Frank Lloyd Wright / two sets of kitchen tools

Roy R. Behrens (©2026) digital collage

Edgar Tafel, About Wright: An Album of Recollections By Those Who Knew Frank Lloyd Wright (New York: John Wiley, 1993), p. 259—

It was arranged that we [members of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesen Fellowship] would arrive [at the home of Wright's cousin, Richard Lloyd Jones, in Tulsa, Oklahoma] in time for early dinner, see the house [which Wright had designed], and camp there in our sleeping bags for the night. After dinner Mrs. Jones took us around in a group, telling about living in the house: its excitement, the flow of spaces, and experiences of each season with light pouring in in different ways. The tour ended in the kitchen, where she made her final pronouncement: "We have two sets of kitchen utensils—one for cooking, of course, and the other to catch the water from the leaks."

Opening spread of chronology in Roy R. Behrens, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason: Architectural Heart of the Prairie, with photograph by Carol M. Highsmith. 

Frank Lloyd Wright and the Dessau Bauhaus

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City

One often hears people asking about the flow of influence between the German Bauhaus and American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Pertaining to that, it was interesting this morning to run across this passage from the memoir of an eyewitness who was present then—

•••

Matthew Josephson, Life Among the Surrealists. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962—

In Germany [in 1927]…I had been deeply impressed by my visit to the school of the Bauhaus-Dessau where Walter Gropius, [Laszlo] Moholy-Nagy, and their confreres carried on a movement for the teaching and propagation of modern industrial design. These people had been frank to tell me that much of their inspiration was derived from an American artist whom Americans scarcely knew: Frank Lloyd Wright.

Wright and Design

 

age-old Japanese motif in Kamerick Art Building

I became interested in the design of the Kamerick Art Building (on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa) on the first day I saw it in 1990. As a job applicant, I had been invited to speak in the auditorium that day, and, while giving that talk, I recognized the logo-like pattern with which it complies. In my most recent online video talk, I conclude by telling about my realization that day, and how it would later contribute to the experience of teaching design in that building for the next three decades (from 1990-2018). I say 38 years in the film, but it was only 28 years (further confirmation that I have never been good at math).

I was never certain who designed the building (the firm was credited but not the designer). But later, around 2015, while giving a Humanities Iowa talk in a library in Des Moines, I shared that story with the audience. After the talk, a man came up from the audience and introduced himself as the building’s architect. I was delighted when he told me that all my suspicions were accurate. 

Samuel Chamberlain's elaborate failed volvelle

Above Drawing by American artist Samuel Chamberlain. Born in 1895 in Cresco IA, he can’t have stayed there for long. He is buried in Marblehead MA, where he died in 1975. He grew up in Washington State, studied architecture at MIT, and served in both World Wars. He went on the become a widely-admired architectural illustrator and printmaker. His exquisite pencil renderings were often published in art-related periodicals, including the architectural journal Pencil Points. In the passage below, he seems to be describing his proposal (never published) for a wheel-like “information chart” (commonly called a volvelle), not unlike those included in Jessica Helfand’s book, Reinventing the Wheel (NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003) [see cover below].

•••

Samuel Chamberlain, Etched in Sunlight: Fifty years in the graphiuc arts. Boston: Boston Public Library, 1968, pp. 94 and 98—

Along with so much printmaking, I spent most of my spare time [c1938] on a totally different project—a wine chart. My interest in the red and white wines of France has always been intense and relentless, and I was determined to combine the graphic arts with gastronomy in one package that would appeal to all gastronomes and oenophiles. A richly decorative chart, brightened with maps, vignettes and pen-and ink sketches, was the result. Everything was hand-lettered. Openings of various sizes were cut in the chart, and these revealed information on various wines, lettered on a disk. Turn the disk to the right place and all the pertinent data on red Bordeaux, red Burgundy, or Cotes-du-Rhone wines would be progressively revealed. There was a descriptive essay on each wine, mention of good culinary companions, proper serving temperature, good recent years, and the significant names of each type of wine. On the other side of the disk was assembled the same information on the great French white wines, those of Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, Vouvray and Anjou, and Alsace. On the two faces of the chart were drawings of typical bottles and wine glasses, and suggestions of what harmonious wine to serve with food, from oysters, soups, fish, shellfish, chicken, red meats, game and cheese, down to desserts and pastry. There were pointers on the technique of serving wine and on secondary vintages, and a list of gastronomic enemies of wine, from anchovies to Tabasco sauce.

I am absolutely appalled at the magnitude of this undertaking, and feel now that my days would have been spent far more usefully…Once the chart was finished, I showed it to several publishers, all of whom turned it down because it presented too many production problems. It has been in my portfolio all these years, a reminder of a magnificent and earnest way to waste one's time.

Gertrude Käsebier's Portraits of Lakota Sioux

Article from The Iowa Source July 2021, p 10

On the evening of June 25, 1906, during a performance at Madison Square Garden in New York, a millionaire named Harry Thaw drew a pistol. Standing only two feet feet behind a prominent architect and socialite named Stanford White, he fired three times into his back, killing White instantly.

Thaw had recently married a chorus girl and actress named Evelyn Nesbit. In an effort to be straightforward, she revealed to him that, several years earlier, as a teenager, she had been sedated and seduced by White. At the time of the shooting, the public was well-acquainted with Nesbit. She was a popular model for artists and photographers, and a “Gibson girl” celebrity.

The best-known portrait of Nesbit, made in 1903, is an iconic image in the history of photography. The woman who made it, Iowa native Gertrude Käsebier (1852-1934), is now widely considered to be one of the finest photographers of the Modernist era. That ranking is not only based on her portrait of Nesbit—indeed, she was far more accomplished than that.

Käsebier (née Gertrude Stanton) had a photographic studio on Fifth Avenue in New York at the time that she photographed Nesbit. Her photographic career had taken off late in the 1890s, when Alfred Stieglitz published and exhibited her photographs. She was, he asserted, “the leading artistic portrait photographer of the day.”
more>>>

Below Roy R. Behrens, Death Announced, 2021. Digital montage. Among the background components is a press photograph (not by Gertrude Käsebier) of the public appearance of Evelyn Nesbit (shrouded) after the assassination of Stanford White by her husband, Harry Thaw.

Roy R. Behrens, copyright © 2021

Mason City's Prairie Landmarks—and Australia

Above A new article on Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Burley Griffin, Marion Mahony Griffin, and Prairie School architecture in Mason City, Iowa—and the surprising connection with Australia. Just published in The Iowa Source magazine, and now accessible online.

Peggy Bang in front of her home—the Melson House

wassily wassily I say unto you—please be seated

Above The latest in a sequence of historic views of various individuals posed in Marcel Breuer's celebrated "Wassily chair," Bauhaus-era. © Roy R. Behrens.

•••

Anon (children's nonsense verse)—

Come smoke a coca-cola
Drink catsup cigarettes
See Lillian Brussels wrestle
With a box of castanets
Pork and beans will meet tonight
And have a finished fight
Chauncey de Pew will lecture
on Sopolio tonight 
Bay rum is good for horses
It is best in town
Castoria cures the measles
If you pay five dollars down
Teeth extracted without pain
At the cost of half a dime
Overcoats are selling now
A little out of time
Do me a favor—drop dead.

Humanities Iowa | Program opportunities 2019

WPA mural by Orr Fisher

Since the mid-1990s, I've been associated with the Humanities Iowa Speakers Bureau. For all those years, I've been available to speak on subjects that pertain (in one way or another) to the history of the state. I've often given talks (sometimes as many as ten per year) at public libraries, historical societies, community centers, and so on. The talks are free and open to the public. They are funded by Humanities Iowa, which is part of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The requesting organization is charged only $50, while the HI picks up the additional costs of travel expenses, speaker's honorarium, and so on. What a great program.

Over the years, the talks I've offered have usually been about Frank Lloyd Wright, Grant Wood, Buffalo Bill, World War I camouflage (which Iowans contributed to), and so on. A few days ago, I gave my presentation on Buffalo Bill (which includes an account of the plight of the Native Americans during the dreadful Indian Wars) at the Story County Conservation Center, just north of Ames IA. The large audience (around 100 people) was absolutely wonderful, and, as usual, I had a truly delightful time.

The downside is that it was probably the last time I'll present my talk about Buffalo Bill, which has easily had the most requests. With my retirement from teaching, I decided it was time to offer new topics. My new talks are listed on the HI website here. One of those talks is about the WPA (Works Progress Administration), one of the government programs set up by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Depression Era, as I described in an essay I wrote years ago. One facet of that enabled unemployed artists to apply to create public murals for permanent installation in US post offices. It's surprising how many of these have survived. Reproduced above is one of my favorites, titled The Corn Parade, a painting by Orr Fisher in the US Post Office in Mount Ayr IA.

Frank Lloyd Wright and Ezra Pound

Frank Lloyd Wright Posters © Roy R. Behrens 2017-18

I ran across this recently in Humphrey Carpenter's gargantuan biography, A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound New York: Dell, 1990, p. 832. It has to do with the controversy in the fall of 1957 about what do with American poet Ezra Pound. At the end of World War II, he had been arrested in Italy by the US Army, and charged with making treasonous (and anti-Semitic) wartime radio broadcasts against President Franklin D. Roosevelt and in praise of Mussolini. Brought back to the US, it was decided that he was mentally unfit to stand trial, and was instead committed to St. Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital in Washington DC.  A dozen years later, when his release became a possibility, there was much debate about where he should be permitted to live (he moved back to Italy). Lots of people offered suggestions about what should happen to Pound—even architect Frank Lloyd Wright—

[Editor and publisher James Laughlin] reported that Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, was willing for Ezra to come and live with him at Taliesin West, the house had designed for himself near Phoenix AZ.  This prospect greatly tickled [poet Robert] Frost, especially as he had feared the spectacle of Ezra leaning across his own fence. "I can hardly resist the temptation of putting Ezra and Frank Lloyd Wright in the same gun turret," he wrote, "but we must be serious where so much is at stake for poor Ezra. I should think he might acceapt a house from the great architect for the great poet at a safe distance."

Below A spread from our book on Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie. It is not a book about his marital indiscretions, his arrogance or his leaky roofs. Nonetheless, it has often ranked among the top selling books about Wright on Amazon since its publication in 2017.

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City

High Backs, Ladder Backs, Glasgow Grids

Above One of the slides featured in a talk by Roy R. Behrens, titled Sitting Down with Frank Lloyd Wright. Presented at the annual gathering called An Afternoon with Frank Lloyd Wright, Cedar Rock State Park (Walter Residence), Quasqueton IA, on October 13, 2018.

Kevin Nute on Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan

If I named a single book from which, more than any other, I learned about the architecture and beliefs of Frank Lloyd Wright (and the source of his influences), my first choice would easily be Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan: The Role of Traditional Japanese Art and Architecture in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright by Kevin Nute, who teaches architecture at the University of Oregon. I was fortunate to buy a copy when it was published in 1994, nearly twenty-five years ago.

Only yesterday, I was delighted to find that Professor Nute will soon be talking about Wright in Japan at the Architectural Interpretive Center in Mason City IA. The lecture begins at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, July 10, 2018. It is free and open to the public.

Top Selling | Frank Lloyd Wright & Mason City

Digital montage (2017)

Publisher's description of Roy R. Behrens, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie. Charleston SC: The History Press, 2016 (repeatedly ranked in recent months among top best-selling books on Frank Lloyd Wright on Amazon)—

In the early 1900s, Frank Lloyd Wright transformed a small midwestern prairie community into one of the world’s most important architectural destinations. Mason City, Iowa, became home to his City National Bank and Park Inn—the last surviving Wright hotel. In addition, his prototype Stockman House helped launch the Prairie School architectural style. Soon after, architect Walter Burley Griffin followed in Wright’s footsteps, designing a cluster of Prairie School homes in the Rock Crest/Rock Glen neighborhood. Design historian Roy Behrens leads the way through Mason City’s historic development from the Industrial Revolution to the modern era of Frank Lloyd Wright.  
    

Book Review | Frank Lloyd Wright & Mason City

Jerome Klinkowitz, in "Right Here in River City: An Iowa Community at the Prairie School's Edge: A Review of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City by Roy R. Behrens" in Universitas (University of Northern Iowa). Vol 12, 2016-2017—

…it is to Behrens's credit that his comprehension of the [Prairie School] movement reaches well beyond the limits that some commentators would impose…

No scholar has identified both the process of organic architecture and its sources more succinctly or with such clarity of thought. More>>>

Mason City, Wright and Book Design

Poster © Roy R. Behrens 2017

Above Frank Lloyd Wright’s achievements in book design will be the subject of an evening talk during National Library Week at the Mason City Public Library, in Mason City IA. Titled Frank Lloyd Wright: Mason City and Book Design, the one-hour presentation will start at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, April 11, 2017. The speaker is author and design historian Roy R. Behrens, who teaches graphic design at the University of Northern Iowa.

Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect, art collector and teacher. His Mason City landmarks are widely known, consisting of the Stockman House, and the City National Bank and Historic Park Inn Hotel. But he also designed furniture, fabrics, dinnerware and stained glass windows. It is not usually noted that he was also a book designer.

In a richly illustrated talk, Behrens will focus on Wright’s efforts at book design, beginning in 1898 with The House Beautiful, a hand-bound letterpress book about interior home design. In that and subsequent efforts, Wright was influenced by various trends in architecture and design, among them the Arts and Crafts Movement, Japonisme, Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

Among Wright’s friends were two prominent book designers, Elbert Hubbard and Merle Armitage. The latter grew up in Mason City, and went on to become the manager and promoter for ballerina Anna Pavlova, operatic soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, humorist Will Rogers, and other star performers. He wrote and designed books about some of the finest artists of the twentieth century, including Martha Graham, Igor Stravinsky, George Gershwin and Edward Weston.

Also featured will be the work of New York publisher Steven Clay, a Mason City native who graduated from Mason City High School in 1969. After moving to New York in the 1980s, Clay established Granary Books, which became a leading distributor of limited edition, experimental “artist books.” In 2013, the archive of Granary Books was acquired by the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University, calling it “one of the country’s most significant artist book publishers.”

In addition to slide examples of the books of Wright, Armitage and others, the talk will include a selection of the actual books from the speaker’s book collection. The event is free and open to the public.

•••

Roy R. Behrens, UNI Professor of Art and Distinguished Scholar, teaches graphic design and design history. He is internationally-known for his publications about art, design and the history of camouflage. The author of eight books and hundreds of published articles, he has appeared in films and interviews on NOVA, National Public Radio, 99% Invisible, Australian Public Television, BBC and IPTV. His most recent book is Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).

Review | Frank Lloyd Wright & Mason City

Poster © Roy R. Behrens (2017)

Above Roy R. Behrens, digital montage regarding Frank Lloyd Wright (2017) in relation to Prairie School architectural landmarks. Sources images include art glass window diagram from Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs (based on window in the Robie House in Chicago), and designer's photograph of the Spirit of Mercury by Richard Bock, commissioned by Wright as a recurrent motif in his City National Bank and Park Inn Hotel in Mason City (1910).

•••

Book review on GoodReads (four stars out of five) of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie. Charleston SC: The History Press, 2016—

I recently visited Wright's Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob houses in Pennsylvania and enjoyed seeing both of those homes. Having spent many summer vacations in Mason City as a youth, I was thrilled to stumble upon this book and excited to read about Wright's architectural impact on this small Iowa town. I think the author did a fine job of showcasing Wright's work in Mason City while incorporating some of Wright's personal (and scandalous!) history with the evolution of this north central Iowa town.

Duplicitous Serenity | Frank Lloyd Wright

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND MASON CITY (2016)

Above Roy R. Behrens, digital montage portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright (2017).

•••

What was it like to encounter for the first time the Midwestern prairie, not yet dominated by Euro-Americans at the time of the American Revolutionary War? Below is a description, based on eyewitness accounts from 1782, as invading American troops were in pursuit of Native Americans who had sided with the British.

Allan W. Eckert, That Dark and Bloody River: Chronicles of the Ohio River Valley. New York: Bantam Books, 1996, p. 342—

For those of the army who had never before seen the Sandusky Plains [in Ohio], their first view of it yesterday was breathtaking. The heavily forested hills through which they had been riding for the better part of a week had abruptly leveled out into high plains, with vast fields of grass as far as the eye could see. Their guides told them this type of terrain would continue all the way to the Sandusky towns, still some 30 miles distant: deep, thick grasses that were emerald green in their lush new growth and so high that the early morning dew soaked their horses and bathed the riders themselves to their waists. There was a deceptive sense of peace to the vista and a strong illusion that they had entered upon an expansive green sea where the surface was calm and smooth except where breezes touched down and rippled the grass in pleasant swaths all the way to the western horizon. The illusion of a sea was further enhanced by, here and there in the distance, great isolated groves of trees projecting above the grasses, appearing to be a series of lovely islands. So strong was this sense, in fact, that almost immediately the men referred to these groves as islands and dubbed them colorful names based on their size or shape or color. Smaller groves, hazy and indistinct in the distance, loomed above the grasses like ships traversing the sea from one of the larger islands to another.

Some of the men, however, viewed the deep grass with a rise of fear; in this sort of cover, a whole great army of Indians could lie hidden beyond detection, abruptly to rise at any given moment and pour a devastating fire into the troops. Their fear became infectious, and soon the initial serenity of the scene was replaced in the men's minds with uneasy expectation.

Wright and Mason City's Architectural Gems

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND MASON CITY •

Above Some of the great treasures of American architecture are located in Mason City IA, two hours south of Minneapolis (or two hours north of Des Moines). The downtown is the setting of the magnificently restored Historic Park Inn Hotel, a tandem two-part structure, that originally also housed the City National Bank, the sole surviving hotel designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is now both a hotel and an events center, with rooms restored to replicate the original Wright design. There is also a Wrightian restaurant, with an excellent menu. The hotel entrance is adjacent to the city park—it's the park that was famously featured in the Broadway musical and film The Music Man, a story that's based on the memories of Meredith Willson, who grew up in what is sometimes called "River City."  It's a great architectural treat to visit Mason City, as flocks of world-wide tourists have found since, fully restored, it reopened several years ago. The Condé Nast Traveler recently declared it "one of the 14 best cities for architectural lovers."

To experience Wright's City National Bank and Park Inn Hotel is itself sufficient reward. But that's only part of the story. Just five blocks east of the hotel is an historically significant cluster of Prairie School homes in a purposely designed neighborhood that borders both sides of Willow Creek. The precisely landscaped neighborhood was designed by Wright's associate, Walter Burley Griffin. Most of the planning drawings were made by another Wright associate, Marion Mahony (one of the first female architects, especially admired for her extraordinary drawings), who was also Griffin's spouse. Known as Rock Crest / Rock Glen, about nineteen houses were planned but only half of those were built. But the ones that were completed are both exquisite and well-maintained.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND MASON CITY •

On the northern edge of this historic neighborhood is the relocated and exactly restored Stockman House, an early Wright prototype for a fireproof two-story Prairie School home. It is now a house museum, and is frequently open for guided tours. And on the property adjoining that is the recently constructed Robert E. McCoy Architectural Interpretive Center, which serves as an informational hub, a gift shop, and a gathering place for talks about Mason City architecture.

To my mind, among the highlights of Mason City's architectural gems is a residence called the Melson House. It was constructed on a limestone cliff on the Rock Crest side of the neighborhood, overlooking the creek and the houses that make up the opposite side, the level bank that called Rock Glen. The significance of the Melson House is discussed in Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (pp. 114-115)—

As H. Allen Brooks has said, it (the Melson House)  is "a master stroke" in which [Walter Burley] Griffin "turned the cliff to his advantage," with the result that the building is "partly hewn, [and] partly growing from the striated cliff." Amazingly, as [C.J.] Hurley notes, "although the almost fortress-like structure appears to be part of the cliff face, the interior is open and spacious, human in its scale, proportions and liveability."

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND MASON CITY •

The owners of the Melson House are Roger and Peggy Bang, who have long been active in Mason City's efforts to restore its architectural gems. Peggy has recently published a book (The Melson House Revealed: An Owner's Perspective) [see cover below] about all the pleasures as well as frustrations involved in maintaining the verve of this astonishing landmark—while also living in it.

• All posters by Roy R. Behrens © 2017. Photo of Melson House © Peggy L. Bang. Other images courtesy Wikimedia.

THE MELSON HOUSE REVEALED

Frank Lloyd Wright Swats Fellow Architects

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND MASON CITY •

Maria Durell Stone (wife of architect Edward Durell Stone) in Edgar Tafel, Ed., About Wright: An Album of Recollections by Those Who Knew Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: John Wiley, 1993, p. 57—

A few hours after I arrived at Taliesin [in 1954] we dined with others outside under a large tree. Flies, for some reason, were prolific on this warm spring day. [Frank Lloyd] Wright remedied this annoyance by having a fly swatter next to his chair. As a fly landed, he would pick up the swatter and take precise aim. "That's [Walter] Gropius," he jovially exclaimed, and then he would take aim again at another unsuspecting fly. "And that's [Le] Corbusier," he would add, until dead flies littered the table and he had struck down the so-called hierarchy of modern architecture.

• Design by Roy R. Behrens, using public domain portrait photograph (colorized) of Wright (c1926), from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs, and his own photograph of the restored City National Bank and Park Inn in Mason City IA, now officially known as the Historic Park Inn Hotel.

Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra

The Stockman House | Mason City IA (1908) •

Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND MASON CITY: Architectural Heart of the Prairie. Charleston SC: The History Press, 2016, pp. 15-16—

Soon after his arrival in the U.S., a young German architect named Richard Neutra was walking through the neighborhoods of the Hyde Park area of Chicago, looking for Prairie School houses.

Earlier, in a European library, he had seen the Wasmuth Portfolio, an album of early buildings by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Now, he had come to Chicago to search for one of Wright’s most admired designs, the famous Frederick C. Robie House on Woodlawn Avenue.

Standing at last in the presence of the Robie House, Neutra was infused with emotion. He rang the doorbell and asked in broken English, “Is Mr. Robie in?” The present owner, who answered the door, replied, “Mr. Robie? Never heard of him.” There had been a succession of owners, and she had bought the house, she explained, because it was “very cheap” and the previous owner “had to get out.” She didn’t particularly like its design, Neutra recalled, and “had all kinds of petty criticisms.” 

In his autobiography, Neutra recalled that this happened repeatedly as he visited famous American buildings, well-known and admired by European architects. Inevitably, he found that the current residents (and their neighbors) had little or no understanding of the importance of the buildings that surrounded them. He was overtaken by what he described as a “sad wonderment.”

“I had arrived in fairyland,” he said, “but the fairies had gone. And the occupants of the enchanted forest looked entirely inconsistent and contradictory to what their setting called for. I was downcast, broken, and puzzled.”

Later, when Neutra actually met Frank Lloyd Wright, he told him how surprised he was that Chicago’s Prairie School houses were not surrounded by prairie. When those homes were built, he asked, were they then in the prairie?

“No,” Wright answered, “there was no prairie…but it was the spirit of the prairie that was recaptured with it and in it.”

• Design by Roy R. Behrens, using public domain portrait photograph (colorized) of Wright (c1926), from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs, and a photograph of the Stockman House by Pamela V. White (2007), from Creative Commons, Wikipedia.

Frank Lloyd Wright and the Real River City

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mason City (2016)

From an unpublished review by Paul D. Whitson of FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie. Charleston SC: History Press, 2016—

[This book is] A masterly detailed romp (staccato vivace) through the cultural and architectural history of the persons, structures, and interrelations emergent along the 1908-1911 timeline in Mason City, Iowa. Although the City National Bank, Park Inn, and Stockman residence by Frank Lloyd Wright are central, equal attention is given to the Rock Crest/Rock Glen residences actuated by the "Griffins," Byrne, Blythe, Broaten, Drummond, and Besinger. Instructive insights into the principles of design, essences of organic logic, and exposed peccadillos (good and not so) of the chief actors pleasantly compliment the illustrative architectural heart of the once prairie village. A five-star read (romp) indeed.