Meetings with Frank Lloyd Wright
Bernard Pyron

Patrick Kinney had taken a course under Professor John F. Kienitz
of the Art History Department at the University of Wisconsin. The course he took may have been on Wright because in 1957 I also took a course under Kienitz on Wright. Kienitz inspired Patrick Kinney to
ask Wright to design a home for him and Margaret.

I had already become interested in Frank Lloyd Wright when my wife and I arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, which is forty miles east
of Taliesin, Wright's Wisconsin home place. On a troop ship coming
home from the Korean War in 1952, I was reading The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, when a soldier came up and told me the novel was based upon the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. I had never heard of Wright before,
but when I got settled I began reading some of the books written by
Wright.

My study of Wright's houses of his last great creative period began when I started collecting a list of his houses since 1950.

I started on the project of gathering a list of Wright's houses since 1950
and on collecting photos of at least the Midwest houses in 1957. The project
was not done as course work in Art History, but grew out of a course
on Wright I had taken under Kienitz in the spring of 1957.

I gradually increased the number of houses since 1950 on my list by
talking to senior Wright apprentices and from the Burnham Library of
Architecture
of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bruce Radde, our companion on several
trips to see Wright houses, made up a list of Wright structures
from Henry-Russell Hitchcock's book, In the Nature of Materials, and from my list. At Falling Water, Bruce met Edgar Kaufman and got his list published in the 1960 book, Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings edited by Kaufman and Ben Raeburn. Later, in 1963 Raeburn of Horizon Press took my manuscript on Wright's houses since 1950 to Mrs. Wright to see at Taliesin West. I still don't know what happened to it. Only two chapters of the manuscript were published, both in the Art Journal, 1961 and 1963.

Then in late September of 1957 my wife and I with Walter Grey, a graduate student in music at Wisconsin, went to Taliesin, forty miles west of Madison.. Grey and I went up to
Wright sitting at a drawing board at Hillside and I started talking to Wright about my project and asked his permission to photograph his floor plans and perspective drawings for the houses since 1950. He agreed and said I was doing it for my own edification. He assigned John Ottenheimer, an apprentice, to work with me on photographing the stuff. At that time most of Wright's floor plans and perspective drawings were in drawers in some disarray in a small room in Hillside, to the east.

I did not spend much time talking to Wright that September day, but I
was impressed that he was easy to talk to and very approachable.

Then a year later in late September or early October of 1958 I wanted
to photograph more of Wright's plans and drawings of his houses of the
fifties. Gene Masselink, his secretary, had me make an official appointment
to see Wright. That day my wife and I spent about an hour with Wright.
I brought my black and white photos of his houses of the fifties and
carried with me a 35 mm slide projector to show him color slides of
his work.

This time I was impressed that a man who was 90 - though we thought he
was 88 at the time - was sharp mentallty and made comments on his
houses as I showed him photos I had taken. On one Michigan house with
a shed roof rising at one end and a too thin fireplace stack, he said
it fell apart.

He noted shadows under the eaves on some black and white photos of
houses and suggested I underdevelop the photo and then go back and rub in developer on all areas except under the eaves to solve this problem.

Wright showed that he had broad interests and knowledge of subjects
that one might not think a famous personality in art might have - such as
how to solve the problem of dark shadows under the eaves in black and
white photos. My impression was that for someone interested in his
houses, he did not put himself up above a lowly grad student from Texas
and his Texas wife.

He never became senile. At our meeting with him he had about seven
months to live. When we were departing, my wife and I reached out to
shake
hands with him at the same time and he said "I will shake both your
hands at the same time." Wright's wife had called him to leave us."
Bernard



Wright Coming Out of the Spring Green, Wisconsin High School In the Summer of 1957 Afer Giving a Talk There. Photo By Bernard Pyron



Wright Drawing on One of His Perspective Drawings Inside the Spring Green High School In the Summer of 1957. Photo By Bernard Pyron.

Patrick Kinney House,

Lancaster, Wisconsin 1952