Frank Lloyd Wright (5 page)

When he designed a beautiful pool for the entrance of the Imperial Hotel, he intended it to be more than a lovely setting. He had perceived that, in Japan, water and being clean was how the Japanese imposed order on their world. The philosophy was that waste was matter that was out of place and was therefore dirt. Ugliness is dirt; dirt is ugly. The pool, therefore, was his acknowledgment of the Japanese way of life, representing cleanliness and order. In reality, the pool was an immense reservoir connected to the hotel water system that collected roof water.

The courtyard entrance of the Imperial Hotel

The Imperial Hotel

The readily available and abundant supply of lava was used as the primary building material. Wright ignored the fact that using lava for an upscale hotel was considered sacrilege in the Japanese culture. It was especially shocking that he wanted to use it to build a hotel for the royal family.

Regardless, in the end, lava was used. Wright described the Imperial as having a “mosaic surface of lava and brick.” He created the infrastructure so that all pipes and wires lay loosely in concrete trenches. The entire building would sway freely in an earthquake, with minimal danger of water pipes or electrical wires snapping. During construction, Tokyo experienced its worst earthquake in 52 years and the Imperial remained undamaged.

Two years after the Imperial Hotel opened, a more dramatic catastrophe struck Tokyo when an earthquake virtually destroyed much of Japan. That earthquake far surpassed the devastation of the previous one. Wright’s immediate response was to determine if the New Imperial, as it was now called, was still standing. In the confusion of the earthquake and the fact there were buildings named the Imperial University, Imperial Theater, Imperial Hospital and so on, Wright predicted that if the editor of the
Los Angeles
Examiner
printed that the Imperial Hotel had been destroyed, he would have to retract his statement. Wright was correct; a telegram arrived from Baron Okura in Tokyo informing him that not only did the Imperial Hotel remain standing, it emerged from the disaster virtually undamaged.

The rest of the note to Frank Lloyd Wright was priceless. It read, “As monument of your genius, hundreds of homeless provided by perfectly maintained service.” Not only was the hotel still standing to provide its patrons safe haven, but it was pressed into service providing sanctuary to the newly-homeless on its terraces. Because of the Imperial Hotel’s large pool, the only available water source was inside the Imperial. The bellboys formed a bucket line, drawing water from the pool for those in need, and to extinguish fires.
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Like many, Baron Okura had lost just about everything else, but the Imperial Hotel remained.

Wright in 1926

“No stream rises higher than its source. What ever man might build could never express or reflect more than he was. He could record neither more nor less than he had learned of life when the buildings were built.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

As early as 1902, Frank Lloyd Wright lectured on the subject of “Man and the Machine,”
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and today his lectures remain best known for advocating individualism. He once asserted, “A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.”

However, unlike later perceptions of a negative relationship between man and machine, Wright initially embraced the concept of the machine, and of the ability of man to create consistency. The Japanese interpretation of the concept followed Wright after his time spent building the Imperial Hotel. He observed that, in Japanese homes, all floor mats were the same size, and all houses were the same size. He preferred the consistency, and he admired the ability of the machine to create it.

“Why are we so busy elaborately trying to get earth to heaven instead of seeing this simple Shinto wisdom of sensibly getting heaven decently to earth?” he pondered. He perceived that the handicraftsman and the artist must eventually succumb to the inevitable. He saw how one man using a machine could produce the work of as many as 50 men in the same time, and do it better, or at least more consistently. In Wright’s words, the artist was “prostituting to methods and ideals.” He pointed out that the furniture in most people’s homes were likely carved by a machine, the craftsman already having been replaced by factories long ago.

He decried the delusion that rugs were art, pointing out that they were mere modern machine weavings of Oriental rug patterns. He also said that wallpaper was a mass-produced imitation of old tapestry in pattern, and that the woodwork in most homes was stained to appear antique, even though it was made of green wood. He criticized this, saying that just because something was in vogue and cost a bit more did not mean it was art.

Instead, he called it truth in disguise. Real truth was the elimination of unnecessary furniture, replacing it with his built-in furnishings. The architect was, in effect, the machine, tasked with creating the entire dwelling, including the landscaping, lighting and all décor. Yes, it still signified the rising of the Machine but in a more honest way, not mimicking other cultures or art. He wrote, “A Japanese artist grasps form always by reaching underneath for its geometry [and] never losing sight of its spiritual efficacy.” Geometry can be machine-made.

Even as he ruminated about individuals in society, he remained involved with various communities across the Midwest. Wright confessed to being an amateur when he built a tower for Hill School at his family’s Wisconsin property. Naysayers predicted Wright’s tower would not stand, given the design. He challenged that it would stand for 25 years. It stood for 44 years, more than proving Wright right.
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By the first few decades of the 20
th
century, Wright helped establish a community of architects around the distinctive style of his that was christened “The New School of the Middle West” by architect Robert Spencer.
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The New School was a community that embraced the Prairie School style of Wright and others who felt that the United States was due for its own architectural style. The term, Prairie Style, referred to the low, flat, prairie-hugging style that mimicked the Midwestern terrain. Simplicity was the order of the day.

The New School of the Middle West was a community of 18 innovators who met monthly in the loft of Chicago’s Steinway Hall. Among the group were architects, designers, sculptors and painters.
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The group started when Wright formed a partnership with Robert Spencer, Myron Hunt, Dwight Perkins, George Dean, and Hugh Garden. “These young men, newcomers in architectural practice like myself, were the first associates in the so-called profession of architecture,” Wright said.
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He considered their predecessors to be merely builders or construction workers.

Robert Spencer Jr. wrote about Wright, “That some of this work has been the designing of simple houses of the less costly sort does not detract from but rather adds to the interest which it should inspire. It is a pleasure to see how style may be given to the cheapest structure when dull or useless precedent is abandoned and materials are handled merely with a sound knowledge of the basic laws of planning and structure but with a keen poetic insight into the subtle sources of beauty. It is not my purpose to criticize the works here shown except as it may seem needful to do so in order to bring out clearly the real nature and significance of each and to define clearly those qualities which give to nearly every one a certain air of distinction.
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Likewise, Wright created a community of students who wanted to learn, firsthand, how to design and build, and he opened his home at Taliesin, in Wisconsin, to these students.

The Robie House in Chicago that Wright designed in the 1900s

The Willits House designed by Wright in the 1900s

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

“A woman is, for man, the best of true friends, if man will let her be one.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

Today, Wright is well-respected, and though his personal life is largely forgotten, it is as interesting as his architecture, even if it wasn’t always happy. As previously mentioned, Frank Lloyd Wright married his first wife when he was 21, and together, they had six children. His son, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr., known as Lloyd Wright, worked with his father as an architect. Another of Frank’s sons, John, was also an architect who assisted his father with the Imperial Hotel project. Later, John invented Lincoln Logs and Timber Toys.

Meanwhile, Frank’s son David Wright became a building products representative, daughter Frances became an arts administrator, and son Robert became an attorney. Frank and Kitty’s daughter, Catherine Wright, became an interior designer, but she is probably more well-known as the mother of Academy Award winning actress Anne Baxter.
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Anne Baxter

In 1909, when Wright was 40, he decided he no longer believed in marriage and wanted a divorce. Their youngest child, Robert, was only six years old at the time, and though Kitty refused to sign the divorce papers, she agreed to grant her husband leave for one year.

Wright did leave. First he went to Germany, where Ernst Wasmuth had offered to publish his writings. He then went to Fiesole, Italy, taking with him Mamah Borthwick Cheney, his mistress. While he worked with the publisher, Wright continued to struggle with the concept of marriage and of publicity.

When he returned to the United States, the architect no longer had a home; two years had passed, and Kitty was living in the family home he had built. Frank’s aunt offered him a low hill on the family’s original settlement in Wisconsin as a place where he could build a home of his own, so he designed and built a home of his design and vision. Among other things, he insisted on the home having no gutters. “I wanted a home where icicles by invitation might beautify the eaves,” he said. It was an apt description and implementation of Wright’s concept of what a house should be, especially in the cold winters of Wisconsin.

Wright named his new home, Taliesin, in honor of a Welsh poet of the same name. The name means “shining brow,” and Wright described the building experience as intensely human. When he hired local masons, they began to see the beauty of his design, and became the sculptors of Taliesin’s massive fireplaces. “Many of them were artistic for the first time, and liked it,” Wright recalled.

Taliesin was in a remote part of Wisconsin, where even the nearest town was no larger than a village. Thus, the workmen, most of whom had to travel some distance, lived in the unfinished house and went home on Saturday night. Wright described his house as “a broad shelter seeking fellowship with its surroundings.” The first fellowship was with the workmen who were building his house and learning new techniques. It was the beginning of what would become an ongoing place of learning, there at the shining brow.

As a child in Boston, Wright’s mother had given him the benefit of the Froebel system, of “training the eyes to see, the brain to think, and the hands to do.” Wright took advantage of those skills as he worked through the nagging question about whether he would remain married to Kitty or not.

When Frank was in Chicago on business in 1914,
Julian Carlton, one of Wright’s employees, used an axe to kill Mamah Cheney and her two children, John and Martha Cheney, along with three other adults who also worked for Wright. Then he set fire to Taliesin. Wright lost priceless Asian art objects along with 500 copies of his recently published work.
Carlton refused to say a word about his motives, nor did he offer an apology. He died while in jail.

Wright insisted that John Vogelsang of Chicago had recommended Julian Carlton, but it seems too coincidental that Wright had previously disagreed with John Vogelsang about his garish suggestions for Midway Gardens. Either way, Wright was devastated by the murders and the fire. He wrote of Mamah in his autobiography, “Instead of feeling that she, whose life had joined mine there at Taliesin, was a spirit near, she was utterly gone.” He buried her and her children on the family property.

The devastation, the deaths, and the fire all took its toll. Wright became ill shortly after, as boils developed on his back and he lost weight. Soon, he needed glasses. He moved to a home at 25 East Cedar Street, in Chicago, and lived there, along with Nellie Breen, an Irish caretaker.

A woman named Miriam Noel appeared in his life about this time, after sending him a personal note. World War I was underway and she had been driven from Paris along with other Americans. She went to Japan with Wright when the Imperial Hotel was under construction. When Frank’s mother joined them in Tokyo, Miriam left.

Miriam

Eventually, Kitty consented to a divorce. In spite of his conflict over marriage, Frank did marry Miriam and welcomed her and her two children by a previous marriage into his home. During her life, Frank remained silent about Miriam’s mental condition, but he admitted in his autobiography, after her death, that she had a tendency to become violent. Not only was she physically violent, but she was spiteful and vindictive as well. After Miriam’s violent outbursts, Frank no longer felt safe around her and very much wanted a divorce that she refused to consent to. When she at last consented to the divorce, it became a hard-fought battle that nearly cost him his career. In fact, there is a gap when Wright thought he would never work again.

Frank devoted a lot of thought as to how he wanted to live his life. With the construction of Taliesin II, Wright began to further consider the definition of the ideal personal life: Any man had a right to three things, if he is honest with all three: his life, his work, and his love.

Eventually, Frank met Olga Ivanova, who went by “Olgivanna.” Some accounts describe her as a dancer from Montenegro (later part of Yugoslavia), but Frank challenged the speculation that she was a dancer in his autobiography. He did say that he rebuilt Taliesin—Taliesin III-for Olgivanna and her daughter by another marriage, Svetlana Peters. Together, Olgivanna and Frank had a daughter, Iovanna, while living there.

Frank’s life improved, and it was because of Olgivanna that he began to write. He penned
In Bondage
and
The Usonian City
. He also started his autobiography, though he finished it much later as a compilation of five books.

Meanwhile, Miriam, his second wife, continued to create financial and legal issues for him. She was determined that what was Frank Lloyd Wright’s should be hers. She pursued him to his embarrassment, involving lawyers and the press, and his reputation suffered considerably during this time.

In an effort to escape it all, Frank and Olgivanna took Svetlana and the newborn Iovanna to Puerto Rico, which was a U.S. territory at the time. They remained there for two months, but they found the Puerto Rican people “gentle, apathetic,” and “pitiful.” They remained there for two months before Olgivanna declared they should no longer tolerate the poverty of those around them. The family went to Washington D.C. before returning to Taliesin, but Miriam Noel was out for revenge and determined to take everything from Wright. Not satisfied with merely causing Frank public humiliation, Miriam convinced Svetlana’s father to fight for her custody.

In another attempt to escape the papers and the prosecutors, Frank and Oglivanna went to Minneapolis to stay with friends. It was an innocent mistake in an effort to escape his vengeful ex-wife and Oglivanna’s ex-husband who continued to be manipulated by Miriam. Instead of finding peace, Frank and Oglivanna found themselves in jail. Oglivanna’s ex-husband sued her and Frank for nine-year-old Svetlanna's abduction. Young Svetlana’s father’s attorneys and Miriam Noel’s attorneys both showed up at the door along with press in Minneapolis, with the intention of charging them both with a federal crime. According to them, Wright and his wife were in violation of the Mann Act by transporting a minor across state lines from Wisconsin to Minnesota. Ironically, Frank later recounted that, had they parked the car on the Wisconsin side of the state line and merely walked across to the Minnesota line, they would not have been guilty, but according to the law, transporting her in a vehicle was a federal violation.

The law and the attorneys-at-law appeared late at night, after the family was in bed. At Frank’s pleading, the local sheriff had promised that Oglivanna and their daughters would be allowed to remain at home during the night, but the sheriff lied, and they were taken to jail in the middle of the night, even though Iovanna was still nursing. Their bail was set at $15,000 each. Friends helped raise the bail, and they were all released, but they could not leave the state until they'd appeared before a judge.

During this time, when Frank was at his lowest, his bank chose to foreclose on Taliesin and everything Frank owned. They sold a block of rare prints belonging to Frank, and the seller took 35% of the $42,000 sale, earning Frank precious little of their value.

Now destitute and desperate to avoid Miriam, Frank and Oglivanna took the children to Maginel’s house in New York. Instead of a reprieve, things only became worse when Olgivanna was arrested by immigration officials, requiring Frank to cash in his last Liberty Bond for her bail.

Needing work, Frank was invited to Phoenix by Albert McArthur, who'd hired him to design the new Arizona Biltmore Hotel, but it was too little, too late. In an effort to get a return on the foreclosure, the bank tried to auction Taliesin and all of its contents. There were but a few bids, all of them too low. Instead, the bank tried to sell Taliesin outright, but there was not a single buyer interested. Wright learned later that those who knew of the sale refused to buy it out of respect for him. Others who might have been willing and eager to buy probably never knew the property and its contents were even for sale.

Again, the Wrights were on the move. This time they went to La Jolla, California, where Miriam hunted Frank and Oglivanna down and physically destroyed the cottage in which they were living. Miriam also swore out a warrant on the grounds of “immorality,” even though her divorce from Frank was final, charging Frank had left her for another woman. At the time, the law dictated that a divorced person could not remarry for one year after their divorce had been finalized, and sufficient time had passed. Miriam had wanted to hurt Frank and his new family, but in the process, she was also destroying him professionally.

Eventually, Miriam fell ill and had some sort of surgery, after which she remained in a coma. She was sent from a public asylum to a private sanitarium, where she died without ever gaining consciousness. She had successfully succeeded in alienating everyone in her lifetime to the point that een her own children failed to appear at her funeral.

Eventually Frank and Oglivanna did marry, in Santa Fe. It took four years, but Taliesin was finally returned to Frank, and he began to design again. He also continued to write and lecture, and he remained married until Oglivanna’s death.