by Edward Penn

Created on: May 21, 2008   Last Updated: June 23, 2008

Frank Lloyd Wright was a world renowned architect, interior decorator, writer, and art collector. The name Frank Lloyd Wright has become synonymous with American Architecture, as he is the greatest known and most influential American architect to date.

Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin on June 8th, 1867, the son of musician and pastor, William Cary Wright and Anna Lloyd Jones. Early on, his mother had high hopes for Wright, it is reported that she even proclaimed that "he would grow up to build buildings" and she hung engravings of famous European cathedrals all round his nursery as to cultivate in him a love of architecture. And Wright, in his autobiography, cites a set of building blocks that his mother gave him as being "deeply influential to his architectural work" he also said that the summers he spent at his uncle's farm brought out in him a love of nature which later became a dominant theme in his designs.

At the age of 12 Wright moved with his family to Madison, Wisconsin where he attended high school, however, at the age of 15 he left without graduating and began working for Allan Conover, a local builder. Conover was also a professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Wisconsin where he helped the young Wright to get admitted as a special student. Wright attended Draftmanship classes there for two years but again left before he graduated.

In 1887 Wright moved to Chicago, Illinois which, at that time, was a Mecca for builders and architects as the city was undergoing a massive reconstruction due to the devastation of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Wright's uncle, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, helped him get a job as a draftsman with Joseph Lyman Silsbee, a Chicago architect who was commissioned to design the Unity chapel for his uncle, which Wright did some work on.

Wright soon left his job with Silsbee to work with the firm of Adler and Sullivan, who's designs were bolder and more suited to Wrights style and talents. Louis Sullivan was considered one of the greatest architects of his time and was one of Wright's primary influences. Wright adopted Sullivan's philosophy of form follows function as well as his belief that American architecture should be based on American function rather than European tradition.

In 1889 Wright met Catherine Tobin whom he later married and with five thousand dollars loaned to him by his boss Louis Sullivan, the two built a home in Oak Park, Illinois where they had five children together. Wright's family was not the

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