Frank Lloyd Wright, “the greatest American architect of all time”
In 2019, eight of the architect’s major works were officially inscribed to the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The name Frank Lloyd Wright is a synonym for great American architecture, clean lines, and “organic” buildings — as he called his designs and philosophy, “in harmony with humanity and its environment.”
In 1991, the American Institute of Architects, in a national survey, recognized Wright as “the greatest American architect of all time,” and voted his “Fallingwater” house, built in 1939 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as “the best all-time work of American architecture.”
And 2019 was a very important year for Wright and his legacy. In fact, eight of the architect’s major works were officially inscribed to the UNESCO World Heritage List by the World Heritage Committee. They include: Fallingwater, Unity Temple (Oak Park, Illinois), the Frederick C. Robie House (Chicago, Illinois), Taliesin (Spring Green, Wisconsin), Hollyhock House (Los Angeles, California), the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House (Madison, Wisconsin), Taliesin West (Scottsdale, Arizona), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, New York).
The buildings span 50 years of Wright’s influential career, and mark the first modern architecture designation in the United States on the World Heritage List, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Of the over 1,000 World Heritage sites around the world, the group of Wright sites now join an existing list of 20+ sites in the US.
Being the first US modern architecture designation by UNESCO, an agency of the United Nations dedicated to education, science, and culture, is important and recognizes the value of preservation of historic buildings in America.
For example, just a few months after the UNESCO accouncement, Wright’s Unity Temple received the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation National Preservation Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
According to Jay Koziarz of Curbed Chicago, although the 1908 building is considered to be one of Wright’s most significant designs, it “had suffered decades of deterioration and even earned a spot on the Trust’s 11 Most Endangered Places in America list in 2009.” Koziarz explains: “A $25 million restoration effort painstakingly repaired the building’s concrete exterior as well as the sanctuary’s plaster, paint, woodwork, and art glass skylights.”
“It was phenomenal before, but it’s even more amazing now,” Gunny Harboe, the Chicago-based architect who led the restoration, told Curbed Chicago in 2017. “We were able to recapture the original intent and feeling of the space. Its organic pallet of colors is executed in a way that provides a rich softness that was missing for some time.”
Wright’s Taliesin West in Arizona and Taliesin in Wisconsin have also been in the news recently for the preservation efforts at the sites.
According to AZ Big Media, “to ensure Wright’s two personal homes are accurately preserved, [Frank Lloyd Wright] Foundation Vice President of Preservation Fred Prozzillo has taken a contemporary approach to the historic preservation of both sites.”
In fact, through the work of the preservation teams, Prozzillo seeks to extend the legacy of Wright’s innovation by showcasing unique design and sustainable practices.
“The preservation of Taliesin West and Taliesin is both unique and challenging. Often people think of historic preservation as picking a point in time and preserving a site to a specific date so people can study it, learn from it and experience it as it was in that moment,” Prozzillo told AZ Big Media. “Wright meant both of these sites to be ever-changing laboratories. He’d split his time between the two and upon his return, he would see the property with a new eye and make changes to the sites season after season. Our challenge is thinking about how we preserve these living sites and accommodate 140,000 visitors per year, while working to preserve the concept of constant change. Our preservation teams maintain a respect for the history of the sites while evolving to fit the changing needs of the properties.”
Fun fact about Frank Lloyd Wright
Wright’s son, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr was also an architect. One of his designs in Minnetonka, right outside Minneapolis, Minnesota was recently in the news after, in a last-minute rescue, Polymath Park, a Pennsylvania-based preservation group, saved it from being torn down.
The house, known as Birdwing, sits on 12 prime acres of land that are being developed into luxury home sites. Polymath Park, a 125-acre resort southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania which includes Frank Lloyd Wright’s Donald C. Duncan House and R. W. Lindholm Residence, struck a deal to save Birdwing from the wrecking ball.
According to the Star Tribune, the builder [Zehnder Homes] agreed to donate the house to the nonprofit organization that oversees the park, and a crew is currently engaged in ‘architectural surgery’, to dismantled it, packed it into shipping containers, and reassembled it at the park where eventually it will be open for touring and overnight lodging.
About Adventures in Preservation (AiP)
Adventures in Preservation (AiP) is a non-profit connecting people and preservation through enriching cultural heritage travel and hands-on education. AiP was founded in 2001 by two women with a great love of historic buildings and a strong desire to travel and understand the world. While perusing the travel section of the Boulder Bookstore, the Volunteer Vacation section suddenly brought everything into focus. Judith Broeker and Jamie Donahoe combined their goal of saving historic buildings with the concept of experiential travel, and created AiP’s hands-on preservation vacations.
Work started on several sites in the U.S., and as word spread, requests for help began to pour in from around the world, underscoring the great potential of using volunteers to restore historic buildings. In supporting community-based preservation initiatives, we discovered that our love of old buildings could translate into environmental and economic sustainability for communities.
AiP is picking up the pace! As our hands-on experiential travel becomes more popular, we have new projects, new partners and initiatives to keep you excited and involved.
