From the School He Founded, Frank Lloyd Wright Articulates to a Mother How He Nurtures and Encourages “Talented Youngsters”

In 1931 Frank and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright circulated a prospectus to an international group of distinguished scholars, artists, and friends, announcing their plan to form a school at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin to “Learn by Doing.”   “The fine arts, so called,” they asserted, “should stand at the center as inspiration grouped about architecture…of which landscape and the decorative arts would be a division.” Education at Taliesin would emphasize painting, sculpture, music, drama, and dance “in their places as divisions of architecture.”

The Prairie School was established, and surrounded by bright, committed and energetic apprentices, Frank Lloyd Wright’s career as an architect found new vigor.The celebrated master expanded his vocabulary, and soon the students could learn as they worked on some of the most innovative buildings in America. The apprentices under his direction created renderings, made models, did the engineering and produced construction drawings. They supervised construction on projects like the Johnson Wax headquarters (Racine, WI), Fallingwater (Bear Run, PA) and the first Usonian houses. They did the first perspectives of the Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY) and Monona Terrace (Madison, WI). The Taliesin Fellowship had with astonishing speed developed into an exciting architectural laboratory which attracted some of the nation’s best work and hosted many of the world’s great artists and great minds.

Wright himself was involved in the instruction and took a personal hand in not only the apprentices’ education but in their development as adults.  This note, which perhaps has some autobiography in it, shows that he corresponded directly with the parents about their children in general and about how to handle intelligent children in particular. The approach he took in this correspondence could be quite unusual and reflect his own unique style of instruction and management.

Typed letter signed, October 7, 1952, on his Taliesin letterhead, to Mrs. Brissenden, signed in full “Frank Lloyd Wright,” which provides deep insight into how he motivated both his apprentices and their parents.  “Like all talented youngsters, Ronnie is a strange boy.  An introvert.   Some years hence, possibly an extrovert.  

“At Taliesin, he applies himself well and therefore really has little time to take on extra duties.  It is my intention that the boys go to bed at night tired.  The discipline is good for him but not probably for you.  I suggest (without being asked) the boy be allowed to vegetate. He is very much younger than his age or looks.

“Give him his head and time?”

At first glance, this appears to be a rather negative characterization of young Mr. Brissenden, saying in effect that he is immature. However, a deeper look shows that that is not so. Rather, Wright is saying the boy has good potential, which will manifest in time. But typically, Wright has chosen a very idiosyncratic way of expressing. Interestingly, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture still exists.