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Wright was born in 1867, 20 years before gasoline-powered cars became popular. It was in 1886 that they were patented, and it is considered the official birth of the modern automobile.
He was undoubtedly one of the first to adopt the internal combustion engine.
Frank Lloyd Wright had a vision of spaces and forms that influenced the changes of his time and influenced many architects who knew and appreciated his ideas and works.
For his urban proposals such as Broadacre City (which generated public debate with Le Corbusier and his Ville Radieuse), the automobile played a crucial role, allowing for decentralization and enhancing the perception of the environment while moving around.
His concept in Broadacre City reflected Wright’s vision of a rural, suburban, and automobile-centric lifestyle.
In these articles, we’ll see how he modified shapes, unified colors, and how they interacted in many of his projects.
Let’s get to work…
Wright received the car on January 5, 1940, shortly after the car was involved in an accident, and at that moment he took the opportunity to redesign it and transform it into a Sedan car, with the front end open and the rear end closed, he eliminated the rear window and added the semicircular windows on the sides.
A Tragic Accident
There was no shortage of terrible events at Taliesin, such as the car accident in September 1946 near the Wisconsin River Bridge in Spring Green, which killed Olgivanna’s daughter and grandson: a pregnant 29-year-old Svetlana and her 2-year-old son, Daniel.
In 1935, William Wesley Peters married Svetlana Hinzenberg Wright (1917–1946), Wright’s stepdaughter, who had just turned eighteen.
Years later, her widower, Peters, married Svetlana Alliluyeva, the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin.
His former mother-in-law, Olgivanna, introduced him to Svetlana Alliluyeva (1926–2011), the daughter of Joseph Stalin, who had defected from the USSR in 1970, fleeing her father’s tyrannical and dictatorial rule.…. You can read the whole story in https://onlybook.es/blog/las-obras-de-frank-lloyd-wright-parte-7-el-taa/
Color
Betty Cass, a Madison social columnist and friend of the Wrights, reported in the Wisconsin State Journal that one color on the breakfast table caught their attention: a red-glazed cream pitcher made by Catalina Island Pottery.
In August 1935, Betty Cass commented in Madison Day-by-Day, “Wherever they go, the color of those two Frank Lloyd Wright Fords, Mr. Wright’s convertible coupe, and Mrs. Wright’s sedan-tourist, always attract attention.”
The Madison Day-by-Day column announced the first of the Taliesin Fellowship’s annual winter pilgrimages to Arizona, although Taliesin West, or “the desert camp,” as it was initially called, wouldn’t be founded until two years later.
Gene Masselink would tell Nancy Willey “a caravan of ten gray and red cars, led by a new, red-painted V8 pickup truck,” traveled southwest from Spring Green to La Hacienda in Chandler, Arizona, to work on the Broadacre City model in mid-January 1935…”
The caravan of 30 people left Spring Green, Wisconsin, on January 23, 1935, in several cars and a red pickup truck, heading for the Arizona desert, a desert many of them had never seen before.
At that time, during the harsh winter, when the temperature was 40 degrees below zero and the roads were canyons dug through drifts of snow…anywhere else would have been a better destination. It was the time of the economic depression…they were equipped with supplies, drawing materials, and architectural models. The 3,500-kilometer journey that Frank Lloyd Wright and his apprentices undertook to Arizona that winter represented a new chapter in his career.
You can read the full article at https://onlybook.es/blog/frank-lloyd-wright-some-key-stages-in-his-life-part-5-mb/
Wright purchased a Cord L-29 Phaeton in 1929, which he had painted a “rusty orange” color that would become known as “Cherokee Red.” The bright orange exterior of this L-29 is striking in the photo, but it is not authentic to Wright-owned vehicles, so when it was restored, it was painted the signature Taliesin Spring Green. It is now owned by the FLlW Foundation.
He praised its front-wheel drive, and in “An Autograph” (Horizon Press, 1977), he wrote, “I feel the Cord should be a hero in this autobiography.”
The FLlW Foundation Archives preserve correspondence from Wright to a representative of the Ford Motor Company. The document is undated and unsigned, but it is presumed to be May 1, 1933.
Dear Simons
Milwaukee Branch Ford Motor Co.
I have asked Mr. John Schoenmen to obtain for me a Ford Touring Sedan: the model with a trunk extension built into the rear of the body, but instead of a fixed roof, I would like this model complete with a phaeton-style convertible sedan roof.
I’ve seen this combination on the streets of Phoenix and Los Angeles and I liked it. Every time I saw the car, it was a color I liked—a color that was now neither listed as a standard Ford nor as a special Ford. I don’t mind the sloping, unextended rear convertible touring car I saw at a Chicago show as standard, nor do I mind Ford’s regular line of colors.
The color I want would be known to the decorator as «Sanguine,» a fairly dark reddish or russet brown. Could you send Mr. Schoenman a color card showing this color and find out if the convertible top and rear trunk extension combination is available from the factory, and if so, when delivery could be made?
Sincerely,
(unsigned)
Steve Sikora’s detailed article for the FLlW Foundation ends with this account:
…Taliesin guide Craig Jacobsen says that in 1984 or 1985, Wes Peters told him… “One day, Gene (Masselink) was driving Mr. b around downtown Phoenix when they stopped at a red light. Admiring the car in front of them, Mr. Wright asked Gene to go ask the driver what color it was. Gene complied, telling him that architect Frank Lloyd Wright was in the car behind him and wanted to know the name of his car. When Gene returned to the car, Mr. Wright asked, “What did he say?” and Gene replied, “He said it’s a special edition 1935 Oldsmobile and the color is called Cherokee Red.”
1953 Bentley R Type Sedanca Coupe
This unique R-Type was built for the American oilman and art patron Charles B. Wrightsman. Two years later, it was sold to John Ballantine of the whiskey family. Three years later, in 1958, Wright purchased it for $7,500, which he used while in New York completing work on the Guggenheim Museum.
The car was subsequently sent to Taliesin West, and after his death, his heirs sold it in 1960.
Its current owner acquired it in 1994 in very poor condition and began a complete restoration. Upon completion, it was presented at the 2003 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and again in 2021.
Features
The 1952 Bentley R-Type replaced the first post-war Bentley, the almost identical Mark VI. London-based designer James Young built numerous exclusive chassis during the 1930s and exhibited his first post-war body designs at the 1948 London Motor Show.
Comments I received on my blog, from the Fans of Frank Lloyd Wright website
In a commentary on my article https://onlybook.es/blog/gb-frank-lloyd-wright-some-key-stages-of-his-life-part-6-ramps-mbgb/
John Shair writes:
“A major breakthrough has been made regarding the final whereabouts of their first vehicle. After years of part-time research, its final resting place was in Darby, Montana. Mistaken for a Maxwell, it was [rightfully] in disrepair and stripped down to the undercarriage for use as a trailer. No trace of its yellow paint remained. I salvaged an old rusty brake band, which now sits on my desk in a pencil holder. I’ll provide more details if anyone is interested. Thank you.”
When asked to write those details, he sent the attached photo and this text.
John Shair writes:
“A major breakthrough has been made regarding the final whereabouts of their first vehicle. After years of part-time research, its final resting place was in Darby, Montana. Mistaken for a Maxwell, it was [rightfully] in disrepair and stripped down to the undercarriage for use as a trailer. No trace of its yellow paint remained. I salvaged an old rusty brake band, which now sits on my desk in a pencil holder. I’ll provide more details if anyone is interested. Thank you.”
When asked to write those details, he sent the attached photo and this text.
…his first car was a yellow 1908 Stoddard-Dayton Model K roadster (two-seat open car). The same model that won the first automobile race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1909.
Known as the Yellow Devil by his Oak Park neighbors, this was a 45-horsepower car capable of reaching 60 miles per hour. With brown seats and brass trim, Wright drove it dressed in an overcoat and driving glasses.
Wright and his sons seemed to enjoy the power; his son John remarked, «Dad kept busy paying fines.»
He installed a gas pump in the garage of his home/studio in Oak Park. It currently resides in the former garage, now the Ginkgo Tree Bookshop. I found this information on the web blog of Art Diamond (postgraduate in philosophy and economics at the University of Chicago) and The New York Times of August 2009.
Lincoln Continental Cabriolet V12 de 1940. “Coupe Landau”
The Lincoln brand is the luxury version of the Ford Motor Company.
Wright redesigned the Lincoln Continental, with wraparound bumpers, integrated headlights, a full windshield with no center divider, and painted Cherokee Red.
He transformed it into a Sendanka Coupé, a cross between a coupé and a convertible, and added a soft top to the rear. For more privacy, he removed the rear window and installed crescent-shaped windows on the sides (like portholes).
On the Road with Frank Lloyd Wright
Patrick Sisson tells us on his Curbed blog and on his On Tour with Frank Lloyd Wright page about the thousands of miles of travel between Taliesin in Spring Green and Taliesin in Scottsdale. June 8, 2017.
Sisson cites a news item in an April 1940 issue of the Architects’ Journal, entitled “Open Wagons,” which described the annual pilgrimage as being organized with “Hollywood exuberance.” An extract from a letter described the scene as “a safari consisting of five or six truckloads of young people, pots and pans, grand pianos, and cement mixers.” You can read more about the caravan to Taliesin at https://onlybook.es/blog/frank-lloyd-wright-some-key-stages-in-his-life-part-5-mb/
Taliesin West was a desert utopia composed of low-rise buildings designed to reflect the imposing expanse of the desert. Wright wrote, “The character of Arizona seems to cry out for a space-loving architecture of its own,” and set about creating it.
To preserve the local landscape, he would build it with “desert masonry”: local rock placed in wooden forms and bound with a mixture of cement and desert sand. (11)
Humanities. The magazine of The National Endowment for the Humanities
I summarize an article that appeared in Humanities, Summer 2019, Volume 40, Number 3. On its cover, it features a 1905 drawing by Evelyn Rumsey Cary to rally support for a national women’s suffrage amendment.
On his first trip, Wright sent a telegram to Gene Masselink, his assistant. (12) Reflecting his impatience, he ordered Masselink to head west, prepared to build.
«The weather is warm, a beautiful site… Come to Jokake Inn, a hotel near Phoenix, bring shovels, rakes, hoes, and hose, eighteen drawing boards and tools, a wheelbarrow, a cement mixer, a small Kohler generator and wire, Melodeon oil stoves for cooking and heating, a water heater, a viola, a cello, unused rugs, and anything else you think we might need.»
The Jokake Inn was a hotel built in 1920 in what is now Scottsdale. Near Camelback Mountain, Wright, Olgivanna, and some apprentices stayed there while they planned and built Taliesin. It currently exists (renovated) as the Phoenician Resort.
The project they would build would be a living space where the community could sing, act, cook, and socialize, in addition to carrying out their daily tasks.
Years later, a wall of the music pavilion would express that sentiment with a quote from the poet Lao Tzu, “The reality of a building does not consist of the roof and the walls, but of the interior space for living.”
Stuart Graff, who served as president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for eight years until August 2024, wrote of the Lao Tzu and Wright quote, “Somehow, buildings enhance the landscape. The landscape enhances the buildings. Both enhance people. And people enhance both buildings and landscape.” The current president of the Foundation is Joseph Specter.
But in 1937, there was little to do; Phoenix had a population of 56,500 and was 26 miles away. That distance was an opportunity; being so far from everything was one of the reasons he was able to buy 800 acres (324 hectares) at $3.50 per hectare. To obtain water, they had to drill 480 feet (147 meters) to find it.
Wright commented, «Some clients have asked me, ‘How far should we go, Mr. Wright?'» «I tell them, ‘Only ten times farther than you think we should go.'»
First Camp, Ocatilla
It was a valuable experiment. Angular designs, with hanging tarps, Wright describes it as, «When these white canvas wings, like sails, unfurl, the buildings… will look like ‘ships of the desert,'» and «the group… like a kind of desert fleet.»
He named the camp Ocatilla, modifying a letter of the name Ocotillo, a plant that grew abundantly in the area.
Wright and his apprentices built it starting in 1927. It was to be a base camp where the progress of the (unbuilt) San Marcos Hotel could be observed.
In his autobiography, he writes, “And soon you will see them as a group of giant butterflies with scarlet spots on their wings, gracefully adapting to the crown of splintered black rock outcrops that rise gently from the desert floor.”
You can read more about Ocatilla at https://onlybook.es/blog/frank-lloyd-wright-some-key-stages-in-his-life-part-4-mbgb/
Life in the desert was harsh, but despite everything, the community lived there for five months, accompanied by Wright’s piano. In May 1929, she wrote to her friend and client Darwin D. Martin (who commissioned the Darwin D. Martin House (1903–1905), the Larkin Administration Building (1904), and Graycliff Estate (1926–1931), that the community had “almost no physical comforts… I don’t know how much longer we can hold out… the rattlesnakes are keeping us on our toes… we have had seven guests. Scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas, and other harmful insects are appearing. You see, we are in the middle of nature; the flies are horrible.”
The Architectural Record, January 1928
In the Cause of Architecture, the Logic of the Plan.
Between 1908 and 1928, Wright wrote a series of theoretical and critical articles in the journal Architectural Record, in which he disseminated his innovative thinking, explained from a theoretical perspective.
The general title was «In the Cause of Architecture,» and the series we are discussing includes the essays entitled «The Logic of the Plan.»
Through them, he presented his principles of organic architecture while criticizing historical styles and academic conventions. He proposed a rational, functional, and free design, unlike classical European styles, which he considered rigid. He was laying the foundations for the modern movement in architecture.
Between 1908 and 1928, Wright wrote a series of theoretical and critical articles in the journal Architectural Record, in which he disseminated his innovative thinking, explained from a theoretical perspective.
The general title was «In the Cause of Architecture,» and the series we are discussing includes the essays entitled «The Logic of the Plan.»
Through them, he presented his principles of organic architecture while criticizing historical styles and academic conventions. I have proposed a rational, functional, and free design, unlike classical European styles, which I have considered rigid. He was laying the foundations for the modern movement in architecture.
A good plan is both the beginning and the end, because every good plan is organic. This means that its development […] is a natural and logical consequence.
To plan, both scientifically and artistically, is to foresee everything. There is more beauty in a good plan than in almost any of its final manifestations.
In itself, it will have the rhythms, masses, and proportions of a good work if it is an organic plan, with an individual style, consistent with its materials. Everything is seen there: purpose, materials, method, character, style. The plan? The prophetic soul of the building: a building that can only live because of the prophecy that is the plan.
Description: “In the Name of Architecture: 1. The Logic of the Plan.” Includes six illustrations. Published as a bound volume in 1975. Cover price: 35 cents. 9 x 11.75 cm. pp. 49-57
The Concept and the Plan
The origin of architectural ideas and the relationship between concept and instrument. Imagination as a territory of creation.“…Conceive buildings in your imagination, not first on paper, but in your mind, thoroughly, before you touch the paper. Let the building, living in your imagination, develop gradually, taking more and more definite form before you bring it to the drawing board. When it is sufficiently alive for you, then begin to draw it with instruments, but not before.”
“Drawing during conception, or sketching […] experimenting with practical adjustments to scale […] let’s hold fast to the concept if it’s clear enough. But it’s always best to cultivate the imagination from within. Construct and complete the building in your mind as much as you can before working on it with a set square and T-square.”
“Working with these instruments should be only to modify, enlarge, intensify, or test the conception; finally, to relate the parts in detail. If the original concept is lost as the drawing progresses, throw it all away and start again. To completely discard a concept to make room for a new one is a mental faculty not easily cultivated. Few architects have that capacity. Perhaps it’s a gift, but it can be achieved with practice. What I’m trying to say is that the plan is the essence of all truly creative subject matter, and it must gradually mature as such.”“…In the logic of the plan, what we call standardization reveals itself as an essential foundation in architecture. All things in nature tend to crystallize; to form mathematically and then to conform, as we can easily see. There is that fluid, elastic period of becoming—as in the plan—in which possibilities are infinite. New effects can then originate from the conceiving idea or principle. But once the form is achieved, that possibility is dead, at least as a positive creative flow.”
Philip Johnson
In a 1949 commentary in Architecture Review, after visiting Taliesin, he declared Wright to be the “greatest living architect.” A way of celebrating Taliesin West as a rebuttal to cold, square modernism, which went to show that Wright was still “inventing new forms: using circles, hexagons, and triangles to articulate space in new ways.”
He hadn’t held this view years before, which is why he found it difficult but reluctant to include him in a major 1932 Museum of Modern Art exhibition he had curated, saying that Wright “had nothing to say about contemporary architecture.”
“I had no buildings to build at this distressing moment, but capitalizing on thirty-five years of past experience, why not build the builders of buildings, preparing them for the time when buildings can be built again?” Autobiography 1867/1944 p 456.
To read about TAA and Learning by Doing see https://onlybook.es/blog/las-obras-de-frank-lloyd-wright-parte-7-el-taa/
and
Building Builders. “Learning by Doing,” Wright relied on three tools to convey his knowledge: the Wasmuth Portfolio, Taliesin East, and Taliesin West… full text https://onlybook.es/blog/las-obras-de-frank-lloyd-wright-parte-6/
In presenting the Taliesin Scholarship, Wright makes public his intention to send it to friends and universities:
Frank Lloyd Wright, along with a number of capable assistants residing at Taliesin, will direct the work of a new Fellowship of Apprentices deeply rooted in Architecture. Three associate residents—a sculptor, a painter, and a musician—will be chosen for the work to be performed. Also present will be an internal group of seven honorary apprentices with the rank of senior apprentices or university professors, and three technical advisors trained in industry. Thinkers, artists, and philosophers from various countries may occasionally attend to share a period of our activities, perhaps to reside for a few seasons. ” In it, he argues for the purpose of establishing an educational entity based on the philosophy of the concept of “Learning by Doing.” “We believe that a rational attempt to integrate Art and Industry must be coordinated with the everyday life we live here in America. Any such rational attempt must be essentially an architecture, growing through the natural social, industrial, and economic processes present in our way of life: Learning by doing.
«We don’t learn so much from our successes as from our failures, our own and those of others. Especially when we properly rectify our failures.»
Wright explicitly valued this direct experience, in contrast to conventional education. Therefore, he considered Nature to be the first teacher, which ultimately gave transcendental value to the location of both Taliesins within natural areas of great environmental value.
FBI and the US Government
Henken recounts that after World War II, the Fellowship was so original in its conception that the FBI investigated its activities, suspecting that the Fellowship could be a breeding ground for communism or sectarianism, creating anti-American behavior.
They considered the possibility that it might be a hotbed of sympathizers with Russia or Germany. This surveillance lasted more than 10 years.
Jack El-Hai, a journalist and author specializing in history, opens the FBI files on FLlW and explains the story behind the government’s interest in the architect.
This article originally appeared in «Elevation,» the Fall 2017 issue of Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly, I’ll leave the link.
During the 1940s, FLLW was the world’s most famous architect and a staunch advocate of pacifism, anti-authoritarianism, and anti-nationalism in wartime. Shortly after the United States’ involvement in World War II, the FBI focused on Wright and his activities at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
The result was a vast dossier of criminal charges, tips from concerned citizens, press clippings, and details of alleged suspicious behavior that produced an impressive FBI dossier.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s spiteful attitude led his agents to continue adding accusations, real and imagined, to the dossier for years after the war’s end.
Wright came under FBI scrutiny during the war in December 1942, after Federal Judge Patrick T. Stone accused the architect of persuading his Taliesin apprentices to avoid the draft by applying for conscientious objector status, thereby harming U.S. military mobilization.
Judge Stone had sentenced one of the apprentices, Marcus Earl Weston, to prison for refusing to submit to the draft (decades later, he denied to a reporter that Wright had influenced his decision).
Thanks to citizen informants, the FBI was already aware of Wright’s opposition to the war and his stance on international affairs. One informant warned Hoover that he «has been talking in the worst possible way and deserves a severe reprimand. He’s been making speeches like we should let Japan have what she wants in Asia, that they are very nice people, etc.» Other anonymous letters complained of his apparent sympathy for Japan and Germany, and some attributed hatred to him towards Great Britain.
Hoover referred these accusations to Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendell Berge in a request to prosecute him for sedition. The file records that Berge refused to let the case go forward and demanded the FBI end its investigation of the architect.
But Hoover wasn’t going to let it go: «If the architect was not guilty of sedition, perhaps he could be charged with obstructing the wartime draft.»
In 1943, an FBI field agent noted in a case report that 26 Taliesin scholars had petitioned the draft board in nearby Dodgeville, Wisconsin, for conscientious objector status two years earlier. «The petitioners [sic] claimed that their work as architects in a construction field was more vital to the homeland defense than service in the army,» the agent wrote. The draft board had denied their request. The agent interviewed a member of the draft board, who opined that Wright “was regarded by the members of the fellowship as a kind of idol, a tin god, or teacher.” Under his tutelage, the man continued, the apprentices believed “they could do no wrong and were more or less immune to local restrictions and laws.” Furthermore, an informant reported that Wright had once stated that “none of his boys would have to go to war under the draft law except over his dead body.”
Eventually, an FBI agent interviewed Wright about the allegations. “The subject steadfastly denied in any way influencing, counseling, or assisting members of his fellowship to declare conscientious objection and opposition to military service, noting that members of his group were serving in the armed forces at the time,” the agent wrote. However, Wright complained that the bill was “destroying his fellowship, scattering them around the world, and utterly destroying that in which they most sincerely believed,” the agent noted.
None of these wartime investigations resulted in charges against Wright. However, the FBI, perhaps guided by Hoover’s personal animus toward Wright, continued to monitor his activities long after the war’s end. In 1949, for example, the agency noted the appearance of Wright’s name on a list of supporters of the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, an event sponsored by an organization the House Un-American Activities Committee had labeled a communist front. Four years later, it recorded in Wright’s file his outspoken suggestion to First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, on a national television broadcast, that she moderate her husband’s military impulses. At the height of anti-communism at the time, the FBI found these accusations and expressions of Wright’s beliefs significant.
At the height of anti-communism at the time, the FBI considered these accusations and expressions of Wright’s beliefs significant. (13)
Notes
11
F.L. Wright Foundation. The Whirling Arrow.
The ancient Native Americans of the region, the O’odham, Piipaash, Hopi, Yavapai, and Apache, had engraved «a whirling arrow,» depicting a pair of intertwined spirals in a kind of handshake.
It was the symbol Wright used.
12
Mark Athitakis is a Phoenix-based journalist and critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and numerous other publications.
13
Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. The Whirling Arrow. Jack El-Hai is a journalist and author specializing in history and opens the FBI files. This article originally appeared in “Elevation,” the Fall 2017 issue of Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly.
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GB. Frank Lloyd Wright, Some Key Stages of His Life. Part 6. Ramps. (MBGB)