mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
YOU WILL NEED
A way with women
A flexible moral compass
One At a Time
Frank Lloyd Wright, the man who revolutionized American architecture, was equally, uh, revolutionary, when it came to his love life. In 1889, he married Catherine Lee Clark Tobin and set about raising a family of six with her. However, that version of his personal life came to an abrupt end in 1909, when Wright went on an extended vacation to Berlin, Germany—with Margaret Cheney, the wife of a client, in tow. The pair spent more than two years in Europe before returning to Chicago and starting a new life as man and wife (though not legally, as Catherine refused to grant him a divorce). That second coupling would only last until 1914, but, to be fair, its end wasn’t Wright’s fault. That year, a disgruntled member of the family’s hired help set the Wrights’ house on fire after locking all but one door. As the former Mrs. Cheney, her two children, and two other guests fled the fire, the workman axed them to death. The freak incident plunged Wright into depression bad enough to distract him from his work, but not bad enough to keep him from hooking up with another woman less than a year later. He spent seven years with that woman, Miriam Noel, before finally getting his divorce from Catherine in 1922. He married Noel the next year. But, by 1924, Miriam left him, an event from which Wright quickly recovered by falling in love with a Yugoslavian ballerina named Olga Hinzenberg. Amazingly, this relationship managed to last to the end of the architect’s life in 1959.
Simultaneously
While Wright cornered the market on serial sort-of monogamy, fellow architect Louis Kahn kept a slightly busier schedule. Beginning around the early 1950s and until he died in 1974, Kahn kept three different sets of women and children, only one of which he was actually legally wed to. Despite the fact that this was pretty much an open secret in architecture circles, his New York Times obituary famously listed only his wife and her daughter as survivors, leaving out his other two children (and their mothers) entirely.
Wow, no wonder George Costanza always wanted to tell people he was an architect. . .
posted by Cynthia on 7-31-2007 at 9:46 am
Maybe that’s why Wright’s buildings often need extraordinary measures to keep from falling down — he was all about looks and not about things enduring.
Straight talk from Sid.
posted by Sid Morrison on 7-31-2007 at 12:40 pm
Well, to come to Wrights defense. When he designed Fallingwater he had a support wall that Edgar Kauffman, the businessman and amateur architect who commissioned the house, said was unneccessary. Wright insisted on the wall so Kauffman told the workmen to build the wall but make it stop 3 inches short of the balcony above, leaving a gap. Kauffman later showed Wright that the balcony was well supported without the wall by showing him the gap. The main problem with Wrights buildings is that the concrete is cracking after seventy or so years of existence.
posted by Tdave on 8-1-2007 at 1:54 am
Unfortunately “Fallingdownwater” (heh heh) isn’t the only example. Wright was arguably a talented stylist and artist, but a mediocre architect, because a real architect has to understand structural engineering, building science, and strength of materials. Wright paid those very very short shrift. High $ custom commision buildings should last HUNDREDS of years with ordinary maintenance, not require extraordinary intervention to keep from falling down in the scant decades after their completition. No excuses (well, OK, the fire at Taliesin wasn’t the fault of faulty architecture!)
posted by Sid Morrison on 8-1-2007 at 6:39 am
*cough*flatroofs*cough*
posted by Maggie on 8-1-2007 at 8:06 am
If we’re really on the subject of being a “ladies man”…maybe it would be appropriate to discuss the possible reasons why these ladies left/he left. FLW was rumored to have encouraged orgies, swinging and homosexuality with his students at his Taliesin West compound in an effort to push their boundaries. Maybe the wifeys didn’t know what they were getting in to!
posted by lulu on 8-1-2007 at 9:03 am
When Mr. & Mrs. Kauffman visited their son at Taliesin, Mrs.K told her husband that she was somewhat disturbed by the amount of what she described as “camaraderie” among the males.
posted by Tdave on 8-1-2007 at 10:21 pm