In the mid-1960s, Americans decided it was time to preserve their past. That’s when federal protective status was first granted to historic districts, including Charleston’s in South Carolina and the Vieux Carré in New Orleans, and in 1966, the National Register of Historic Places was created. But for all of the interest in preserving America’s meaningful landmarks, the midcentury sense of history was narrow in scope; preservationist zeal largely focused its efforts on buildings and districts established before the Gilded Age, with a particular emphasis on the Revolutionary Era. (For example, the first site placed on the register was Slater Mill in Rhode Island, built in the 1790s.) The 20th century wasn’t yet considered worth preserving.

That began to change after major works of more recent architecture were destroyed, including New York’s original Penn Station and Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler’s Garrick Theater in Chicago, which was leveled for a parking garage. The tide shifted in the early 1970s as preservationists and the surviving families of important American architects began to understand that if modern architecture wasn’t protected, then it would be perpetually endangered. And a significant change was spurred by the work of one architect in particular: Frank Lloyd Wright. Protecting his work was a paradigm shift in historic preservation and, in response, a number of organizations (foundations, a trust, and conservancies) were formed to protect individual buildings. The result today is a web of nonprofits that effectively own different pieces of Wright and his work, sometimes with competing visions for his legacy and what it entails. This patchwork approach isn’t specific to Wright, but as arguably the most famous American architect, he produced work that is effectively the model for protecting architectural landmarks in the United States—for better and for worse.

Wright died in 1959, leaving behind a vast body of work scattered throughout the nation after executing over 500 buildings in his lifetime. High-profile commissions like the one he received from New York’s Guggenheim Museum, combined with his distinctive style and scandalous personal life, had made Wright a household name. (Ayn Rand is said to have modeled her most famous protagonist after him.) Despite his fame, Wright’s work wasn’t immune to the urban reshaping that led to the destruction of many 20th- century landmarks. The Chicago home he designed and built for Oscar and Katherine Steffens, for instance, was demolished in 1963, making way for a housing development, and other works of his were torn down in his lifetime. Protecting Wright’s work, however, was a complicated endeavor. Most of his work was in private hands, and homeowners like the Steffenses were free to sell to the highest bidder, regardless of architectural significance. (This wasn’t particularly unusual for works of modern architecture; when Ray Eames wanted to preserve her and Charles’s Los Angeles house, she couldn’t find a single extant institution that would guarantee it wouldn’t sell the home within a decade.)

It became clear that if there wasn’t a concerted effort to protect Wright’s work, much of it would vanish, eroding not just our collective architectural inheritance but Wright’s reputation as well. In response, distinct groups of preservationists sought to protect his homes and workspaces—namely, his Oak Park Home and Studio in Illinois, Taliesin in Wisconsin, and Taliesin West in Arizona—but their interpretations of Wright’s legacy often differed.

The Village of Oak Park, a tony suburb of Chicago and home to dozens of Wright’s buildings, was one of the first to take action. In 1970, its Citizens Action Committee identified work by Wright and his acolytes with the purpose of protecting it. The committee was particularly interested in the home and studio, where Wright did his professional work for more than a decade.

Wright built the Oak Park Home and Studio in 1889 with money borrowed from Louis Sullivan. He worked there until 1909, during that time achieving “broad recognition as a leading American architect,” according to architectural historian Lisa D. Schrenk. Oak Park was both where he lived with his first wife and children as well as where he eventually established his own workshop, training young architects. (In addition to buildings designed by Wright, the neighborhood is home to many of his acolytes’ work.) Though Wright left Oak Park in 1909, writing that his “family life…conspired against the freedom to which I had come to feel every soul entitled,” he continued to remodel the home and studio until 1956, shortly before his death. Oak Park, Schrenk writes, held “deep personal significance,” making it one of Wright’s most consequential buildings. But even before his death, the home was no longer in his or his family’s possession, because he had used it to secure substantial loans.

When the Village of Oak Park formed its Citizens Action Committee, the home and studio were still privately owned. Even though they were open for tours and their owners were using the entry fees to “further their twenty-year effort to restore the house to its original appearance,” according to a 1966 newsletter from the Society of Architectural Historians, the home and studio had undergone extensive renovations.

Oak Park went up for sale in 1972. It took a few years, but eventually the Oak Park Development Corporation partnered with the National Trust for Historic Preservation to buy the home and the site. The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation was established to manage the property and oversee its eventual restoration. The foundation evolved into the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, and the National Trust leased the home and studio to it “for a nominal fee over a period up to 40 years,” writes architectural historian Richard Longstreth in the 2023 book Rethinking Frank Lloyd Wright. (The trust went on to purchase the home in 2012.)

What emerges from a close look at the foundation and the trust are differing views of an architect and what preservation of his work means.

Today the trust has expanded to oversee four of Wright’s major sites, including the Frederick C. Robie House in Hyde Park, Illinois. As a 501(c)3, the trust focuses on historic preservation, as well as exhibitions and education. Its purpose differs slightly from that of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, a separate 501(c)3 based in Arizona with a slightly different name. Unlike the trust, the foundation was established by Wright himself in 1940. In a 2021 interview, Stuart Graff, the foundation’s current president and CEO, said Wright formed it to “perpetuate his architectural ideas, known as organic architecture, ‘to make life more beautiful, the world a better one for living in, and to give reason, rhyme, and meaning to life.’” Wright endowed the foundation with the places that became his homes and studios after he left Oak Park: Taliesin in Wisconsin, where he lived off and on from 1911 until his death, and Taliesin West, his winter studio from 1937.

After Wright’s death, his third wife, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, continued to live in Taliesin West and became the president of the foundation. In her 1979 letter to the National Register of Historic Places, requesting that Taliesin West be considered for the registry, she wrote, “I believe that the two Taliesins, both of which were built by my husband, should be considered together as a unique expression of his work and that the Landmark designation be extended to Taliesin West, as it has been to Taliesin in Wisconsin.” Taliesin West was designated a national landmark in 1982.

Further complications lie ahead: Though the foundation owns Taliesin, the building is managed by Taliesin Preservation, a separate 501(c)3 established in 1993 with an $8 million loan from the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority. The purpose of that money was location specific, meant to preserve and restore the house while also adding outbuildings for visitors. Taliesin Preservation functions more like the trust. The foundation’s goals, on the other hand, are broader; they focus on preserving the two Taliesins as much as on furthering Wright’s reputation, continuing to ensure that his recognizable style is disseminated and alive.

Home and Studio in Oak Park, Illinois." layout="wide" credit="James Caulfield, courtesy Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, Chicago" photoUserId=""/>

The foundation also runs the newly formed initiative Taliesin Institute, which teaches the “history and future of organic architectural principles.” But, perhaps more significantly, the foundation licenses Wright’s work, which includes the tchotchkes available at virtually every museum store. That reproduction of a Wright lamp your mom gave you for Christmas? It was probably licensed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. But the licensing isn’t limited to curios: It also works with partners like Brizo, which makes bathroom hardware inspired by Wright’s organic architecture. There’s a collaboration with Steelcase on a line of office furniture and even entire houses from Lindal Cedar Homes. (Lindal’s president is on the foundation’s board of trustees.) Then there are Wright-inspired New Balance sneakers produced with trendy street-wear label/retailer Kith. According to the foundation, the mission of its licensing program is to promote “beautifully designed products that allow people to bring Wright’s ideas into their lives.”

A partnership with Kith might seem far afield from Wright’s idiosyncratic ideas about architecture, to say nothing of his deep and abiding commitment to design inspired by natural elements, and what emerges from a close look at the foundation and the trust are differing views of an architect and what preservation of his work means. The Wright of Taliesin was an established architect designing the Guggenheim Museum who had abandoned his family life in pursuit of what he described as “voluntary exile.” As such, the foundation is deeply invested in ensuring Wright’s place as the father of modern American architecture, cultivating the legacy of an undoubted genius whose work is perpetually relevant, even to Gen Z–focused brands. The Wright of Oak Park was still a young family man eager to experiment and establish himself and build his atelier, and the preservation of Wright’s Oak Park was part of a larger community-driven project to restore numerous architecturally important works. Though Wright’s works and presence loom large in Oak Park’s ongoing preservation efforts, he is part of a larger project. The story of those Wrights also diverges from the obstinate architect of Fallingwater, the iconic vacation home commissioned by Edgar Kaufmann and donated to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Unlike the Taliesins, most of Wright’s work for Fallingwater is in the public domain.

In 2019, eight of Wright’s buildings were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list, including Taliesin and Taliesin West, becoming the first works of modern architecture in the U.S. given that designation. The effort was led by yet another organization: the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, a nonprofit that doesn’t own any Wright properties but is dedicated to preserving his work. Like the foundation and trust, it’s rooted in the preservationist spirit of the ’70s, the result of a paradigm shift inspired by Wright’s work. Though the existing foundations, trust, and conservancies are a complex web, they’ve succeeded, accidentally or otherwise, at one common goal: building a model for preserving architecture, broadening our sense of what is historically valuable, and using sometimes competing mythologies to get it done.

Top Image: Frank Lloyd Wright at the Frederick C. Robie House in March, 1957, Chicago. Chicago Sun-Times. Courtesy Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, Chicago

—

Head back to the November/December 2023 issue homepage