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It's Frank Lloyd Wright's birthday today (thank you, Google, for the reminder), and Gothamist would like to take the time to think about the man. There was a time in Gothamist's life when we wished we could be Frank Lloyd Wright, because we were mesmerized after a visit to the Guggenheim Museum AND the This Old House where Bob Vila visited Taliesin West. Frank Lloyd Wright, a man of the Midwest, didn't really like New York City, as it was about grids and lines, so he broke that up with his circular plan for the Guggenheim. From the Guggenheim website's section about the building:
Wright made no secret of his disenchantment with Guggenheim's choice of New York for his museum: "I can think of several more desirable places in the world to build his great museum," Wright wrote in 1949 to Arthur Holden, "but we will have to try New York." To Wright, the city was overbuilt, overpopulated, and lacked architectural merit.He died six months before it was completed, but the museum is a New York City icon.
You can visit the museum and walk along the curving ramps. Here's a nice PBS page about Wright, a virtual tour of his buildings, Meryle Secrest's biography, and a pop-up book of his buildings - and links to FLW via Google. Plus some more quotes from Wright about different cities:
- "It [New York City] is a great monument to the power of money and greed. ..a race for rent."
- "Tip the world on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles"
- "Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world."
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Only one other house in NYC was built from Wright's architectural plans, in Staten Island. See this page
http://www.forgotten-ny.com/YOU'D%20NEVER%20BELIEVE/Latourette%20Park/latour.html
I haven't updated it for awhile: the house was indeed sold in 1999.
Have to agree with Wright on the Chicago comment :)
I'd take Wright's Guggenheim over Gehry's Bilbao any day of the week. Wright, at least, understood that an architect didn't have to assault the senses of passersby to get noticed.
Thanks for the link, Kevin! That's very cool - Wright also built a lot in Buffalo and upstate. I also want to mention that Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3 uses the Guggenheim - and Richard Serra - to great effect.
And Benjy, to each his or her own!
Wright also designed the Mercedez-Benz showroom, which I believe is on Park Ave in midtown -- It has been redesigned since, though...he also had projects planned for apartment buildings in the NYU area that echoed the inverted shape of the Gugg -- as well as his plan for a Mile-High skyscraper with nuclear-powered elevators and heli-pads.