Happy 150th Birthday, Frank Lloyd Wright! (revised 2025)

Whenever anyone thinks of American architects, the first person who comes to mind for many is Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW). As the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation proudly proclaims "Frank Lloyd Wright changed the way we build and the way we live."

Frank Lloyd Wright, 1954

FLW was born on June 8, 1867 to William Carey Wright, a preacher and musician and Anna Lloyd Jones, a teacher in Richland Center, Wisconsin. His parents divorced when he was 18 years old. He attended the University of Wisconsin but not graduate. He moved to Chicago in 1887 in search of work. After short stints at the Joseph Lyman Silsbee and Beers, Clay, and Dutton firms, he apprenticed at the highly respected Adler and Sullivan firm in 1888. Following a dispute with Louis Sullivan, FLW opened his own practice in 1893. He died on April 9, 1959 in Phoenix, AZ at age 91.

He designed over 1100 structures in a career lasting 70 years. 532 of the designs were built. The Prairie Style with which he is closely associated is mostly horizontal in shape with one story low-pitched roofs, deep overhangs, and generally long rows of casement windows. The goal of his architecture was to be "organic," a physical manifestation of buildings in harmony with the natural environment in which they are placed. The Frank Lloyd Wright Trust provides information about and access to some of the structures FLW built in Chicago. Buffalo, NY has seven of his houses dating from its days as an industrial hub as the 1800s gave way to the early 20th century. FLW designed and built two houses in South Carolina: "Auldbrass Plantation" here in Beaufort County near Yemassee and "Broad Margin" in Greenville.

FLW's domestic life was often chaotic. Wright was known for his disinterest in traditional family life and had more than a few extramarital alliances, some which ended in matrimony, and some which did not. He married Catherine Lee "Kitty" Tobin on June 1, 1889. Together they had 6 children before they divorced in 1922. Perhaps the most notorious of the acknowledged relationships was Mamah Borthwick Cheney who would be killed along with two of her children and  four Taliesin workers by axe-wielding arsonist Taliesin servant, Julian Carlton, in 1914. Wife #2 was a morphine addict, Maude "Miriam" Noel. His third wife was Olga Lazovich Hinzenburg, a dancer whom he met in 1924 and married in 1928. Together they had a daughter and he adopted her daughter from Olga's marriage to Vlademar Hinzenberg, a Russian architect. Olga died in 1985. 

Aspects of his personal life has spawned fictional treatment and a real crime story of murder: 

• Death in a Prairie House : Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders by William R. Drennan, 2008.
• The Women : A Novel by T. C. Boyle, 2009. Olga is the main character in The Women.
• Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, 2007.
• Murder in Perspective : An Architectural Mystery, 1997.

Note: The image of Frank Lloyd Wright above was by New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer: Al Ravenna [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Latest revision: 8 May 2025-gmc

Frank Lloyd Wright's Auldbrass (revised)

Latest revision: 8 May 2025 - gmc

We seldom think of 20th century structures as "historic," but of course, they can be. Take for example, Auldbrass, a southern plantation complex designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) near Yemassee. Its design and erection had its trials and tribulations. 

The design process began in 1938. The Auldbrass Plantation complex was formally commissioned to FLW in 1939 by C. Leigh Stevens, an internationally known industrial consultant. According to David G. De Long, Stevens "would prove to be one of Wright's more demanding clients." Although spade work started in the fall of 1940, material and labor shortages caused by World War II and its aftermath slowed progress. Design and construction were complicated by fire, divorces, and ownership changes. Stevens who lived mostly near Boston MA became a part-year resident in 1946. Wright worked on Auldbrass alterations until his death in 1959. Stevens died in 1962. By the time of his death in 1962, the original cost estimate of $50,000 had turned into expenditures in excess of $250,000. 

In the mid-1970s, the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism considered buying it to turn the 3000 acres of the 4000 acre property into a state park. That plan did not come to fruition. Auldbrass was formally added to the National Register of Historic Places with a ceremony at the site on November 14, 1976. Stevens's daughter, Jessica Stevens Loring, sold the complex in 1979 and serious neglect took its toll. The buildings remained unfinished until Joel Silver, a successful Hollywood producer who had already rescued another Wright house, purchased the property in 1986 for approximately $148,000. He spent 15 years on Auldbrass's long delayed completion. Auldbrass is featured in Beaufort County Open Land Trust tours from time to time.

The Beaufort Gazette/Island Packet has a short slideshow about Auldbrass Plantation posted on its website. 

To read more about Auldbrass Plantation, we recommend these library resources:

• The BDC has a vertical file about AULDBRASS. 
• Charles N. Bayless Photographs (BDC only) C.N. Bayless Photographs in our Research Room include images taken on Auldbrass Plantation some of which have been digitized in the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) Collection by the Library of Congress. (Please note: The home is in Beaufort County, not Hampton County as indicated incorrectly in the documentation.) HABS documents achievements in architecture, engineering, and landscape design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types, engineering technologies, and landscapes, including examples as diverse as the Pueblo of Acoma, houses, windmills, one-room schools, the Golden Gate Bridge, and buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. You can also view photographs of the outlying buildings online through the Library of Congress.
• Auldbrass: Frank Lloyd Wright's Southern Plantation by David G. De Long, 2003. 
• Auldbrass: the Plantation Complex Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright: A Documented History of its South Carolina Lands by Jessica Stevens Loring, 1992. 
• Frank Lloyd Wright: The Masterworks by David Larkin and Bruce Brooks, 1993.
• If This House could Talk...: Historic Homes, Extraordinary Americans by Elizabeth Smith Brownstein, 1999.

FLW built over 1100 houses, commercial buildings and other structures during his long career. We recommend that you review these websites: 

•     List of Frank Lloyd Wright Works 
•     Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy
•     Frank Lloyd Wright's Work  by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
•     Public Wright Sites by the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust

If you want to read more about the architect and his work, Beaufort County Library has these materials to share with you:

• Frank Lloyd Wright by Meryle Secrest. 
• Frank Lloyd Wright: The Romantic Spirit by Carol Bishop
• Frank Lloyd Wright by Ken Burns [DVD]
• 20th Century America, 100 Influential People by Robert C. Baron
• About Wright: An Album of Recollections by Those Who Knew Frank Lloyd Wright by Edgar Tafel 
• History Makers: 100 Most Influential People of the Twentieth Century by Ian Whitelaw
• Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright by Paul Hendrickson
• The Gardens of Frank Lloyd Wright by Derek Fell
• The Story of Architecture by Jonathan Glancy
• The Wright Space: Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright's Houses by Grant Hildebrand

And, if you have a valid Beaufort County Library card and passwords for the subscription databases we provide through the "Research & Learn" tab on our library's homepage, you can learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright and Joel Silver in the Biography in Context database.