he would be an architect.
00:09:21So, to that end, she put engravings, so Wright tells us, of the great cathedrals in her room.
00:09:27Then, when he was born and it was a boy, she put the engravings of the great cathedral in his room.
00:09:34His childhood was tempestuous, chaotic, a byproduct of his parents' unhappy marriage.
00:09:42His father, William Wright, was a hugely charming man who pursued all kinds of callings,
00:09:48educator, musician, politician, preacher.
00:09:53But he was unwilling to stay at any job for long and unable ever to earn enough money to
00:09:59satisfy his wife's lofty aspirations.
00:10:04Although she may have been bitterly disappointed in her husband, Anna Wright lavished love and
00:10:09admiration on her only son.
00:10:14He was more than a child to her, one of his sisters remembered.
00:10:17He was her protege.
00:10:19He would accomplish what she and her husband could not.
00:10:23She bought him a set of wooden blocks and encouraged him to build things.
00:10:29One of the things that Wright often said was that he was very lucky to have had the kind of mother he did.
00:10:35And she had the most wonderful quality, the kind of quality that the ideal mother has.
00:10:41You know, she was all for you.
00:10:44When Frank was 11, Anna reluctantly snipped off his curls and sent him off to spend the first of many summers
00:10:51working on her family's Wisconsin farm.
00:10:54The Lloyd-Joneses were Welsh, Unitarian radicals who were known locally as the God Almighty Joneses
00:11:02because of their piety and the extreme seriousness with which they took themselves.
00:11:08Their family motto was truth against the world.
00:11:18Frank hated farm work.
00:11:20He learned only to add tired to tired, he remembered.
00:11:24But during those summer evenings, he listened eagerly to the Lloyd-Joneses' lively dinner conversations
00:11:30about religion, philosophy, and Ralph Waldo Emerson's vision of the American future.
00:11:40Surrounded by the beauty of the Wisconsin countryside,
00:11:43he developed the love of nature he would hold to all his life.
00:11:47What he was interested in was a nature that human beings inhabited
00:11:55and, in fact, that they transformed through their own spiritual use of it.
00:12:01So for him, what an artist is, is a person who transforms nature by looking at nature,
00:12:07passing it through the soul.
00:12:09And in the expression of what the soul experiences in nature,
00:12:15something more natural than nature itself emerges,
00:12:17which is as close as we get to God.
00:12:27Frank's father moved his family from town to town and state to state in search of work,
00:12:32eventually landing in Madison, Wisconsin.
00:12:38But his parents' marriage was going from bad to worse.
00:12:43Finally, in 1884, Anna told her husband she would never again share his bed.
00:12:50William Wright filed for divorce and walked away from his family.
00:12:54Frank sided with his mother, changed his middle name to Lloyd in honor of her family,
00:13:01and refused ever to see his father again.
00:13:07But the legacy of William Wright would remain stubbornly alive in him,
00:13:12in his lifelong love of music, his enormous charm, his restlessness,
00:13:18and his inability ever to live within his means.
00:13:24The father dropped out of the picture,
00:13:26and Frank chose to go with the mother
00:13:28and never have anything to do with the father again,
00:13:30and never even attended the father's funeral,
00:13:32never did anything about the father.
00:13:34But there was the great character
00:13:36who really helped so much to create the true Frank Lloyd Wright.
00:13:43In 1886, Wright took courses at the University of Wisconsin
00:13:47and learned the rudiments of architectural drafting.
00:13:50But he already felt himself distinctly different from his classmates
00:13:54and dressed accordingly, wearing a top hat
00:13:57and stalking across the campus with a cane.
00:14:01He was anxious to get away from the scene of his family's troubles,
00:14:05eager to be on his own in the big city of Chicago.
00:14:11Telling no one, he pawned a few of his father's old books
00:14:14to pay for his rail ticket and boarded the train.
00:14:18With him, he remembered,
00:14:19he carried only his mother's most precious gift to him,
00:14:23a boundless faith that he would succeed.
00:14:27Frank Lloyd Wright was now determined to become an architect.
00:14:30The great thing about Chicago is that after the 1871 fire,
00:14:48when the whole downtown is basically annihilated
00:14:50by this incredible fire,
00:14:52the whole downtown has to be rebuilt,
00:14:54and there's money to do the rebuilding
00:14:56because the city is clearly going to boom
00:14:58to be one of the great cities of the United States.
00:15:00So all these architects come in,
00:15:02and they have a tabula rasa,
00:15:03they have a clean slate on which to do their work.
00:15:06And so emerges the sense of the architect
00:15:09as the person who creates the universe that we inhabit.
00:15:14Wright comes into that community,
00:15:15and he imbibes that vision.
00:15:19An uncle helped Wright get a draftsman's job
00:15:22with a respectable firm,
00:15:24but he wanted more.
00:15:25In 1887, when he was just 20 years old,
00:15:30he approached the best architect in the city,
00:15:33Louis Sullivan,
00:15:34and asked for a job.
00:15:38Sullivan himself was just a kid, really.
00:15:40He was 31, 32 years of age,
00:15:43very artistic,
00:15:44passionately determined to make good.
00:15:47And into their office came this adorable boy,
00:15:51who obviously Sullivan in a perfectly ordinary sense
00:15:55of the word fell for,
00:15:57and thought,
00:15:57oh my God,
00:15:58this is somebody that I can really mold
00:16:00and make into a great man.
00:16:01And Frank himself
00:16:02plainly felt the same way about the relationship.
00:16:06Louis Sullivan was a revolutionary,
00:16:10seeking a distinctly American architecture.
00:16:12Probably the single most influential event of the 1890s
00:16:17that changes the whole architectural landscape of the United States
00:16:20is the 1893 World's Fair.
00:16:22The fair was cast in a neoclassical revival mode
00:16:26in which all the buildings had a kind of facade on them
00:16:29that looked Greek or Roman.
00:16:30And it was called the White City.
00:16:34It moved the visitors to the fair
00:16:36more than any other single thing that was there.
00:16:39And it's the reason why the mall in Washington, D.C.
00:16:41is cast in Greek revival form
00:16:43and why every downtown of every American city
00:16:45built in the 19-0s and 19-10s
00:16:47have this kind of Greek revival form.
00:16:51Sullivan reacted very negatively to that vision of the fair,
00:16:54and so did Frank Lloyd Wright following Sullivan.
00:16:57Louis Sullivan believed that architectural style
00:17:03must evolve in harmony with its intended use.
00:17:06Form must follow function.
00:17:09He designed some of the world's first skyscrapers,
00:17:12and Frank Lloyd Wright helped him do the drawings.
00:17:17Soon, Wright became what he called
00:17:19a good pencil in the master's hand
00:17:21and was promoted to chief draftsman in charge of 49 men.
00:17:27By this time, Wright had fallen in love
00:17:33with a charming 17-year-old
00:17:35from a prosperous Chicago family,
00:17:37Catherine Tobin, whom everyone called Kitty.
00:17:41They'd met at a church social
00:17:43when they literally collided on the dance floor.
00:17:46Before long, he asked her to marry him.
00:17:50Wright did what we all do when we're young.
00:17:52He constructed an image
00:17:54of the most beautiful girl in the world
00:17:56and made someone fit.
00:18:00And here is this enchanting girl
00:18:01that sort of falls into his lap,
00:18:03and he naturally enough says,
00:18:07this is the girl of my dreams,
00:18:08this is the one who's going to accompany me
00:18:10to the great heights,
00:18:11and she is the one who's going to live for me,
00:18:14because being an egotist,
00:18:16a narcissist of the first water,
00:18:18this is the kind of girl he wanted.
00:18:19At first, Kitty's parents opposed the marriage.
00:18:25Wright was too young,
00:18:26too unconventional,
00:18:28too poor.
00:18:30Frank's mother was also against the match
00:18:33and emphasized her unhappiness
00:18:35by fainting at the wedding.
00:18:37To ensure that he and his bride
00:18:43started out amidst the luxury
00:18:45that he was certain was somehow his due,
00:18:48Frank talked his boss
00:18:49into giving him a five-year contract,
00:18:51then persuaded Sullivan personally
00:18:53to loan him enough money against it
00:18:55to build himself a fine new home
00:18:58in the fashionable and conservative
00:18:59Chicago suburb of Oak Park.
00:19:03Oak Park was so sedate,
00:19:05so comfortable,
00:19:07so filled with churches
00:19:08that local people liked to call it
00:19:10saint's rest.
00:19:12It would be Wright's home
00:19:14and center of operations
00:19:15for two decades.
00:19:24And so he married an adorable young woman,
00:19:27very good-looking,
00:19:28very fiery and spirited,
00:19:29and a perfect consort for him.
00:19:31And they began to hurl child after child
00:19:34after child into the world.
00:19:44There would eventually be six children,
00:19:47four boys and two girls.
00:19:53Kitty looked after them,
00:19:55and Wright looked after his career.
00:20:02Wright loved to conduct tours of his own home,
00:20:05pointing out the big, echoing playroom
00:20:07he added for the children,
00:20:09the elegant dining room
00:20:10with its imposing high-backed chairs,
00:20:13specially designed by Wright,
00:20:14and the fireplace at the center of the house,
00:20:18which he believed symbolized
00:20:19the heart of the family.
00:20:22Above the mantle was carved
00:20:24Frank Lloyd Wright's new family motto,
00:20:27Truth is Life.
00:20:33The Wrights loved to socialize.
00:20:36There were parties somewhere all of the time,
00:20:38his eldest son remembered,
00:20:39and everywhere some of the time.
00:20:43He was a romantic figure beyond anything.
00:20:47The whole atmosphere of a room
00:20:49changed when he came into it.
00:20:51The cape, the cane,
00:20:52all the accoutrements
00:20:53of a superb actor of the 19th century.
00:20:57And women, understandably,
00:21:00fell in love with him at once.
00:21:02He was a far more remarkable figure
00:21:04than their husbands,
00:21:05who were lawyers and dentists
00:21:07and other ordinary folk.
00:21:09From the first,
00:21:13Wright lived beyond his means.
00:21:15He collected old books
00:21:17and Japanese prints.
00:21:19So long as we had the luxuries,
00:21:21he liked to say,
00:21:22the necessities could pretty well
00:21:23take care of themselves.
00:21:27When they didn't,
00:21:29he betrayed Louis Sullivan's trust.
00:21:32He began secretly designing houses
00:21:34for wealthy clients,
00:21:36sometimes under an assumed name.
00:21:39Well, he was in all kinds of trouble
00:21:41all the time,
00:21:43and he said things that were
00:21:44so remote from being true
00:21:46again and again,
00:21:48and he would be caught out
00:21:50telling some real whopper,
00:21:53and he would only say with a smile,
00:21:54well, there you are.
00:21:56In 1893, Sullivan found out
00:22:01that Wright was moonlighting
00:22:02and dismissed him.
00:22:05Wright would always claim
00:22:07that he had quit,
00:22:08not been fired.
00:22:10But he never looked back.
00:22:12He added an impressive
00:22:14high-ceiling studio to his home,
00:22:16launched his own practice,
00:22:17and attracted a staff
00:22:19of young, talented artists
00:22:21and designers
00:22:21who would help him do the work.
00:22:28Over the next decade,
00:22:30he struggled to develop
00:22:31a style of building houses
00:22:33distinctly his own.
00:22:36He would work all day
00:22:38and all night,
00:22:39and sometimes he would go
00:22:40for three or four days
00:22:41continuously working
00:22:42and developing drawings
00:22:45for just one project,
00:22:47drawing after drawing
00:22:49after drawing,
00:22:50and this would go on
00:22:51all the time continually.
00:22:53This is where he was
00:22:55developing his grammar.
00:22:56This is in the Oak Park days.
00:22:58He was really getting it down,
00:23:00getting what it was
00:23:01that he wanted to do,
00:23:02how he wanted to move
00:23:03with architecture.
00:23:05Following the wishes
00:23:06of his Oak Park clients,
00:23:07he first incorporated elements
00:23:09drawn from every sort
00:23:10of European style,
00:23:13including an odd hybrid
00:23:14he called Hans Christian Andersen.
00:23:17But he was not satisfied.
00:23:24It was a uniquely American style
00:23:27that Wright was after,
00:23:29based not on models
00:23:30imported from the old world,
00:23:32but growing naturally
00:23:33out of local conditions
00:23:35in the new.
00:23:40Every great country,
00:23:42as it emerges into greatness,
00:23:44develops its own architecture.
00:23:46It goes beyond style,
00:23:47it goes beyond fashion,
00:23:48which are common places
00:23:49of change.
00:23:51In principle,
00:23:52there ought to be
00:23:53something autochthonous,
00:23:54there should be something
00:23:54coming out of the ground
00:23:56that says,
00:23:57this is the way we build
00:23:58in this particular culture.
00:24:01Frank was trying to say,
00:24:02we deserve an American architecture.
00:24:08When Wright began
00:24:10to be an architect,
00:24:11the typical house,
00:24:11say in Oak Park,
00:24:12where he lived,
00:24:13was on a relatively narrow lot,
00:24:15maybe 60 or 70 feet wide,
00:24:17maybe 100 or 125 feet deep.
00:24:20It had a front porch
00:24:22where people could gather
00:24:24in a kind of semi-public
00:24:25relationship to the street.
00:24:28Wright took that model
00:24:30and recognizing in part
00:24:31that the automobile
00:24:32changed the nature
00:24:34of street life
00:24:35and that while you sat
00:24:36on a porch
00:24:36and talked to people
00:24:37walking by
00:24:38or in a slow-moving carriage,
00:24:40an automobile destroyed
00:24:41that relationship.
00:24:42So he recognized that
00:24:44and he turned the house
00:24:4590 degrees to the street.
00:24:48More importantly,
00:24:49Wright threw away the porch
00:24:50and in fact always conceals
00:24:53his entrance
00:24:53in some obscure way.
00:24:57Some elements
00:24:58of Wright's radical new style
00:25:00were borrowed
00:25:00from builders overseas,
00:25:02the arts and crafts movement
00:25:04in Britain,
00:25:04the secessionist school
00:25:06in Vienna,
00:25:06and the architecture of Japan.
00:25:09But no one had ever drawn
00:25:11upon all of them
00:25:12as he did.
00:25:15Wright's houses
00:25:16were horizontal
00:25:17rather than vertical
00:25:18to fit into the flat
00:25:20Midwestern landscape
00:25:21and they featured
00:25:22sheltering overhangs,
00:25:24low terraces,
00:25:25and sequestered private gardens.
00:25:27They would be set back
00:25:30from the street
00:25:31to ensure greater privacy.
00:25:33They would be stripped
00:25:34of the decorative detail
00:25:36Wright considered superfluous.
00:25:38The outside of the house,
00:25:40he said,
00:25:41was there chiefly
00:25:42because of what happened inside.
00:25:44In Wright's houses,
00:25:50rooms were no longer
00:25:51to be boxes
00:25:52beside boxes.
00:25:54Instead,
00:25:54the whole lower floor
00:25:56was to be one room,
00:25:58its many different uses
00:25:59suggested by screens
00:26:00rather than closed off
00:26:02with walls.
00:26:04Everything was to be
00:26:05a unified whole,
00:26:07Wright liked to say,
00:26:08order out of chaos.
00:26:10It's all coming out still
00:26:15of the straight-laced,
00:26:18tight, Victorian
00:26:20and Edwardian periods
00:26:22where formality
00:26:24and closed,
00:26:25discreet rooms,
00:26:27parlors with double doors
00:26:29that closed shut
00:26:30and were used
00:26:31for this formal purpose
00:26:32or that formal purpose
00:26:33and so forth.
00:26:34Wright's desire
00:26:35to make everything
00:26:36open and flowing
00:26:37was a revolution
00:26:39at that time.
00:26:40It just exploded
00:26:41the whole idea
00:26:42of what the house
00:26:44had been.
00:26:48The homes he built
00:26:49for the Kuhnleys,
00:26:51the Littles,
00:26:51the Blossoms
00:26:52and the Robies,
00:26:54the prairie houses
00:26:55as he called them,
00:26:56would one day
00:26:57make Frank Lloyd Wright
00:26:58one of the most
00:26:59talked about figures
00:27:00in the world of architecture
00:27:01and influence
00:27:03a whole generation
00:27:05of young builders
00:27:05in Europe.
00:27:08Between 1900
00:27:10and 1909,
00:27:11Wright's practice
00:27:12boomed.
00:27:13He designed
00:27:14135 prairie houses,
00:27:17mostly in the new suburbs
00:27:18that were rapidly growing up
00:27:20around Chicago.
00:27:23To his well-to-do clients,
00:27:25his houses offered
00:27:26what one critic called
00:27:27a safe and secure harbor
00:27:29to the family,
00:27:31battered about
00:27:31on the uncharted seas
00:27:33of modern life.
00:27:37There really is
00:27:38no environment
00:27:39that I know
00:27:39that is as serene
00:27:41as a great Wright space.
00:27:44Partly,
00:27:45you see it's because
00:27:46it's both firmly organized,
00:27:48but it seems
00:27:49to have no boundaries.
00:27:51It seems to go on forever.
00:27:53And that's one reason
00:27:56for the low ceiling.
00:27:57So you will associate
00:27:58yourself physically
00:28:00with that horizontal expansion.
00:28:03And the other thing
00:28:04is the color.
00:28:06They're the colors
00:28:07of the harvest.
00:28:09It's golden,
00:28:10green and golden
00:28:11and gentle browns
00:28:13in there.
00:28:15There's nothing like it
00:28:16for a sense of serenity
00:28:17and belonging.
00:28:18Always wonderful autumn
00:28:22in Wright's houses.
00:28:48Wright considered architecture
00:28:52to be the master art form.
00:28:55The art form
00:28:56that subordinated
00:28:57all other art forms.
00:29:00Because contained within it
00:29:01were the visual arts,
00:29:03the plastic arts,
00:29:04sculpture.
00:29:08And so what he tried to do
00:29:09was to bring in
00:29:10all of these elements,
00:29:12control them all,
00:29:13subordinate them
00:29:13to his vision
00:29:14as a way of creating
00:29:15a perfect realization
00:29:16of beauty.
00:29:18And his vision
00:29:20of what it would be like
00:29:21to live within
00:29:21that beautiful space
00:29:22would be that it would be
00:29:24genuinely transformative.
00:29:25It would make the people
00:29:27different who inhabited
00:29:28that space.
00:29:35Every house is a missionary,
00:29:38Frank Lloyd Wright once said.
00:29:40I don't build a house
00:29:42without predicting the end
00:29:44of the present social order.
00:29:45The houses are fabulous,
00:30:04but really American architects
00:30:05are the only architects
00:30:07in the world
00:30:07who make careers
00:30:08out of houses.
00:30:10This is the only country
00:30:11that continually builds houses.
00:30:13But in the world's spectrum,
00:30:15it's public buildings
00:30:16that are the buildings
00:30:18that make a career.
00:30:22Frank Lloyd Wright
00:30:23had earned a reputation
00:30:24as a builder of handsome
00:30:25and innovative private houses.
00:30:28But he still longed
00:30:29for the kind of large-scale commissions
00:30:31prized by every architect.
00:30:35He got the chance in 1902
00:30:37when a generous-hearted businessman
00:30:39named Darwin Martin
00:30:40arranged for him
00:30:42to design a new administration building
00:30:44for a large mail-order business
00:30:46in Buffalo, New York,
00:30:47the Larkin Company.
00:30:50To get the job,
00:30:51Wright claimed that he,
00:30:53and not Louis Sullivan,
00:30:54had designed several
00:30:55of Sullivan's best-known buildings.
00:30:58It wasn't true,
00:31:00but Martin believed him,
00:31:02and Wright enthusiastically
00:31:03started work
00:31:04on the largest commission
00:31:06he'd ever had.
00:31:07The Larkin building,
00:31:34Wright said,
00:31:35was intended to transform
00:31:37business life.
00:31:39It was a huge, austere,
00:31:41fireproof vault
00:31:42filled with modern,
00:31:43specially designed
00:31:44steel furniture
00:31:45and hermetically sealed
00:31:47to keep out the noise
00:31:49and fumes
00:31:49of the nearby factories.
00:31:56It was an essay,
00:31:58Wright wrote later,
00:32:00in the third dimension,
00:32:02a genuine expression
00:32:03of power directly applied
00:32:05to purpose
00:32:05in the same sense
00:32:07that the ocean liner,
00:32:08the plane,
00:32:09or the car is so.
00:32:13The Larkin building
00:32:14was like a modern cathedral.
00:32:16And if you consider
00:32:17those engravings
00:32:18of the great cathedrals
00:32:19that his mother
00:32:20had put in his room,
00:32:20if you imagine
00:32:21the cathedral facade
00:32:22with the vertical towers
00:32:23and the horizontals
00:32:24weaving through,
00:32:25that's what the Larkin building is,
00:32:27only abstracted
00:32:28with no decoration.
00:32:31What Wright was trying
00:32:32to do in that
00:32:33was to create
00:32:34a modern building
00:32:35that would give
00:32:36the workers
00:32:37a sense of what he called
00:32:39a family gathering.
00:32:42The interior is opened up
00:32:44into what today
00:32:45we would call
00:32:46an atrium-like space,
00:32:48which in effect does
00:32:49for the office building
00:32:50what the hearth
00:32:52or the fireplace
00:32:52did for the family home.
00:32:55That's to say,
00:32:56provide a sense of focus.
00:32:57All the women
00:32:59are sitting there
00:33:00typing on the tables
00:33:01that he designed
00:33:02and everything fits
00:33:03in together
00:33:04and the mottos
00:33:05of early individualistic capitalism
00:33:08are up there saying,
00:33:09work hard
00:33:10and you'll be rewarded
00:33:10and so on.
00:33:15Wright went way over budget,
00:33:17but the directors
00:33:18of the Larkin Company
00:33:19and his new friend,
00:33:20Darwin Martin,
00:33:22loved their building.
00:33:27Looking back
00:33:28many years later,
00:33:30Wright said,
00:33:31I was a real Leonardo da Vinci
00:33:33when I built that building.
00:33:34Everything in it
00:33:35was my invention.
00:33:38But the critics,
00:33:40accustomed to more
00:33:41classical forms,
00:33:42were not impressed.
00:33:46The lover of architecture
00:33:48who looks,
00:33:49perhaps for the first time,
00:33:51at a building
00:33:52so entirely removed
00:33:54from the traditional
00:33:55styles and schools
00:33:56feels a shock of surprise,
00:33:59which is the reverse
00:34:00of pleasure.
00:34:02Few persons
00:34:02who have seen
00:34:03the great monuments
00:34:04of the past
00:34:04and who have loved them
00:34:06will fail to pronounce
00:34:08this monument
00:34:09an extremely ugly building.
00:34:12It is, in fact,
00:34:13a monster of awkwardness.
00:34:17Russell Sturgis,
00:34:18The Architectural Record.
00:34:26I was told a story
00:34:28of two teachers
00:34:30with a house
00:34:31in South Carolina
00:34:32and one day
00:34:33a vase arrived
00:34:34at their house
00:34:35and they opened it
00:34:36and it had a little card
00:34:37and Frank Lloyd Wright
00:34:38had written something like,
00:34:39I thought this would look perfect
00:34:40over the fireplace.
00:34:42And indeed it did.
00:34:43A few weeks later,
00:34:44a bill came
00:34:45for the vase.
00:34:46They had thought
00:34:47it was a gift
00:34:47and suddenly they were
00:34:48stuck with the bill.
00:34:52Frank Lloyd Wright
00:34:53expected all of his clients,
00:34:55big and small,
00:34:56to give him
00:34:57their grateful cooperation.
00:34:59It's their duty,
00:35:00he said,
00:35:01to understand
00:35:02and appreciate
00:35:03and conform,
00:35:04insofar as possible,
00:35:06to the idea
00:35:06of the house.
00:35:09He would tell one client
00:35:11that all his family's possessions
00:35:12were prehistoric
00:35:13and had to go
00:35:15and often insisted
00:35:16on designing
00:35:17all the furnishings
00:35:18right down
00:35:19to the napkin rings
00:35:20used at his dinner table.
00:35:23At least once,
00:35:25he designed the gown
00:35:26the hostess was to wear
00:35:27as well.
00:35:28And when she dared
00:35:29rearrange the furniture
00:35:30before he came to call,
00:35:32he dragged it all back
00:35:33to where he'd meant it to be.
00:35:36He can be very overbearing
00:35:38because you walk
00:35:39into one of his houses
00:35:40and you have to live
00:35:42in his head,
00:35:43you have to live
00:35:44in his imagination.
00:35:45It's in the furnishings
00:35:47that you get this idea
00:35:48of how much control
00:35:50he demanded
00:35:52of the people
00:35:53that were to live
00:35:54in his houses.
00:35:55I think he was
00:35:56one of the more controlling
00:35:58architects
00:35:59you could have ever met.
00:36:02People put up with it all
00:36:04because of Wright's
00:36:05enormous charm
00:36:06and his ability
00:36:07to infuse them
00:36:08with the excitement
00:36:09he seemed able
00:36:09to summon up
00:36:10for every project.
00:36:12He believed his clients
00:36:14were privileged
00:36:14to be working with him
00:36:15and somehow made them
00:36:17believe it too,
00:36:18even though his buildings
00:36:20would cost far more
00:36:21than his original estimates.
00:36:23They would have
00:36:24to forgive him.
00:36:25They had no choice.
00:36:27And of course,
00:36:27he was perfectly conscious
00:36:28of how spellbinding
00:36:30he was in being able
00:36:32to sell a project,
00:36:33but he also was giving
00:36:34full value.
00:36:38Wright's practice
00:36:38was bringing in
00:36:39a lot of money,
00:36:40but he was spending
00:36:41still more.
00:36:43The sheriff of Oak Park
00:36:44once had to spend
00:36:45the night in his kitchen
00:36:46for fear Wright
00:36:47would leave town
00:36:48before one of his checks
00:36:49had safely cleared.
00:36:51It was my misfortune,
00:36:53Wright once complained,
00:36:55that everybody
00:36:55was willing to trust me.
00:36:58He never felt
00:36:59altogether content
00:37:00except when he was
00:37:01desperately in debt.
00:37:02And his son wrote
00:37:03about the time
00:37:04when his father,
00:37:05borrowing money
00:37:06from a friend,
00:37:06then went out
00:37:07and bought
00:37:07two or three grand pianos
00:37:09so he was to be
00:37:10deeply in debt again
00:37:11all within eight
00:37:12or nine hours.
00:37:13You know,
00:37:13he felt so good
00:37:14on the edge.
00:37:15The edge was where
00:37:16he gave him the stimulus.
00:37:18Plainly his adrenaline
00:37:19was filling him up
00:37:21to the brim
00:37:21when he was in desperate
00:37:23trouble of that kind.
00:37:26He's in a sense
00:37:27a man who never grew up.
00:37:29He remained a kind of
00:37:30golden boy
00:37:31all of his life.
00:37:33Both his greatest strengths
00:37:34and his greatest weaknesses
00:37:35come from his childishness.
00:37:37He's so playful,
00:37:38he's so supple,
00:37:39he's so malleable,
00:37:40he can do whatever he wants
00:37:41and get away with it.
00:37:42He's used to getting away
00:37:43with things.
00:37:44And it means that
00:37:44he can play with
00:37:45other people's money
00:37:46like a child,
00:37:47not worrying about
00:37:48ever paying his debts.
00:37:52Better be very careful
00:37:53in your dealing with him,
00:37:54one battered client
00:37:56warned another.
00:37:58If he is sane,
00:37:59he is dangerous.
00:38:00I understand that
00:38:08you attend no church.
00:38:10I attend the greatest
00:38:11of all churches.
00:38:13I put a capital N
00:38:14on nature
00:38:15and call it my church.
00:38:18What do you think
00:38:19of church architecture
00:38:20in the United States?
00:38:22I think it's, of course,
00:38:24a great shame.
00:38:26Because it improperly
00:38:28reflects the idea
00:38:29of religion?
00:38:30Because it is
00:38:32a parrot and monkey
00:38:33reflection
00:38:33and no reflection
00:38:34of religion.
00:38:40In 1905,
00:38:42the Unitarian Church
00:38:43of Oak Park
00:38:44burned to the ground.
00:38:46Its progressive minister
00:38:47and most of his congregation
00:38:49wanted to replace it
00:38:50with a bold,
00:38:51new architectural statement.
00:38:54They gave the contract
00:38:55to one of their own members,
00:38:57Frank Lloyd Wright.
00:38:57Why have the steeple
00:39:01of the Little White Church,
00:39:02he said.
00:39:03Why point to heaven?
00:39:05Why not build a temple
00:39:06to man,
00:39:07appropriate to his uses,
00:39:08as a meeting place?
00:39:13The exterior of his
00:39:15unity temple
00:39:16was unlike
00:39:17any other church
00:39:18anywhere.
00:39:19Some disappointed
00:39:20worshippers
00:39:21compared it
00:39:21to a prison gatehouse,
00:39:23an ice factory,
00:39:25a Mayan handball court.
00:39:30But the interior
00:39:31was something else again.
00:39:34You come in the back door
00:39:37of that chapel.
00:39:38You could hear the church,
00:39:40but you couldn't see.
00:39:42And then you made
00:39:43the three turns.
00:39:44Every turn is a very
00:39:45difficult thing.
00:39:46A right-angled turn
00:39:47is a wrench.
00:39:48But he knew
00:39:49you didn't go very far.
00:39:50It was a small church.
00:39:52And then being forced
00:39:53to turn
00:39:53makes you start
00:39:54over a new life.
00:39:55And then by slowing
00:40:04you down
00:40:05to the right-angled turn,
00:40:07he prepares you
00:40:07intentionally
00:40:08for the surprise
00:40:09of the religious feeling.
00:40:14When you come
00:40:15into the church,
00:40:15you come in upstairs
00:40:17onto the auditorium floor,
00:40:19which is like
00:40:19a raised platform,
00:40:21which therefore
00:40:22comes to be
00:40:22a spiritual plane.
00:40:24In other words,
00:40:24it's as if you've
00:40:25risen up to a plane
00:40:26which is floating
00:40:28literally in air
00:40:29because it's surrounded
00:40:30by these depressed
00:40:30cloisters on all four sides.
00:40:33Standing on this
00:40:34raised plane
00:40:35with space dropping
00:40:36away from you
00:40:37on every side,
00:40:39it's like being
00:40:40on a kind of plateau,
00:40:41a mountaintop
00:40:42out in the landscape.
00:40:43And I think
00:40:44that's what gives
00:40:45it spirituality.
00:40:55it's not a big building,
00:41:14but I think it's the biggest
00:41:16space in America.
00:41:17It's a square inside,
00:41:21like the old meeting houses.
00:41:23And as in the old meeting houses,
00:41:25the preacher is on one side,
00:41:28and then people
00:41:29are on the other three sides.
00:41:31And they're looking
00:41:31into each other's faces
00:41:32as well as into his.
00:41:35So there's an enormous
00:41:36sense of community.
00:41:37It's an extraordinary building
00:41:52because it has
00:41:52staggering
00:41:54civic dignity to it.
00:41:57And what Wright wanted
00:42:00to do was show
00:42:01that you can make
00:42:02a modern, monumental,
00:42:05public place.
00:42:09That was the real importance
00:42:10of Unity Temple.
00:42:27I always remember
00:42:31my father talking
00:42:33about how my grandfather
00:42:35would work late
00:42:36into the night.
00:42:37He'd hear him
00:42:37playing the piano.
00:42:39It would be 12 o'clock,
00:42:411 o'clock at night
00:42:42that he'd come in
00:42:43from the office.
00:42:46I think a lot of
00:42:47my father's looking back
00:42:49was a great deal
00:42:51of nostalgia,
00:42:52I think yearning
00:42:53to have had more
00:42:55of a relationship.
00:42:56I often wonder
00:42:58just how happy
00:42:59things were.
00:43:02By 1909,
00:43:04Frank Lloyd Wright
00:43:05seemed to have
00:43:06everything an ambitious
00:43:07architect could want.
00:43:09A successful career,
00:43:11a comfortable home,
00:43:13a loving wife
00:43:14and family.
00:43:15But appearances
00:43:16were deceiving.
00:43:19His practice
00:43:20was flourishing,
00:43:21but he had no prospects
00:43:22for any more big jobs.
00:43:25And he felt
00:43:25that he had done
00:43:26all he could do
00:43:27with the prairie style.
00:43:29I was losing my grip
00:43:31on my work, Wright remembered,
00:43:33and even my interest in it.
00:43:34I could see no way out.
00:43:37He was not getting
00:43:39the kind of recognition
00:43:40that he felt he deserved
00:43:42and as a result
00:43:43was not getting
00:43:44the kind of large-scale
00:43:46building projects
00:43:46that he deserved.
00:43:47here he was pushing 40
00:43:50at that time
00:43:51and he had not had
00:43:53except for the Unity Temple
00:43:55and the Larkin building
00:43:56a major commission.
00:43:59How many three-bedroom houses
00:44:01can you do?
00:44:02How many different ways
00:44:03can you do them?
00:44:05But more importantly,
00:44:05how many times
00:44:06can you meet with
00:44:07Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith
00:44:09and talk about her closets
00:44:10without going nuts?
00:44:12And there was trouble
00:44:17at home, too.
00:44:19He and Kitty
00:44:19were growing apart.
00:44:21He was an architect,
00:44:23he once explained.
00:44:24Her profession
00:44:25was motherhood
00:44:26and he grew to resent
00:44:28the amount of attention
00:44:29she paid to the children.
00:44:31He hated being called Papa,
00:44:34refused to play any part
00:44:35in disciplining his children,
00:44:37complained when they
00:44:39interrupted his work.
00:44:40Wright was never a father
00:44:44in the classic sense.
00:44:46There are pictures of him
00:44:47with his family.
00:44:47He's always sitting
00:44:48a little bit to one side.
00:44:51He's not really their father.
00:44:54He's more like a kid
00:44:56among all these other kids
00:44:58and in a way
00:44:59just as competitive
00:45:00for the affection of mother.
00:45:03But I think that Wright
00:45:05never, ever was a real father.
00:45:10I have had the father feeling
00:45:12for a building,
00:45:13he once said,
00:45:14but I never had it
00:45:15for my children.
00:45:22A few blocks away,
00:45:24in a handsome house
00:45:25Wright had designed for them,
00:45:27lived Edwin Chaney
00:45:28and his wife,
00:45:30Maima Borthwick Chaney.
00:45:31They were good friends
00:45:33of both the Wrights.
00:45:35But now Wright's relationship
00:45:36with Maima
00:45:37ripened into something else.
00:45:40She was vivacious,
00:45:42intellectual,
00:45:43artistic,
00:45:44and unsatisfied
00:45:45with the traditional role
00:45:46of wife and mother.
00:45:49She was a writer,
00:45:50she was an early feminist,
00:45:52she was not your ordinary
00:45:54run-of-the-mill
00:45:55kind of suburban housewife.
00:45:58Their affair began
00:46:00with long rides
00:46:01in Wright's
00:46:01bright yellow roadster.
00:46:02Soon they became
00:46:04the talk of Oak Park.
00:46:07Wright didn't care.
00:46:09He was captivated
00:46:10with his new love.
00:46:12I think the clue here
00:46:14is that she was
00:46:16all for him.
00:46:19In a way,
00:46:20that Kitty was no longer.
00:46:22Kitty was much too involved
00:46:23in those six children
00:46:24to pay much attention
00:46:25to Frank,
00:46:27and Maima
00:46:27never made that mistake.
00:46:29Eventually,
00:46:36Kitty discovered
00:46:37what was happening,
00:46:38but decided to ignore
00:46:40her husband's infidelity
00:46:41in the hope
00:46:42that it was an infatuation
00:46:44that would not last.
00:46:47But it did last.
00:46:51In the summer of 1908,
00:46:53Wright asked Kitty
00:46:54for a divorce.
00:46:56She refused.
00:46:57A year later,
00:47:00he asked her again.
00:47:03Again,
00:47:04she said no.
00:47:08Then,
00:47:09in October of 1909,
00:47:11with no warning
00:47:12to anyone,
00:47:13Wright closed
00:47:14his studio,
00:47:15abandoned Kitty
00:47:16and their six children,
00:47:18and ran off to Europe
00:47:19with Maima Chaney,
00:47:20who left her husband
00:47:22and children behind
00:47:23to join him.
00:47:24All he left,
00:47:28Wright's son David remembered,
00:47:30were bills to be paid.
00:47:34As I say,
00:47:35when he left home,
00:47:38he left my mother
00:47:39with a grocery bill
00:47:40of over $900,
00:47:41which was pretty high
00:47:42at that time.
00:47:44The butcher shops
00:47:47and the grocery shops
00:47:48were very kind to us
00:47:50there on Chicago Avenue.
00:47:52Frank had never forgiven
00:47:56his father
00:47:56for deserting his family.
00:47:59Now,
00:47:59at age 42,
00:48:01after nearly two decades
00:48:02of marriage,
00:48:03he had done
00:48:04precisely the same thing.
00:48:07There was a great deal
00:48:08of tension,
00:48:09especially when
00:48:09my grandfather
00:48:10left the family.
00:48:13There was actually
00:48:13physical violence.
00:48:15My father
00:48:16attacked my grandfather
00:48:18when he was leaving.
00:48:19And so there was,
00:48:22there was tension there.
00:48:26I went out
00:48:28into the unknown,
00:48:29Wright wrote later,
00:48:30to test faith
00:48:31in freedom,
00:48:33test faith in life,
00:48:35as I had already
00:48:36tested faith
00:48:37in work.
00:48:39At first,
00:48:40Kitty refused
00:48:41to blame her husband.
00:48:43Her old friend,
00:48:44Maima Chaney,
00:48:45she told a reporter,
00:48:46was a vamp.
00:48:47She was very much
00:48:49in love with him.
00:48:51She wouldn't give him
00:48:52a divorce
00:48:53for several years
00:48:55after he left home.
00:48:57She was always hoping
00:48:59that he would come back.
00:49:01But he never did.
00:49:07Now,
00:49:08a public scandal erupted.
00:49:11Newspapers published editorials
00:49:13condemning the couple.
00:49:14The Chicago Tribune
00:49:16held Wright responsible
00:49:17for what it called
00:49:18an affinity triangle,
00:49:20unparalleled
00:49:21even in the history
00:49:22of soul mating.
00:49:24In Oak Park,
00:49:26the Presbyterian minister
00:49:27preached
00:49:27that such a man
00:49:29as Wright
00:49:29has lost all sense
00:49:30of morality
00:49:31and religion
00:49:32and is damnably
00:49:33to be blamed.
00:49:34The couple traveled
00:49:41to Berlin,
00:49:42where he prepared
00:49:43a portfolio
00:49:44of his own work
00:49:45for publication,
00:49:46and then to Italy,
00:49:48where he drank in
00:49:50all the architectural
00:49:51history he could.
00:49:54They stayed abroad
00:49:55for a year.
00:49:57Wright called it
00:49:58voluntary exile.
00:50:00Frank had really
00:50:11constructed an idea
00:50:12of himself
00:50:13as a superior being.
00:50:15He was a creative artist,
00:50:17and he really,
00:50:18I think,
00:50:18innocently thought
00:50:19that everybody else
00:50:20would think
00:50:20he was a creative artist,
00:50:22therefore outside
00:50:23the bounds
00:50:24of conventional morality.
00:50:25In 1910,
00:50:29Wright abruptly
00:50:29returned to Oak Park.
00:50:32He was out of money
00:50:32and anxious
00:50:33to see his children
00:50:34who had been sending
00:50:35letters begging him
00:50:36to come home.
00:50:38Mamma stayed in Europe.
00:50:40Kitty desperately hoped
00:50:42for a reconciliation,
00:50:43but Wright was living
00:50:44apart from his wife now
00:50:46and using borrowed funds
00:50:48had begun building
00:50:49another home
00:50:50on a hillside
00:50:50in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
00:50:53He called it
00:50:54Taliesin,
00:50:55Welsh for Shining Brow.
00:50:58He told everyone
00:50:59it was to be
00:51:00a new house
00:51:01for his mother,
00:51:02but he really meant
00:51:03to share it with Mamma
00:51:04once she obtained
00:51:06a divorce.
00:51:08He, of course,
00:51:09could no longer
00:51:09live in Oak Park,
00:51:10and even Chicago
00:51:11was difficult.
00:51:13He had to move
00:51:13away from there.
00:51:14He had to have
00:51:15a refuge,
00:51:17and so he went
00:51:19back to the valley
00:51:19of his ancestors,
00:51:21the Lloyd-Jones,
00:51:22and there,
00:51:23of course,
00:51:24on this hillside,
00:51:25he was able
00:51:26to build
00:51:26this wonderful
00:51:27Taliesin.
00:51:29It means
00:51:30shining brow,
00:51:32and Taliesin
00:51:32is built
00:51:33like a brow
00:51:34on the edge
00:51:34of the hill,
00:51:35not on top
00:51:35of the hill,
00:51:36because I believe
00:51:37you should never
00:51:38build on top
00:51:39of anything directly.
00:51:41If you build
00:51:42on top of the hill,
00:51:43you lose the hill.
00:51:47Wright's plans
00:51:48for Taliesin
00:51:48were partially inspired
00:51:50by the villas
00:51:50he and Mamma
00:51:51had visited in Italy.
00:51:53But its meandering
00:51:54design was his alone.
00:51:57So was its relation
00:51:59to the land.
00:52:01The outside walls
00:52:03and chimneys
00:52:04were built
00:52:04from rough limestone
00:52:05quarried a few miles away.
00:52:08Inner walls
00:52:09were covered
00:52:09with plaster
00:52:10made from sand
00:52:11from the banks
00:52:11of the Wisconsin River.
00:52:13The roof's weathered
00:52:15cedar shingles
00:52:16were meant to be
00:52:17the color
00:52:17of tree trunks
00:52:18at dusk.
00:52:21I wish to be part
00:52:22of my beloved Wisconsin,
00:52:23he wrote.
00:52:25My house is made
00:52:26out of the rocks
00:52:26and trees
00:52:27of the region.
00:52:28It is part of the hill
00:52:30on which it stands.
00:52:35It was, to him,
00:52:36a retreat.
00:52:37This was a sanctuary.
00:52:40It was a meeting point
00:52:42there of the spirit
00:52:43and the soul
00:52:44of nature
00:52:46and of human beings
00:52:48coming together.
00:52:49And to him,
00:52:50it was a sacred thing
00:52:52that was happening here.
00:52:56Like any architect,
00:52:57Frank Lloyd Wright
00:52:58wanted to make
00:52:59his own house
00:53:00an epitome
00:53:00of everything
00:53:01he stood for
00:53:02emotionally,
00:53:03spiritually,
00:53:04technically.
00:53:06And so he built
00:53:08this great,
00:53:08long, rambling,
00:53:10beautiful,
00:53:11hugging-the-ground house.
00:53:14And it was going
00:53:15to be his statement
00:53:16to the world.
00:53:21And he kept losing it,
00:53:22mortgaged it unpaid,
00:53:23bank would take it,
00:53:24he'd get it back,
00:53:25he'd incorporate himself,
00:53:27found a new method
00:53:28of outwitting
00:53:29everybody around him.
00:53:31And he hung on to that
00:53:32to his dying day.
00:53:33It was perfectly wonderful
00:53:34how he manipulated
00:53:35everybody to preserve
00:53:36his house.
00:53:38But the house itself
00:53:40was and is
00:53:41a wonder.
00:53:50Taliesin is,
00:53:51I think,
00:53:52the most important
00:53:53building Wright ever did.
00:53:54I think it was
00:53:55the building
00:53:56that Wright
00:53:57put more into
00:53:58than any other,
00:54:01not only in terms
00:54:02of personal,
00:54:03physical labor,
00:54:04but also in terms
00:54:06of thinking
00:54:07about architecture.
00:54:11To Wright,
00:54:12Taliesin was
00:54:13the perfect embodiment
00:54:14of what he liked
00:54:15to call
00:54:16organic architecture.
00:54:21I think we're
00:54:22very likely
00:54:23to misunderstand Wright
00:54:24when he uses
00:54:24that word, organic,
00:54:26because what we think
00:54:27we mean
00:54:27when we use
00:54:28the word organic
00:54:28is something
00:54:29that's just taken
00:54:30right out of pristine,
00:54:31pure nature
00:54:31and used
00:54:32in a natural way.
00:54:33It's not what Wright
00:54:34meant by organic
00:54:35or natural at all.
00:54:36What he meant
00:54:36was things taken
00:54:38from nature
00:54:39that inspire the artist
00:54:41to see beyond
00:54:42those natural forms
00:54:43some ideal,
00:54:44almost divine form
00:54:45that lay behind
00:54:46that natural form.
00:54:49And so it was
00:54:49the job of the artist
00:54:50to create a vision
00:54:53of nature
00:54:53that was more natural
00:54:54than nature itself.
00:54:59Maima Cheney
00:55:00returned from Europe
00:55:01and finally got her
00:55:02divorce in the summer
00:55:03of 1911
00:55:04and when Kitty Wright
00:55:06again refused
00:55:06even to consider
00:55:07granting one to Frank
00:55:09he moved to Taliesin
00:55:10anyway
00:55:11to be with Maima.
00:55:13The scandal
00:55:14was reborn.
00:55:16A reporter noted
00:55:17that Wright
00:55:18had been spotted
00:55:19carrying Cheney
00:55:19across a stream
00:55:20and that she had
00:55:22exhibited a good deal
00:55:23of lingerie
00:55:24of a quality
00:55:25not often on display
00:55:26in that part
00:55:27of Wisconsin.
00:55:27on Christmas Day
00:55:321911
00:55:33a defiant Wright
00:55:35held a press conference
00:55:36to explain
00:55:36his actions
00:55:37to the world.
00:55:39The ordinary man
00:55:41cannot live
00:55:42without rules
00:55:42to guide his conduct
00:55:44he said.
00:55:45He, Frank Lloyd Wright
00:55:46was not ordinary.
00:55:50My grandfather
00:55:51always said
00:55:52you have to live
00:55:53in the now.
00:55:55What is happening
00:55:55right now
00:55:56is the most important
00:55:57thing
00:55:57and I think
00:55:58he really lived
00:55:59that way
00:56:00and he didn't
00:56:00look back.
00:56:05Maima and Frank
00:56:07would live together
00:56:07at Taliesin
00:56:08for three years
00:56:09doing their best
00:56:10to ignore
00:56:11the endless gossip.
00:56:13She worked on a book
00:56:14ran the household
00:56:15and enjoyed
00:56:16her children's
00:56:17occasional visits.
00:56:19He tried to make
00:56:20amends with his
00:56:21own children
00:56:22and struggled
00:56:23to rebuild
00:56:23his practice
00:56:24nearly destroyed
00:56:25by the scandal.
00:56:28Wright managed
00:56:29to land
00:56:29the commission
00:56:30for the Midway Gardens
00:56:31on Chicago's
00:56:32South Side
00:56:33a whole block
00:56:34to be transformed
00:56:35into a European
00:56:36style pleasure garden.
00:56:38Assisted now
00:56:39by his son John
00:56:40Wright hurled
00:56:41himself into
00:56:42the construction
00:56:43returning to
00:56:44Taliesin
00:56:44each weekend
00:56:45to be with
00:56:46his mistress.
00:56:49In August
00:56:50of 1914
00:56:52Frank Lloyd Wright
00:56:54was in Chicago
00:56:55working on the
00:56:56Midway Gardens
00:56:56and he had left
00:56:58Maima Borthwick
00:56:59in Taliesin.
00:57:01She was there
00:57:02for the weekend
00:57:02and she had
00:57:03her two children
00:57:04her boy and a girl
00:57:05were there
00:57:06there were a number
00:57:07of other workmen
00:57:08there
00:57:08and they were all
00:57:09having lunch
00:57:10one day
00:57:11when something
00:57:13so awful
00:57:15happened
00:57:16that I think
00:57:18it's the greatest
00:57:19tragedy of
00:57:20Frank Lloyd Wright's
00:57:21life.
00:57:26Wright had hired
00:57:27a West Indian
00:57:28named Julian Carlton
00:57:30to serve as butler
00:57:31and handyman
00:57:32at Taliesin.
00:57:34Carlton's wife
00:57:34was to be the cook
00:57:35but something
00:57:38went wrong
00:57:39no one would ever
00:57:40know what it was
00:57:41and Maima may have
00:57:43told them
00:57:44they would have
00:57:44to leave.
00:57:47The final meal
00:57:49that they were
00:57:49to serve
00:57:50was lunch
00:57:50on Saturday.
00:57:52Julian Carlton
00:57:53appeared in his
00:57:54white jacket
00:57:54and served lunch
00:57:55as usual
00:57:56and he then
00:57:57asked permission
00:57:58to clean
00:57:59some carpets
00:58:00with gasoline
00:58:00and he was given
00:58:01that permission.
00:58:04He went outside
00:58:05and instead of
00:58:06pouring it on
00:58:07the carpets
00:58:07poured it
00:58:08all the way
00:58:09around the outsides
00:58:10of the windows
00:58:11and doors.
00:58:14As Maima
00:58:15and the others
00:58:16were eating
00:58:16their lunch
00:58:17Carlton quietly
00:58:18bolted the windows
00:58:19and all but one
00:58:20of the doors.
00:58:24Then he lit
00:58:25the gasoline.
00:58:27In seconds
00:58:28the house
00:58:29was engulfed
00:58:29in flames.
00:58:31When those
00:58:32inside tried
00:58:33to flee
00:58:33Carlton
00:58:35hacked them
00:58:35to death
00:58:36with an axe.
00:58:39If you can
00:58:39imagine
00:58:40this all
00:58:40happened
00:58:41in a fraction
00:58:42of a second.
00:58:43He had killed
00:58:44Mabel Borthwick
00:58:45by splitting
00:58:46her skull.
00:58:47He also
00:58:48did the same
00:58:48with her son.
00:58:49He attacked
00:58:50her daughter.
00:58:52Everything
00:58:53was in disarray.
00:58:54People were
00:58:54screaming
00:58:55trying to jump
00:58:56out of windows.
00:58:57They were a story
00:58:57and a half
00:58:58above the ground.
00:58:59One man
00:59:00jumped out
00:59:01broke his arm
00:59:01but was in flames
00:59:03was rolling
00:59:03on the ground.
00:59:04Other men
00:59:05were being
00:59:07butchered.
00:59:13Wright was
00:59:15in Chicago
00:59:15when the news
00:59:16came.
00:59:19Frank was
00:59:19called to
00:59:20the telephone
00:59:20and he
00:59:21came back
00:59:22in the room
00:59:23and John
00:59:24his son
00:59:25said who
00:59:26was that
00:59:27and his father
00:59:28didn't reply
00:59:28and he turned
00:59:29around and
00:59:30looked at his
00:59:30father
00:59:30and his father
00:59:32was staggering
00:59:32against the
00:59:33table.
00:59:33His face
00:59:34was ashen
00:59:36you know
00:59:36just ashen
00:59:37of the nine
00:59:40people who
00:59:40had sat down
00:59:41to dinner
00:59:41seven were
00:59:42dead or dying.
00:59:43in his grief
01:00:01he refused
01:00:02to let the
01:00:03undertaker
01:00:03touch the body
01:00:04of the woman
01:00:04he had loved.
01:00:06Instead
01:00:07he had his own
01:00:08carpenters
01:00:08fashion a simple
01:00:09wooden box
01:00:10house for her.
01:00:13There was no
01:00:14formal funeral
01:00:15either.
01:00:18The coffin
01:00:19was placed
01:00:20aboard a
01:00:20plain farm
01:00:21wagon
01:00:21covered with
01:00:22flowers
01:00:23and drawn
01:00:24by horses.
01:00:26Wright's eldest
01:00:27son and two
01:00:28cousins
01:00:28helped him
01:00:29bury her
01:00:30in the little
01:00:30cemetery
01:00:31behind his
01:00:32mother's
01:00:32family chapel.
01:00:33I wanted
01:00:36to fill
01:00:37the grave
01:00:37myself
01:00:38Wright
01:00:38remembered
01:00:39no monument
01:00:41marks the spot
01:00:41where Mema
01:00:42was buried
01:00:43why mark
01:00:44the spot
01:00:45where desolation
01:00:45ended
01:00:46and began
01:00:47I suppose
01:00:50someone you
01:00:51have lost
01:00:52as Frank
01:00:53lost
01:00:54Mema
01:00:54Borthwick
01:00:55is always
01:00:57going to be
01:00:58the one
01:00:59you fantasize
01:00:59about
01:01:00and I
01:01:04sometimes
01:01:05think
01:01:06that
01:01:06had Mema
01:01:07lived
01:01:08Frank's
01:01:10life might
01:01:10have taken
01:01:11an entirely
01:01:11other tack
01:01:12I think
01:01:14she would
01:01:15have
01:01:15stabilized
01:01:17him
01:01:17and I
01:01:20think
01:01:20he never
01:01:20forgot her
01:01:21there is
01:01:34release
01:01:34from anguish
01:01:35in action
01:01:36Frank Lloyd Wright
01:01:37wrote later
01:01:37and he
01:01:39consoled himself
01:01:40the only way
01:01:40he knew how
01:01:41by losing
01:01:42himself
01:01:43in his work
01:01:44he completed
01:01:46Midway Gardens
01:01:47began to
01:01:48rebuild a new
01:01:48Taliesin
01:01:49on the ashes
01:01:50of the old
01:01:50lobbied
01:01:52for new
01:01:52commissions
01:01:53it wasn't
01:01:54in his nature
01:01:55to suffer
01:01:57a prolonged
01:01:57bouts
01:01:58of whatever
01:01:58cause
01:01:59he bounced
01:02:00back
01:02:00he liked
01:02:01it to be
01:02:02on the edge
01:02:02and this
01:02:03was another
01:02:03case
01:02:04where tragedy
01:02:04provided an edge
01:02:06and then
01:02:06he came
01:02:07back
01:02:07and started
01:02:08life over
01:02:09in 1916
01:02:12Wright sailed
01:02:13for Japan
01:02:13to begin
01:02:14work on a
01:02:15project
01:02:15that would
01:02:16dwarf
01:02:16everything
01:02:17he had
01:02:17ever done
01:02:18before
01:02:19the emperor
01:02:21of Japan
01:02:22had decreed
01:02:22that there
01:02:23should be
01:02:23a monumental
01:02:24western style
01:02:25hotel
01:02:26in Tokyo
01:02:26to attract
01:02:27investors
01:02:28from abroad
01:02:29Wright had
01:02:31always loved
01:02:32Japanese art
01:02:33and culture
01:02:33and had fought
01:02:35hard to get
01:02:35the commission
01:02:36he would
01:02:38spend most
01:02:38of the next
01:02:39six years
01:02:40in Tokyo
01:02:40overseeing
01:02:41its design
01:02:42and construction
01:02:43the imperial hotel
01:02:46was something
01:02:47that Wright
01:02:47I think
01:02:48really
01:02:48really
01:02:49wanted
01:02:50badly
01:02:51first of all
01:02:52he had never
01:02:53gotten a major
01:02:54international commission
01:02:55and he had never
01:02:57done a building
01:02:57of that scope
01:02:59the vast hotel
01:03:03would contain
01:03:04285 guest rooms
01:03:06and would cost
01:03:07more than
01:03:07four million
01:03:08dollars
01:03:09Wright designed
01:03:11everything
01:03:11even the dinner
01:03:12plates
01:03:13and hotel
01:03:14stationery
01:03:15and the problem
01:03:17he faced
01:03:17was to design
01:03:18a hotel
01:03:19that would reflect
01:03:21both Japanese
01:03:22attitudes
01:03:23and of course
01:03:23western attitudes
01:03:24because if it wasn't
01:03:25to reflect western
01:03:26attitudes
01:03:26they wouldn't have
01:03:27asked him
01:03:27in the first place
01:03:28he was interested
01:03:30in creating a building
01:03:31as he said
01:03:32that would bring
01:03:32the Japanese
01:03:33to their feet
01:03:34Wright
01:03:37Wright worked hard
01:03:38to ensure
01:03:38that the building
01:03:39would be able
01:03:40to withstand
01:03:40the earthquakes
01:03:41Japan was famous
01:03:42for
01:03:42his design
01:03:44called for the
01:03:45hotel's walls
01:03:46to be thicker
01:03:46at the bottom
01:03:47than at the top
01:03:48and to move
01:03:49independently
01:03:50of each other
01:03:50he specified
01:03:52a copper roof
01:03:53instead of the
01:03:54traditional tiles
01:03:55and an unusual
01:03:56foundation
01:03:57of concrete posts
01:03:58that would anchor
01:03:59the building
01:04:00in the unstable mud
01:04:01that lay beneath it
01:04:02we think of Wright
01:04:06as this triumphant
01:04:07creator
01:04:08of brilliant
01:04:08aesthetic objects
01:04:09which indeed he was
01:04:10but he was also
01:04:11a great engineer
01:04:12he did phenomenally
01:04:14interesting things
01:04:15from an engineering
01:04:16standpoint
01:04:17and he never forgot
01:04:20a sense that
01:04:21architecture is
01:04:22construction
01:04:23as much as it's art
01:04:25covered with ornate
01:04:32stone carvings
01:04:33the Imperial Hotel
01:04:34was one of the last
01:04:36great handcrafted
01:04:37buildings
01:04:37of the 20th century
01:04:39when the Imperial
01:05:08was finally completed
01:05:09Wright's Japanese
01:05:10clients were delighted
01:05:12not long afterward
01:05:15a massive earthquake
01:05:17leveled Tokyo
01:05:18Wright back in the
01:05:21United States
01:05:22waited anxiously
01:05:23to learn the fate
01:05:24of his hotel
01:05:26September 8th
01:05:321923
01:05:33dear Mr. Wright
01:05:36the first shock
01:05:38was enough to lay
01:05:39many buildings flat
01:05:41and the second shock
01:05:42easily leveled
01:05:44what the first
01:05:45had loosened
01:05:46fire billowed
01:05:49from every house
01:05:50and those people
01:05:51who survived the crush
01:05:53and sought places
01:05:54of safety out
01:05:55in the open
01:05:56were killed
01:05:57by the smoke
01:05:58and scorching
01:05:59hot air
01:05:59roasted by hundreds
01:06:01hundreds and thousands
01:06:02all steel buildings
01:06:05proved fatal
01:06:06enough to show that
01:06:09our architects
01:06:10were fools
01:06:11what a glory it is to see
01:06:18the Imperial standing
01:06:19amidst the ashes
01:06:21of a whole city
01:06:22glory to you
01:06:27sincerely
01:06:29Arata Endo
01:06:30many other buildings
01:06:35survived as well
01:06:36but the legend grew
01:06:38encouraged by Wright
01:06:39that his hotel alone
01:06:41had survived
01:06:42now he was sure
01:06:44he would be seen
01:06:45as an engineering genius
01:06:47as well as a great architect
01:06:49December 12th 1914
01:07:02my dear sir
01:07:04because I stand aghast
01:07:07at the university
01:07:08of your sorrow
01:07:09because my own soul
01:07:11has been chastened
01:07:12by grief
01:07:13shortly after the death
01:07:14of Mayma Chaney
01:07:15Wright had received
01:07:17a sympathy letter
01:07:17from a woman
01:07:18who asked to see him
01:07:19she too was an artist
01:07:21she said
01:07:22a sculptress
01:07:23and had suffered
01:07:24terrible losses
01:07:25first the death
01:07:27of her husband
01:07:27then abandonment
01:07:29by a lover
01:07:30and feel that last touch
01:07:32in the allness
01:07:34of the universe
01:07:35sincerely
01:07:37Madam Noel
01:07:39Miriam Noel
01:07:41was cultured
01:07:43wealthy
01:07:43theatrical
01:07:44and she was infatuated
01:07:46with Wright
01:07:47whom she called
01:07:48lord of my waking dreams
01:07:50she was a southerner
01:07:53who had
01:07:54somehow
01:07:55gotten herself
01:07:56to Paris
01:07:57you know
01:07:57and had set up
01:07:58a salon there
01:07:59and claimed to know
01:08:00Leon Trotsky
01:08:01and claimed to have
01:08:02all kinds of
01:08:03important connections
01:08:04soon
01:08:07Wright had moved
01:08:08Noel
01:08:09into the rebuilt
01:08:09Taliesin
01:08:10and then took her
01:08:11with him to Japan
01:08:12while he worked
01:08:14on the Imperial Hotel
01:08:15it would prove
01:08:17a disastrous mistake
01:08:18Miriam was violent
01:08:20unstable
01:08:21and addicted to morphine
01:08:23they quarreled
01:08:25from the first
01:08:26he denounced
01:08:27the food she cooked
01:08:28the clothes she wore
01:08:29she accused him
01:08:31of infidelity
01:08:32of being too much
01:08:34under the thumb
01:08:34of his mother
01:08:35who hated her
01:08:36still they would stay
01:08:39together for more
01:08:40than eight contentious
01:08:41years
01:08:42then in 1923
01:08:46Kitty Wright
01:08:47finally granted
01:08:48Frank a divorce
01:08:49that same year
01:08:51his mother died
01:08:52and despite all
01:08:54the tension
01:08:55with Miriam
01:08:55he agreed to marry
01:08:57her
01:08:57in an effort
01:08:58to calm her
01:08:59he would say later
01:09:00it didn't work
01:09:03he didn't realize
01:09:05what he was getting into
01:09:06he didn't realize
01:09:08that she had a problem
01:09:08with alcohol
01:09:09and with morphine
01:09:10he didn't realize
01:09:11that the life
01:09:12they were going to have
01:09:13was going to be
01:09:13a life of absolute agony
01:09:15it was just a doomed
01:09:17relationship
01:09:17from the beginning
01:09:18Wright found some comfort
01:09:25in four small commissions
01:09:26he drummed up
01:09:27in Southern California
01:09:28there he experimented
01:09:31with patterned
01:09:32concrete forms
01:09:33which he called
01:09:34textile blocks
01:09:36drawing inspiration
01:09:38from ancient
01:09:39Mayan architecture
01:09:40Wright wanted to create
01:09:42thoroughly modern houses
01:09:43that were affordable
01:09:45easy to maintain
01:09:47and fireproof
01:09:48Wright's genius
01:09:55is to carry ideas
01:09:57to their extremes
01:09:58to do them with
01:10:00a discipline
01:10:01a rigor
01:10:02a sense of
01:10:05the play
01:10:06of light
01:10:06and shade
01:10:07the sense
01:10:09of the sensuousness
01:10:10of surface
01:10:11when he chose
01:10:12to do that
01:10:12as in the textile blocks
01:10:13that is more
01:10:15than anyone else
01:10:16it's not that
01:10:19he doesn't have
01:10:19a great genius
01:10:20he is a total genius
01:10:21he can make us
01:10:22see all of history
01:10:23afresh
01:10:25one of his
01:10:29California houses
01:10:30was said to have
01:10:31been so admired
01:10:32by its unhappily
01:10:33married owners
01:10:34that neither
01:10:35would ever agree
01:10:36to a divorce
01:10:37for fear of having
01:10:38to move out
01:10:39but the California houses
01:10:47were plagued
01:10:48with difficulties
01:10:49there were cost overruns
01:10:51leaky roofs
01:10:52and walls
01:10:53and the textile blocks
01:10:55proved difficult
01:10:56to fabricate
01:10:57and Wright
01:10:58estranged himself
01:10:59for a time
01:11:00from his eldest son
01:11:01Lloyd
01:11:02who had been
01:11:03supervising the construction
01:11:04and whom he unfairly blamed
01:11:06for everything
01:11:07that went wrong
01:11:08you are not really reliable
01:11:10he told his son
01:11:11you will buy
01:11:12when you can't pay
01:11:14you will attempt anything
01:11:15and blame failure
01:11:16on others
01:11:17you are absolutely
01:11:19the worst mannered
01:11:20young man I know
01:11:21my grandfather
01:11:24and my father
01:11:25was the same way
01:11:25they would get into
01:11:26terrible temper tantrums
01:11:28and just blow up
01:11:29about something
01:11:29and just lay
01:11:31everybody to waste
01:11:32a couple hours later
01:11:33they come in
01:11:34as if nothing had happened
01:11:35you know
01:11:35what are you sad about
01:11:37or why are you not
01:11:38talking to me
01:11:39you know
01:11:39as if nothing
01:11:40had been happening
01:11:41they just like
01:11:41they didn't realize
01:11:42that the outburst
01:11:44what it had caused
01:11:45and the emotional stress
01:11:47and they had moved on
01:11:49and everything was okay again
01:11:51meanwhile
01:11:52there were more quarrels
01:11:54between Wright and Miriam
01:11:55and more accusations
01:11:57she threatened him
01:11:58with a knife
01:11:59finally stormed
01:12:00out of the house
01:12:01in the spring of 1924
01:12:02vowing no other woman
01:12:04would ever have him
01:12:05but there was
01:12:07another woman
01:12:08Olgivana Ivanova
01:12:12Milanov-Hinzenberg
01:12:14was just 26
01:12:16less than half Wright's age
01:12:18born in eastern Europe
01:12:20and separated
01:12:21from her German husband
01:12:22she was a disciple
01:12:24of Georgi Ivanovich Gurdjieff
01:12:26a charismatic Russian mystic
01:12:28who had attracted
01:12:29a large international following
01:12:31to his teachings
01:12:32that combined eastern
01:12:33and western philosophy
01:12:35his idea of life
01:12:38was that most people
01:12:39walked around asleep
01:12:41they really weren't
01:12:42aware of themselves
01:12:44and aware of the life
01:12:45around them
01:12:46Wright met Olgivana
01:12:50by chance
01:12:51at a ballet performance
01:12:52in Chicago
01:12:53and Frank said
01:12:56something to her
01:12:57about the ballet dancers
01:12:59who were doing
01:13:00some kind of classical dance
01:13:01and he said to her
01:13:02something about
01:13:02well most of these people
01:13:04are dancing as though
01:13:05they are asleep
01:13:07she looked at him
01:13:09and she thought
01:13:10my goodness
01:13:12here is somebody
01:13:13who really sees
01:13:14what's going on in life
01:13:15women in the 20s
01:13:17are all dolled up
01:13:18with little tight curls
01:13:19and lipstick
01:13:19and everything
01:13:20and her first
01:13:20with a very plain
01:13:21beautiful
01:13:22slightly tan complexion
01:13:24hair brought back
01:13:24very simply
01:13:25her beauty
01:13:26was such
01:13:26of natural nature
01:13:28that appealed to him
01:13:29because he loved
01:13:31things that were natural
01:13:32and her life began there
01:13:34both married
01:13:35both seeking divorces
01:13:37but he invited her
01:13:38a few weeks ago
01:13:39to come up to Taliesin
01:13:40and he said to her
01:13:42come to me Olgivana
01:13:43and they won't see us
01:13:45for the dust
01:13:45Olgivana moved
01:13:49into Taliesin
01:13:50soon she was pregnant
01:13:52with Wright's child
01:13:53a whole new era
01:13:56of scandal began
01:13:57Miriam
01:14:01enraged by Olgivana's
01:14:03presence
01:14:03went to the newspapers
01:14:05broke into the house
01:14:06threatened to shoot
01:14:08the lovers
01:14:08and she pursued them
01:14:11like a vengeful
01:14:13bat out of hell
01:14:14she hounded him
01:14:17until he was broke
01:14:18she hounded poor
01:14:20Olgivana
01:14:21until Olgivana
01:14:22didn't know
01:14:23whether she was
01:14:23alive or dead
01:14:24she threw lawsuits
01:14:26at them
01:14:27she stalked them
01:14:27from one town
01:14:29to the next
01:14:29from one state
01:14:31to the next
01:14:31she drove them
01:14:33mad for the next
01:14:34three or four years
01:14:35Olgivana's
01:14:37ex-husband
01:14:38pursued them too
01:14:39finally the lovers
01:14:41fled to the
01:14:41Minnesota woods
01:14:42where they hid out
01:14:43under assumed names
01:14:45which they could
01:14:46never quite remember
01:14:47the local sheriff
01:14:49arrested Wright
01:14:50he was charged
01:14:51with violating
01:14:52the federal man act
01:14:53which made it illegal
01:14:55to carry a woman
01:14:56across state lines
01:14:57for immoral purposes
01:14:58Wright spent two nights
01:15:02in jail
01:15:02before his lawyers
01:15:04could get him out
01:15:04on bail
01:15:05he was blameless
01:15:08he told the press
01:15:09the only sin
01:15:11to which he pled guilty
01:15:12was what he called
01:15:14the deadly sin
01:15:15in a democracy
01:15:16of having ideas
01:15:17even members
01:15:20of Wright's
01:15:21own family
01:15:21turned against him
01:15:23Frank Lloyd Wright
01:15:25was an embarrassing
01:15:26relative
01:15:28for my father
01:15:29in high school
01:15:30he was a torment
01:15:31because
01:15:32here was this guy
01:15:33who was notorious
01:15:35rather than
01:15:36he wasn't celebrated
01:15:37as the great
01:15:38American genius
01:15:39in the 20s
01:15:40he was regarded
01:15:41as kind of a dangerous
01:15:42moral influence
01:15:44and a man
01:15:45of great talent
01:15:47who was squandering
01:15:48his talent
01:15:49on salacious
01:15:50romantic episodes
01:15:51and all that
01:15:52kind of stuff
01:15:52in 1925
01:15:58a fire destroyed
01:15:59the second Taliesin
01:16:01and while Wright
01:16:02was rebuilding it
01:16:03the local bank
01:16:04foreclosed
01:16:05on the mortgage
01:16:05friends had to
01:16:07bail him out
01:16:08bad luck
01:16:12seemed to haunt
01:16:13Wright's work
01:16:13as well
01:16:14although hundreds
01:16:16of skyscrapers
01:16:17were going up
01:16:17in cities
01:16:18all across the country
01:16:19few of the corporations
01:16:21that were building them
01:16:22were willing
01:16:23to take a chance
01:16:24on the notorious
01:16:25Frank Lloyd Wright
01:16:26he did manage
01:16:32to win commissions
01:16:33for an extensive
01:16:34development
01:16:34in the Sierra Madre Mountains
01:16:36a summer colony
01:16:38at Lake Tahoe
01:16:39and a steel cathedral
01:16:42that would seat
01:16:42one million worshippers
01:16:43in New York City
01:16:44but none of them
01:16:47were ever built
01:16:48it's odd that when the country
01:16:53was flourishing
01:16:53Wright was not
01:16:54during the boom time
01:16:56of the 20s
01:16:57his career
01:16:57was at rock bottom
01:16:58when he was in his 50s
01:17:02there were articles
01:17:02about how this
01:17:04quite interesting architect
01:17:05but now a has-been
01:17:07was basically washed up
01:17:09he hadn't built a building
01:17:10of any consequence
01:17:11in years
01:17:12in August of 1927
01:17:17Miriam relented
01:17:18and gave him a divorce
01:17:20but Wright was now penniless
01:17:23friends and former clients
01:17:25agreed to pay
01:17:26his alimony for him
01:17:27he and Olgivana
01:17:33were married
01:17:34one year later
01:17:34and returned to Taliesin
01:17:37then came the crash
01:17:40of 1929
01:17:41destroying Wright's hope
01:17:43that his one remaining commission
01:17:44an elaborate resort
01:17:46in the Arizona desert
01:17:47would ever be built
01:17:48it was a terrible time
01:17:51in a letter he wrote
01:17:53to one of his clients
01:17:54said
01:17:54we're cutting up
01:17:56bedsheets
01:17:57to make handkerchiefs
01:17:58we haven't bought
01:17:58any new clothes
01:17:59in four years
01:18:00his sister
01:18:02Maganella
01:18:03lived in New York
01:18:04and gave Mrs. Wright
01:18:04a warm winter wool coat
01:18:06a second hand down coat
01:18:08it was like gold to her
01:18:10everything he struggled to do
01:18:16turned to dust and ashes
01:18:17for a period
01:18:18of many years
01:18:19very few people
01:18:22have ever succeeded
01:18:23in recovering
01:18:24from that degree
01:18:25of failure
01:18:26persistent failure
01:18:27and not altogether
01:18:29for once
01:18:29his own fault
01:18:30the kinds of buildings
01:18:33that he'd been building
01:18:34at the turn of the century
01:18:35in 1905, 1910
01:18:37were so far
01:18:38into the past
01:18:39they're you know
01:18:40things he did
01:18:4120 years before
01:18:42nobody was interested
01:18:45in the kinds of ideas
01:18:47that architecture
01:18:48ought to reflect
01:18:48the noblest vision
01:18:50of society
01:18:51you know
01:18:51nobody was interested
01:18:52in that concept anymore
01:18:53Wright's position
01:18:58really
01:18:58as he went
01:18:59into his 60s
01:19:01was probably
01:19:02the most desperate
01:19:04moment of his life
01:19:05Frank Lloyd Wright's career
01:19:09lay in ruins
01:19:10a victim of changing times
01:19:13and changing fashion
01:19:14of personal scandal
01:19:16and the excesses
01:19:18of his own ego
01:19:19his critics wrote him off
01:19:23as out of date
01:19:24old fashioned
01:19:24but they had
01:19:26underestimated him
01:19:28in the years to come
01:19:31he would eclipse
01:19:33everything
01:19:33that had gone before
01:19:35next time
01:19:42it's as if he was saying
01:19:43okay Europeans
01:19:44you want to do it that way
01:19:46I'll show you how to do it that way
01:19:48this is the normal
01:19:50American program
01:19:52just build me an office building
01:19:54and what did he do
01:19:55he built a palace
01:19:56he built a church
01:19:57he built something
01:20:00that just soared
01:20:01it's the finest room
01:20:04maybe in the United States
01:20:06today
01:20:06it still is
01:20:08don't miss the conclusion
01:20:10of Frank Lloyd Wright
01:20:12the most desperate
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