The Anonymous Frank Lloyd Wright and the 700 William Street, River Forest Projec: 100th Anniversary Edition

At the celebration dinner for the completion of the manuscript for The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog, dean of architectural historians Henry-Russell Hitchcock pointedly told me that Frank Lloyd Wright would drive him through the streets of Evanston, River Forest and Oak Park, and Hyde Park, and would point to a building and often say, “I did that, but nobody will ever know.” This book offers the 700 William Street houses as houses to which Wright pointed as he drove Hitchcock through the neighborhood so near the architect’s home.Those who deny these homes as Wright’s designs — yes, there are some — need to show where in River Forest there are any other homes to which Wright could have pointed. Failing that, these homes are by Frank Lloyd Wright, produced anonymously so as to conceal Wright’s involvement at a time his scandalous affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, wife of a client, would have demonized the project.So enjoy the discovery of 27 new homes by America’s creator of Prairie architecture as his American architecture, the first stage of his developing a Democratic American architecture.---William Allin Storrer, Ph.D. Read more