-
1 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio, located at 951 Chicago Avenue, Oak Park, Ill. Built circa 1889.Don Kalec/Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust—Getty Images -
2 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple Church in Oak Park, Ill. Built circa 1905-1908.Hedrich Blessing Collection/Chicago History Museum—Getty Images -
3 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's Avery Coonley house, Riverside, Ill. Built circa 1908.Chicago Architectural Photography Company/Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust—Getty Images -
4 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House, Chicago, Ill. Built circa 1909-1910.Hedrich Blessing Collection/Chicago History Museum—Getty Images -
5 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's J. Kibben Ingalls house in River Forest, Ill. Built circa 1909.Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust—Getty Images -
6 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin East in Spring Green, Wisc. Built circa 1911.Hedrich Blessing Collection/Chicago History Museum—Getty Images -
7 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, 1950s. Built circa 1919-1923.Authenticated News—Getty Images -
8 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House in Los Angeles. Built circa 1924.Philip Scott Andrews—AP Photo -
9 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water house in Mill Run, Penn. Built circa 1936-1939.Brent Winebrenner/Lonely Planet Image—Getty Images -
10 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Ariz. Built circa 1937.Hedrich Blessing Collection/Chicago History Museum—Getty Images -
11 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Company complex in Racine, Wisc. Built circa 1936-1939.Bettmann—Getty Images -
12 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's William H. Danforth Chapel at The Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Fla. Built circa 1938.Julie Fletcher—AP Photo -
13 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York, N.Y. Built circa 1959.George Heyer—Getty Images -
14 of 15Frank Lloyd Wright's Marin County Civic Cente rin San Rafael, Calif. Built circa 1960.Garth Eliassen—Getty Images -
15 of 15The last architectural structure designed by Frank Lloyd Wright; Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium on the campus of Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz. Built circa 1964.Alan Band/Fox Photos—Getty Images
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.”
- Inside One Indian iPhone Factory
- Congress Avoided a Shutdown. What Happens Next?
- Global Climate Solutions Exist. It's Time to Deploy Them
- What Happens to Diane Feinstein's Senate Seat
- The Enduring Charm of John Grisham
- Who The Golden Bachelor Leaves Out
- Kerry Washington: The Story of My Abortion
- Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time
