I find the photograph of "the man" on the phone to be quite an appropriate opener for this page! You see, many moons ago, when I was just a wee bairn in nappies, Mr. Wright was in Phoenix without a phone!!

He would come to our apartment and use my folks' phone. When he moved on, he did so without paying his phone bill. Details, always details, right? They never did get paid back for his long-distance calls, but Mom sure got her money's worth out of the story. Every time she was at Taliesin West for any kind of "do", she would tell it with the glee only Mary Jane could deliver and still sound like a gracious lady. Mr. Wright passed away when I was 18; Mom was still getting mileage out of the story 40 years later. ~laffin'~

Arizona Biltmore Hotel

The hotel is constructed of Wright's tile blocks and has a Southwestern theme, but with exotic and almost oriental touches, such as the cutouts in the eaves. It was abandoned for a time, then extensively renovated, and is now a world-class golf resort. The Biltmore is located about four miles from the house I grew up in, and we often utilized their stables and miles of desert trails for horseback riding. Today, of course, it is abutted on all sides by homes, multi-story office buildings, and modernistic malls. Most if not all of you are too young to remember Jean Harlow's great movie "Blond Bombshell". Mom was Jean's double for all the horseback scenes, and they were filmed right there at the Biltmore.

Widely credited with revolutionizing American architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 - 1959) produced one innovation after another over the course of his long career. If contradictions make for interesting people, Wright was surely one of this century's most fascinating Americans. Wright the modernist was also Wright the romantic, iconoclast, and champion of the individual, and the products of his contradictory sensibility offer a sassy repudiation of his European contemporaries' chilly, everyman modernism. His genius for architectural synthesis transformed his field; a hundred years after his earliest solo commissions, Wright's designs have become so entwined in the vocabulary of American architecture that we take his radical ideas for granted.

Hanna House, exterior

The Hanna House sits on the brow of a small hill and is built around three ancient oaks on the property. Photographs of the inside are not allowed.

Hanna House, waterfall

This beautiful waterfall at the rear of the main house reflects the hexagon pattern on which the entire site is designed. Wright believed that people do not naturally turn 90 degree corners, but prefer 120 degree corners. The hexagon, of course, incorporates six 120-degree angles, and thus virtually every corner on the house and grounds is 120 degrees.

1st Christian Church, Phoenix

Frank Lloyd Wright designed this chapel for a seminary that was never built. After Wright's death, a Phoenix church was able to purchase the plans and build the chapel. The steeple and bell tower both have an asymmetrical cross section.

The photos above are of Mr. Wright's beloved Taliesin West.
Mom loved to go there, but I content myself with looking out at the same mountains .... albeit from the other side. ~grin~

Frank Lloyd Wright is considered the most influential American architect of the 20th century. A visionary whose ideas were well ahead of his time, Wright's creative designs presented a bold challenge to familiar habits. Today his influence is worldwide. The majority of art glass windows designed by Mr. Wright are abstractions from nature. Ribbons of windows framed the landscape, creating vistas between inside and outside space. These Frank Lloyd Wright Collection products are authorized by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona.

Many of the building pictures are from Webshots. The photograph, signature, and glassworks are from various art catalogues.

This page created for Diva of the 'Net

by Peggy Swycaffer