Design
Frank Lloyd Wright Hated Cities, Which Might Explain Why Americans Love Him
On his 145th birthday, a look back at Wright's legacy.
Frank Lloyd Wright was born on this day in 1867. 145 years later, he is still central to American architecture.
Working for Adler & Sullivan (a Chicago-based firm that paved the way for early American modernism) in his early 20s, Wright saw an America searching for its own visual identity, still dependent on classical Greek and French ideas of democracy through architecture. He also saw the typical American city as a dirty and overcrowded space, a space that was neither culturally or socially enriching. That theory was hard to contest at the time, and the relentless interest in decentralization ended up as one his core beliefs.