Mrs Frank Lloyd Wright Did Not Admit Me To the Wright Nomenclature
Bernard Pyron
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. I had read The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, on a troopship coming home from the Korean War, and found out the novel was based partly on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. I had never heard of Wright before, but when I got settled I began reading some of the books written by
Wright.
I took a course in art history under John Kienitz of the Art History Department at the University of Wisconsin who had been a friend of Wright. This led to my study of Wright's houses of his last great creative period.. I began collecting a list of his houses since 1950. At that time there was no Internet and no published books or articles containing a list of all his many works.
I started on the project of gathering a list of Wright's houses since 1950
and on collecting photos of at least the Midwest houses.
Gradually I increased the number of houses since 1950 on my list by
talking to senior Wright apprentices and from the Burnham Library of
Architecture of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bruce Radde, my 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. At Falling Water, Bruce met Edgar Kaufman and got his list published in the 1960 book, Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings edited by Kaufman and Ben Raeburn.
Later, in 1963 Raeburn the editor of Horizon Press took my manuscript on Wright's houses since 1950 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 1963 article "Wright's Small Rectangular Houses: His Structures of the Forties and Fifties," Art Journal, Vol 23, No 1, Autumn, 1963. 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. See: http://prairiemod.typepad.com/prairiemod/2006/10/a_prairiemod_fr.html
The second PrairieMod article was The Patrick Kinney House, 1951-1954, which was put on the Internet in 2007. See: http://www.prairiemodstuff.com/Kinney_article.pdf
After 2007 I wrote a longer article on the history of Wright's diamond module designs with the major focus on his small diamond module home of the early fifties for Patrick and Margaret Kinney on the northern edge of Lancaster, Wisconsin. I photographed the Kinney house in early October of 1958.
This longer Internet article on the history of Wright's diamond module designs is "Wright's Small Diamond Module Designs: The Patrick Kinney House." See: http://northwye.blog.co.uk/2011/03/17/wright-s-small-diamond-module-designs-the-patrick-kinney-house-10847963/
http://www.storrer.com/billphd.html
William Storrer says: "I travelled across the country to every known site of a Wright building. In an around-the-world tour with Pan Am in 1971 and with World Campus Afloat by boat in 1972, to the sites overseas, I had seen and photographed everything still standing. I was still looking for a publisher.
Then, at a Society of Architectural Historians meeting in Washington, D.C., while standing in line for lunch, I discovered that immediately next me was Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., at that time one of the major names in Wrightian lore and scholarship Somehow the discussion came to a point where I told him of my Wright project. He put me in touch with Ben Raeburn of Horizon Press, who had published Wright's post-war books as well as co-authoring, with Kaufmann, Jr., Frank Lloyd Wright Writings and Buildings. Raeburn took my photos and info to Mrs. Wright at Taliesin West during a beautiful spring. I was, while Ben was in Scottsdale, driving from my home on the South Fork of Long Island to Yemassee, South Carolina, over to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, up to Kansas City, Missouri, then back through the midWest to Long Island, photographing 40 buildings for which I still had unsatisfactory photos. Ben knew I was doing this, and that the 40 photos (of which he had a list) would bereplaced in the "complete set" he'd taken to Maricopa Mesa. Yet, when he returned, he said he would not do the book because of Mrs. Wright's objection to "forty bad photos"!!!!!!!
Mrs Wright did not admit Bill Storrer to the Wright nomenclature either, but he admitted himself and became the authority on Wright buildings.
Bernard Pyron
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. I had read The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, on a troopship coming home from the Korean War, and found out the novel was based partly on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. I had never heard of Wright before, but when I got settled I began reading some of the books written by
Wright.
I took a course in art history under John Kienitz of the Art History Department at the University of Wisconsin who had been a friend of Wright. This led to my study of Wright's houses of his last great creative period.. I began collecting a list of his houses since 1950. At that time there was no Internet and no published books or articles containing a list of all his many works.
I started on the project of gathering a list of Wright's houses since 1950
and on collecting photos of at least the Midwest houses.
Gradually I increased the number of houses since 1950 on my list by
talking to senior Wright apprentices and from the Burnham Library of
Architecture of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bruce Radde, my 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. At Falling Water, Bruce met Edgar Kaufman and got his list published in the 1960 book, Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings edited by Kaufman and Ben Raeburn.
Later, in 1963 Raeburn the editor of Horizon Press took my manuscript on Wright's houses since 1950 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 1963 article "Wright's Small Rectangular Houses: His Structures of the Forties and Fifties," Art Journal, Vol 23, No 1, Autumn, 1963. 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. See: http://prairiemod.typepad.com/prairiemod/2006/10/a_prairiemod_fr.html
The second PrairieMod article was The Patrick Kinney House, 1951-1954, which was put on the Internet in 2007. See: http://www.prairiemodstuff.com/Kinney_article.pdf
After 2007 I wrote a longer article on the history of Wright's diamond module designs with the major focus on his small diamond module home of the early fifties for Patrick and Margaret Kinney on the northern edge of Lancaster, Wisconsin. I photographed the Kinney house in early October of 1958.
This longer Internet article on the history of Wright's diamond module designs is "Wright's Small Diamond Module Designs: The Patrick Kinney House." See: http://northwye.blog.co.uk/2011/03/17/wright-s-small-diamond-module-designs-the-patrick-kinney-house-10847963/
http://www.storrer.com/billphd.html
William Storrer says: "I travelled across the country to every known site of a Wright building. In an around-the-world tour with Pan Am in 1971 and with World Campus Afloat by boat in 1972, to the sites overseas, I had seen and photographed everything still standing. I was still looking for a publisher.
Then, at a Society of Architectural Historians meeting in Washington, D.C., while standing in line for lunch, I discovered that immediately next me was Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., at that time one of the major names in Wrightian lore and scholarship Somehow the discussion came to a point where I told him of my Wright project. He put me in touch with Ben Raeburn of Horizon Press, who had published Wright's post-war books as well as co-authoring, with Kaufmann, Jr., Frank Lloyd Wright Writings and Buildings. Raeburn took my photos and info to Mrs. Wright at Taliesin West during a beautiful spring. I was, while Ben was in Scottsdale, driving from my home on the South Fork of Long Island to Yemassee, South Carolina, over to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, up to Kansas City, Missouri, then back through the midWest to Long Island, photographing 40 buildings for which I still had unsatisfactory photos. Ben knew I was doing this, and that the 40 photos (of which he had a list) would bereplaced in the "complete set" he'd taken to Maricopa Mesa. Yet, when he returned, he said he would not do the book because of Mrs. Wright's objection to "forty bad photos"!!!!!!!
Mrs Wright did not admit Bill Storrer to the Wright nomenclature either, but he admitted himself and became the authority on Wright buildings.
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The link to my blog.co.uk article on the Patrick Kinney house no
longer works. Here is a link to the same article that works as of
August 11, 2017: http://www.blogster.com/halfback/wrights-small-diamond-module-designs-the-patrick-kinney-house-reposted |
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