9781422276464

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

experiences on his uncle’s farm. Wright laboriously traced out Jones’s designs and patterned drawings after the style of the best-known Chicago architect of

John J. Glessner House Chicago, 1887 The boldly imaginative, force- fully individual architecture of Henry Hobson Richardson would have an enormous impact on Frank Lloyd Wright. Richardson’s Glessner house was radically asymmetrical in the austere front it presented to the street and the riot of towers and windows in its inner court. It was an expression in stone of the role of the individ- ual in public and private life.

the time, Louis Sullivan. With Adler & Sullivan

Before the end of 1887, Wright, who was as much a genius at self-promotion as he was at the drafting table, parlayed these drawings into a job at the firm of Adler&Sullivan. He had successfully positioned himself at the very center of the American architectural world, at the top firm in the top city. As if by preordination Wright, who seemed to possess an impeccable sense of timing throughout his long career, appeared at a critical juncture in American architectural history. Henry Hobson Richardson, acknowledged to be the first architect to achieve a uniquely American and personal style with his massive, archedstonebuildings, haddied that year, just before one of hismasterworks, the block-longMarshall FieldWholesale Store inChicago, was unveiled. At the same time, Sullivanwasworking on theAuditoriumBuilding, inspired byRichardson, whichwouldnailAdler&Sullivan’s reputationas the foremost commercial archi- tects in Chicago.

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