At 151, famed architect still has the Wright stuff
Simon and Garfunkel may have memorably sung about saying “so long” to Frank Lloyd Wright, but we certainly haven’t: Popular interest in the famed architect is going strong.
Earlier this spring, Wright expert Tim Totten drew full houses to talks at Winter Park’s Casa Feliz about Wright’s legacy in Florida; audience members traded stories about visits to Wright sites, especially Fallingwater in western Pennsylvania — named by Smithsonian magazine as one of the globe’s must-see spots, right up there with the Pyramids of Giza and the Grand Canyon.
Wright would have been 151 on June 8, 2018 — he was born in 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War. (He died on April 9, 1959, at 91.) Last year, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation planned special programs to celebrate his legacy at 150, and many of those resources are still available online, including the strawberry-jam-laced recipe for his favorite birthday cake — just put “Frank Lloyd Wright” and “birthday” into your favorite search engine, and you should find some fun stuff.
It’s great to visit Fallingwater and other far-flung Wright sites of renown, but we’re also got some great ones right here in Florida, including the state’s capital. National Register of Historic Places in 1979. After George Lewis died in 1996, Clifton Lewis and others formed the Spring House Institute to preserve the property as a community resource. She died in 2014.
The Spring House Institute continues work to restore the house — the only built private residence designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Florida. Much work lies ahead, says Byrd Lewis Mashburn, and much public support is needed. She’s grateful for the visitors who come from all over the world to see the house, but it needs plenty of work. No one ever said Wright’s buildings were a snap to maintain.
Currently, Spring House is open to visitors from 2 to 4 p.m. on the second Sunday of each month. The next opportunity is July 8. For more information, visit preservespringhouse.org. campus at Florida Southern College in Lakeland. It’s open most days for tours (reservations are a good idea). Plus, its history makes for a pretty fascinating story: how a small Florida college with no endowment—during the Great Depression and World War II — not only persuaded Wright to design the campus but also managed to build his designs.
In addition to structures including the gloriously restored 1941 Annie Pfeiffer Chapel, visitors can also take in a new “Usonian” house, built in 2013 from Wright’s 1939 design for an affordable home for the typical American family.
In 2012, the Florida Southern College Historic District was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior for being the largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in the world.
Various tour experiences begin at the Sharp Family Tourism and Education Center, which features a spiffy gift shop. For information, visit www.flsouthern.edu/visitors and click on “Frank Lloyd Wright Architecture,” call 863-680-4597 or email fllw@flsouthern.edu. Drive time from Orlando: About 75 minutes.