A Frank Lloyd Wright Road Trip


 
Always fascinated by Frank Lloyd Wright but knowing his work only through the photographs of other people, my husband (a former home-builder) and I (a former Art History major) decided to take a side trip after our annual visit to Washington, D.C. and drive up to western Pennsylvania to visit Fallingwater before returning home to Florida.

Frank Lloyd Wright -- ArchitectOur plans for a “side trip” quickly developed into a “pilgrimage” as we added Oak Park, Illinois to our itinerary — something we felt compelled to do because, well, we be both needed to see where Mr. Wright began his amazing and unparalleled career.

Armed with William Storrer’s complete catalog of Wright’s work as we traveled, we digressed repeatedly from our planned route and searched for Wright houses hidden deep inside suburban neighborhoods along the interstate highways. Some we found, most we didn’t.

This web site shares the photographs we took on our trip in the Fall of 2000 and some that were taken on subsequent trips. Since that first trip to Fallingwater, we’ve been able to visit and photograph more than eighty residential and non-residential buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Most of the photographs were taken by my husband, Robert, who doesn’t object to lying on his back in the middle of the street to “get the right angle.” Some were taken by me. Our road trip to Oak Park happened in mid-September, as did our later trips. Subsequently, all the leaves were still on the trees which made it difficult, in some cases, to photograph the buildings — for an unobstructed view of Mr. Wright’s buildings, a trip in the dead of winter is recommended. We hope these images inspire you to take your own road trip because the most important thing we learned on ours is this: no photograph can fully communicate the experience of standing in (or near) a space created by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Note: dates on this site conform to those in The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright by William Allin Storrer (2nd edition, 1995). In most cases, these appear to be design dates rather than construction dates.