Bernard Pyron
Photo I Took Of Frank Lloyd Wright Coming Out of the Spring Green High School in 1957
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Photo
I took of Frank Lloyd Wright coming out of the Spring Green High School
where he had just given a speech in the summer of 1957.
When I arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, which is forty miles east of Taliesin, Wright's Wisconsin home place. I had already become interested in Frank Lloyd Wright. On a troopship coming home from the Korean War I was sitting on deck one day reading The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand and a soldier came up and said the novel was based upon Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1952 I had never heard of Wright,, but when I got settled I began reading some of the books written by
Wright.
One day in the summer of 1957 when my first cousin A.C. Donaho was living with us on Middleton Beach Road In Middleton, northwest of Madison, we went to Spring Green and to the high school where Frank Lloyd Wright was sitting on the stage behind William T. Evjue, the editor of the Capital Times, who was giving a long winded political speech, probably on Wisconsin Progressivism. Progressivism was the Wisconsin form of the Populist movement of the Midwest, Texas and the South which went on in the late 19th century and later.
This was my first experience of being in the presence of Frank Lloyd Wright.
In the early Fall of 1957 Walter Gray, a graduate student in music, and I walked up to Wright in Hillside sitting at a drafting table surrounded by his apprentices. I asked his permissions to photograph many of his floor plans and perspective drawings for his houses after the late forties. He agreed and assigned his senior apprentice John Ottenheimer to help me. Wright's floor plans and perspective were then in some disarray in a room at Hillside which was mainly Wright's Drafting Room and the Fellowship Mess Hall, where I once ate lunch. My wife Gail and I were in Taliesin one day with a Wright Apprentice and I was talking about a Bach Contata called "Ich Habe Hunger."
Gail and I sat in the front row of the University of Wisconsin Student Union Auditorium in the Fall of 1957 where Frank Lloyd Wright gave a talk. I remember that Wright had a strong presence when he appeared onstage from the left.
I went back the following Fall - of 1958 -, to get Wright's
permission to photograph more of floor plans and perspective drawings for the houses on my list and his
secretary Gene Masselink had me make an official appointment to
talk with Wright. We spent about an hour that day showing Wright the
color slides and black and white photos I had of his recent houses.
One day when Bruce Radde went with us to Taliesin, on the way home to Middleton we stopped at Wright's Wyoming Valley School on the west side of Wisconsin State Highway 23, about two and a half miles south of Taliesin. We saw Wright that day looking at the building which then was almost finished. He had his cape on.
Bruce Radde, our companion on several
trips to see Wright houses, made up a list of Wright structures
from Henry-Russell Hitchcock's book, In the Nature of Materials, and from my list. I made up a list of Wright buildings from a list I was given by the Burnham Library of Architecture of the Art Institute of Chicago, and from Senior Wright apprentices I talked to at Taliesin, including John Ottenheimer.
When he was at Falling Water, probably in 1958 or 1959 Bruce Radde met Edgar Kaufman and got his list published in the 1960 book, Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings edited by Kaufman and Ben Raeburn.
When we went to Texas for Christmas in late 1959, we met Bruce
Radde in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the way back in January of 1960 and he went with us
to Madison. He then told us that the list was to be published in the
Kaufman and Raeburn book, Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings.1960.
Bruce F. Radde published on the works of Frank Lloyd Wright after I lost contact with him. . I found this: Frank Lloyd Wright - Steiner Ag www.steinerag.com/flw/Periodic
Radde wrote a book on Wright's buildings in California when he was a Professor of Art History at San Jose State.
William Storrer said that some of the Wright houses listed in the Bruce Radde List cannot be found.
See:www.franklloydwrightinfo.c
"Built or Not?
"When no photographs are known of a work, we wonder if truly it was
built. When the Taliesin archives state that it was, we work on the
basis that they are right. This led to some errors in the first
edition of The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, a complete catalog.
Most of the incorrect listings in the list attributed to Bruce Radde,
but actually assembled by John Ottenheimer, in Raeburn and Kaufmann's
Frank Lloyd Wright; Writings and Buildings were found simply because
the listed buildings wheren't there. This, however, did not solve the
problem of buildings that had been built but were not on the list, a
problem that was only solved, and then only partially, with
publication a quarter century later of The Frank Lloyd Wright
Companion. Here all the Erdman prefabs were finally listed, but some
Richards prefabs remained to be found."
www.franklloydwrightinfo.com is William Storrer's web site.
From the photos of Wright's floor plans and perspective drawings and from a number of photos I made of Wright homes, I wrote a manuscript in the period of 1957 to 1960 on Wright's houses since 1949.
.In 1963 Ben Raeburn, the editor of Horizon Press, took my manuscript on Wright's houses since 1949 to Mrs. Wright to see at Taliesin West. I still don't know what happened to it.
Mrs Wright did not admit me to the Wright nomenclature. But the Internet has its own nomenclature.
Mrs Frank Lloyd Wright did not seem to like my book manuscript that Horizon Press gave to her to look at in the spring of 1963. I never got the manuscript back from Horizon Press. Nothing. Much later, in 2006, I sent an E Mail to the Wright Foundation Archives asking if they have a copyright on Wright talks. They sent me a shorter paper of mine on Wright's owner built houses they had, but did not find the big manuscript of 1963.
I had not done anything on Wright since my 1961 article, "Wright's Diamond Module Houses His Development of Non-Rectilinear Interior Space, Art Journal
Volume 21, 1961 - Issue 2, Pages 92-96 | Published online: 09 Mar 2015, and my 1963 article "Wright's Small Rectangular Houses: His Structures of the Forties and Fifties," Art Journal, Vol 23, No 1, Autumn, 1963, and . The return of my long lost paper on owner built Wright houses led me to write two Internet articles for PrairieMod of Chicago. The first was "Owner Built Wright Houses: The Robert Berger House,October,2006. The second PrairieMod article of mine was on the Patrick Kinney house of Lancaster, Wisconsin, which is no longer available on the Internet. But I have a longer article on Wright's development of his nonrectilinear interior space designs, especially his diamond module houses,on a blog.
See: http://www.blogster.com/…/wrig
Though I may not have thought of this when the Art Journal published my chapter on Wright's Diamond Module Houses in 1961, it was appropriate to publish this in a journal called Art Journal. Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect and not a painter or sculptor. Yet he was a great American artist, probably our greatest.
"PrairieMod put an article I wrote for them Online about Frank Lloyd Wright's diamond module houses, with a focus upon the Patrick Kinney house in Lancaster, Wisconsin. I mentioned this article on Save Wright .org - http://wrightchat.savewright.
" I prefer the small, compact Robert Berger and Patrick Kinney diamond module houses to both the Gillin and Thaxton houses. The John Gillin house is a large diamond module design in Dallas, and the Thaxton house is also larger than Wright's smaller, compact diamond module usonians."
When I arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, which is forty miles east of Taliesin, Wright's Wisconsin home place. I had already become interested in Frank Lloyd Wright. On a troopship coming home from the Korean War I was sitting on deck one day reading The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand and a soldier came up and said the novel was based upon Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1952 I had never heard of Wright,, but when I got settled I began reading some of the books written by
Wright.
One day in the summer of 1957 when my first cousin A.C. Donaho was living with us on Middleton Beach Road In Middleton, northwest of Madison, we went to Spring Green and to the high school where Frank Lloyd Wright was sitting on the stage behind William T. Evjue, the editor of the Capital Times, who was giving a long winded political speech, probably on Wisconsin Progressivism. Progressivism was the Wisconsin form of the Populist movement of the Midwest, Texas and the South which went on in the late 19th century and later.
This was my first experience of being in the presence of Frank Lloyd Wright.
In the early Fall of 1957 Walter Gray, a graduate student in music, and I walked up to Wright in Hillside sitting at a drafting table surrounded by his apprentices. I asked his permissions to photograph many of his floor plans and perspective drawings for his houses after the late forties. He agreed and assigned his senior apprentice John Ottenheimer to help me. Wright's floor plans and perspective were then in some disarray in a room at Hillside which was mainly Wright's Drafting Room and the Fellowship Mess Hall, where I once ate lunch. My wife Gail and I were in Taliesin one day with a Wright Apprentice and I was talking about a Bach Contata called "Ich Habe Hunger."
Gail and I sat in the front row of the University of Wisconsin Student Union Auditorium in the Fall of 1957 where Frank Lloyd Wright gave a talk. I remember that Wright had a strong presence when he appeared onstage from the left.
I went back the following Fall - of 1958 -, to get Wright's
permission to photograph more of floor plans and perspective drawings for the houses on my list and his
secretary Gene Masselink had me make an official appointment to
talk with Wright. We spent about an hour that day showing Wright the
color slides and black and white photos I had of his recent houses.
One day when Bruce Radde went with us to Taliesin, on the way home to Middleton we stopped at Wright's Wyoming Valley School on the west side of Wisconsin State Highway 23, about two and a half miles south of Taliesin. We saw Wright that day looking at the building which then was almost finished. He had his cape on.
Bruce Radde, our companion on several
trips to see Wright houses, made up a list of Wright structures
from Henry-Russell Hitchcock's book, In the Nature of Materials, and from my list. I made up a list of Wright buildings from a list I was given by the Burnham Library of Architecture of the Art Institute of Chicago, and from Senior Wright apprentices I talked to at Taliesin, including John Ottenheimer.
When he was at Falling Water, probably in 1958 or 1959 Bruce Radde met Edgar Kaufman and got his list published in the 1960 book, Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings edited by Kaufman and Ben Raeburn.
When we went to Texas for Christmas in late 1959, we met Bruce
Radde in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the way back in January of 1960 and he went with us
to Madison. He then told us that the list was to be published in the
Kaufman and Raeburn book, Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings.1960.
Bruce F. Radde published on the works of Frank Lloyd Wright after I lost contact with him. . I found this: Frank Lloyd Wright - Steiner Ag www.steinerag.com/flw/Periodic
Radde wrote a book on Wright's buildings in California when he was a Professor of Art History at San Jose State.
William Storrer said that some of the Wright houses listed in the Bruce Radde List cannot be found.
See:www.franklloydwrightinfo.c
"Built or Not?
"When no photographs are known of a work, we wonder if truly it was
built. When the Taliesin archives state that it was, we work on the
basis that they are right. This led to some errors in the first
edition of The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, a complete catalog.
Most of the incorrect listings in the list attributed to Bruce Radde,
but actually assembled by John Ottenheimer, in Raeburn and Kaufmann's
Frank Lloyd Wright; Writings and Buildings were found simply because
the listed buildings wheren't there. This, however, did not solve the
problem of buildings that had been built but were not on the list, a
problem that was only solved, and then only partially, with
publication a quarter century later of The Frank Lloyd Wright
Companion. Here all the Erdman prefabs were finally listed, but some
Richards prefabs remained to be found."
www.franklloydwrightinfo.com is William Storrer's web site.
From the photos of Wright's floor plans and perspective drawings and from a number of photos I made of Wright homes, I wrote a manuscript in the period of 1957 to 1960 on Wright's houses since 1949.
.In 1963 Ben Raeburn, the editor of Horizon Press, took my manuscript on Wright's houses since 1949 to Mrs. Wright to see at Taliesin West. I still don't know what happened to it.
Mrs Wright did not admit me to the Wright nomenclature. But the Internet has its own nomenclature.
Mrs Frank Lloyd Wright did not seem to like my book manuscript that Horizon Press gave to her to look at in the spring of 1963. I never got the manuscript back from Horizon Press. Nothing. Much later, in 2006, I sent an E Mail to the Wright Foundation Archives asking if they have a copyright on Wright talks. They sent me a shorter paper of mine on Wright's owner built houses they had, but did not find the big manuscript of 1963.
I had not done anything on Wright since my 1961 article, "Wright's Diamond Module Houses His Development of Non-Rectilinear Interior Space, Art Journal
Volume 21, 1961 - Issue 2, Pages 92-96 | Published online: 09 Mar 2015, and my 1963 article "Wright's Small Rectangular Houses: His Structures of the Forties and Fifties," Art Journal, Vol 23, No 1, Autumn, 1963, and . The return of my long lost paper on owner built Wright houses led me to write two Internet articles for PrairieMod of Chicago. The first was "Owner Built Wright Houses: The Robert Berger House,October,2006. The second PrairieMod article of mine was on the Patrick Kinney house of Lancaster, Wisconsin, which is no longer available on the Internet. But I have a longer article on Wright's development of his nonrectilinear interior space designs, especially his diamond module houses,on a blog.
See: http://www.blogster.com/…/wrig
Though I may not have thought of this when the Art Journal published my chapter on Wright's Diamond Module Houses in 1961, it was appropriate to publish this in a journal called Art Journal. Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect and not a painter or sculptor. Yet he was a great American artist, probably our greatest.
"PrairieMod put an article I wrote for them Online about Frank Lloyd Wright's diamond module houses, with a focus upon the Patrick Kinney house in Lancaster, Wisconsin. I mentioned this article on Save Wright .org - http://wrightchat.savewright.
" I prefer the small, compact Robert Berger and Patrick Kinney diamond module houses to both the Gillin and Thaxton houses. The John Gillin house is a large diamond module design in Dallas, and the Thaxton house is also larger than Wright's smaller, compact diamond module usonians."
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