Frank Llyod Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, the son of William Russell Cary Wright and Anna Lloyd (Jones). His father was a musician and clergyman from New England, his mother a schoolteacher with strong roots in the Unitarian faith and community. After a peripatetic childhood, Wright's family settled in Madison, Wisconsin in 1880. Anna Wright sent Frank to work summers on his uncles' farms in nearby Spring Green. His time spent working in the vast, flat prairie fields of the Middle West shaped his vision of what was to become "organic architecture." In a lecture published in 1935, Wright remarked upon the importance of simplicity and space informing organic architecture, tracing its origins back to summers on the Lloyd-Jones' farmsteads, "You may see in these various feelings all taking the same direction that I was born an American child of the ground and of space, welcoming spaciousness as a modern human need as well as learning to see it as the natural human opportunity."

Wright briefly attended high school in Madison before enrolling at the University of Wisconsin. Since the University offered no degree in architecture, Wright decided to pursue courses in civil engineering, before leaving after three largely unfulfilling years. Wright left for Chicago in 1887 and subsequently found work as an $8 dollar a week draftsman in an architect's office. One year later he secured a position as assistant to the preeminent Chicago architect Louis Sullivan. The Adler-Sullivan firm was the most progressive architectural alliance of its time. For the next six years Wright participated in developing works that became landmarks of modern architecture. Sullivan was interested primarily in building skyscrapers, so most commissions for houses received by the firm were given to Wright. Wright was married at this time to Catherine Lee, and as his family began to grow, his debts also accrued, prompting the young architect to undertake domestic projects on his own time. When Sullivan discovered Wright's private commissions, he dismissed him. Wright subsequently acknowledged Sullivan as his, "master and inspiration."  

Principal Works: .An Autobiography. New York: Horizon Press c1977 620p.; The Future of Architecture-New York: New American Library 1970, c1953 ; Genius and the Mobocracy. Enl. ed. London, Secker, and Warburg. 1972. 247p. An Organic Architecture, the Architecture of Democracy. The Sir George Watson Lectures of the Sulgrave Manor Board for 1939. London, Lund, Humphries & Co. ltd., 1939. In the Cause of Architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright: essays/by Wright for Architectural Record, 1908-1952; with a symposium on architecture by eight who knew him, Andrew Devane. . .et al.

About: Gill, Brendan: Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: G.P.Putnam's Sons, 1987. Heinz, Thomas A.: Frank Lloyd Wright: New York, St. Martin's Press, 1982. Spencer, Brian A. (editor): The Prairie School Tradition. New York: Watson-Gupthill, 1985. Sullivan, Louis H. The Autobiography of an Idea: Dover 1956. Secrest, Meryl: Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography.Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. New York.1992.