![Exterior Of Robie House Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House, Chicago, IL. Built 1909-1910.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-04.jpg?quality=85&w=2400)
Renowned American architect Frank Lloyd Wright would have turned 149 on Wednesday. The monumental figure designed 1,114 architectural works — 532 of which were completed— before his death in 1959.
In honor of his birthday, the above photos represent 15 of his best-known ones, from the Guggenheim museum in New York City, which he wanted to feel like “a curving wave that never breaks” (LIFE, Nov. 2, 1959), to the office building the Wisconsin native designed for a wax-polish company in a “drab section” of Racine, which was meant to be “as inspiring a place to work in as any cathedral ever was to worship in” (May 8, 1939). As LIFE summed up his portfolio in his 1959 obituary:
His low-slung houses, with their massive chimneys and slablike walls “married to the ground,” created a sensation in an era when ornate mansions were the vogue. His office buildings, with their golf-tee columns, their spiky or rounded towers, were striking phenomena amid the rectangular steel structures that came to dominate U.S. cities.
In addition to being known for sprawling oases like Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Ariz., he was also notorious for going over-budget (perhaps not surprisingly, given his taste in luxuries like velvet knickers). For instance, at one point he considered applying a gold leaf coating to the concrete surfaces of Fallingwater, the personal home of Kaufmann’s Department Store owners in Bear Run, Pa. (and the subject of the Jan. 17, 1938 cover of TIME). Thus, LIFE concluded in its Aug. 12, 1946 issue that he had “one dominant trait of character; an absolute inability to endure confinement of any sort.”
![Home exterior Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, located at 951 Chicago Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois. Built in 1889.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-01.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Unity Temple Church Unity Temple Church in Oak Park, IL. Built 1905-1908.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-02.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Avery Coonley house exterior Frank Lloyd Wright's Avery Coonley house, Riverside, Illinois. Built in 1908.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-031.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Exterior Of Robie House Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House, Chicago, IL. Built 1909-1910.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-04.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![J. Kibben Ingalls house exterior Frank Lloyd Wright's J. Kibben Ingalls house in River Forest, Illinois. Built in 1909.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-05.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Taliesin East Exteriors Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin East in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Built in 1911.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-06.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Imperial Hotel Exterior Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan, 1950s. Built circa 1919-1923.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-07.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Frank Lloyd Wright House Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House in Los Angeles, CA. Built circa 1924.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-08.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Falling Water home, designed in 1935 by Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water house in Mill Run, PA. Built circa 1936-1939.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-09.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Taliesin West Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West in Scottsdale, AZ. Built circa 1937.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-10.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Johnson & Son Buildings By F. L. Wright Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Company complex in Racine, WI. Built circa 1936-1939.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-11.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Travel Trip Wright Campus Frank Lloyd Wright's William H. Danforth Chapel at The Florida Southern College in Lakeland, FLA. Built circa 1938.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-12.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![The Guggenheim Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York, NY. Built circa 1959.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-13.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Marin County Civic Center Administrative Building Frank Lloyd Wright's Marin County Civic Cente rin San Rafael, CA. Built circa 1960.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-14.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Wright's Last Work The last architectural structure designed by Frank Lloyd Wright; Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium on the campus of Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Built circa 1964.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-frank-lloyd-wright-15.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Eyewitness Accounts From the Trump Rally Shooting
- Politicians Condemn Trump Rally Shooting: ‘No Place for Political Violence in Our Democracy’
- From 2022: How the Threat of Political Violence Is Transforming America
- ‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
- Remembering Shannen Doherty , the Quintessential Gen X Girl
- How Often Do You Really Need to Wash Your Sheets?
- Welcome to the Noah Lyles Olympics
- Get Our Paris Olympics Newsletter in Your Inbox
Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com