Letters to the Editor

Author(s): Henry A. Millon and Curtis Besinger

Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 31, No. 2 (May, 1972), p.
159
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural
Historians
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/988697
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 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Sir: Lloyd Wright's birthdate with some ly disputes with Henry-Russell Hitchcock
Having recently read Donald Hoff- amusement; I don't think that it is a very and others concerning the dating of draw-
mann's interesting note "Clear Span Ri- important issue. While I was at Taliesin, ings and buildings. Mr. Wright relished a
valry" in the March 1970 issue of the SAH we celebrated Mr. Wright's birthday each friendly dispute-and some not so friend-
Journal I would like to offer a small factual year. On those occasions at which Mr. ly.)
emendation. Mr. Hoffmann states, page 49, Wright's sister Jane (Mrs. Andrew Porter) To add further to the mystery and myth-
the span of the Machinery Palace for the was present, there was always a friendly making, I would like for architectural his-
Exposition of 1889 to be 111 m. and cites family quarrel about just how old her torians to ponder just why Louis Sullivan
Figure 152 found in Engineering, XLVII (3 brother was. She knew that he was older would write in 1924 and concerning Mr.
May 1889), 462, as the source. A more than she, but according to the birthdate that Wright, "This architect whom I have
reliable source may be found in E. Henard, he claimed he was younger than she--and known since his eighteenth year.. ." ("Re-
Le Palais des Machines (Paris, 1891). Henard so it went. Frankly it didn't seem to be a flections on the Tokyo Disaster," Architec-
gives a full account of the construction and terribly important issue then. Sister Jane tural Record [February I1924]).
cost of the building. He included illustra- was regarded as a bit quarrelsome. To me this is an indication that Sullivan
tion with dimensions and, on page 17, But now that the misplacement of the thought that Mr. Wright was eighteen
cites the dimension in question (from birthdate is being treated as a part of Mr. years old when he began work in the office
center of pin to center of pin) as I1o.6o m. Wright's "largely self-generated mythol- of Adler and Sullivan. Assuming that this
or 362'I01o/4". This dimension confirms ogy," I am moved to make the following date was either in late 1887 or early 1888,
that found in L'Exposition de Paris (the comments and to offer the following evi- this would agree with the 1869 birthdate.
only other contemporary French source dence to help set the "mythology" straight. Was Mr. Wright engaged in generating
cited) mentioned in note 3 of Mr. Hoff- I have in my possession a letter from the myth in I888-at the age of twenty?
mann's note. Mr. Wright written shortly after I left the Or, was he simply being poor in arith-
HENRY A. MILLON
Fellowship; it concerns the length of my metic, careless about dates, or, possibly,
apprenticeship
Massachusetts Institute of Technology with him, among other since there seems to be a move to make his
things. The letter begins, ".. . During the "shrewish" mother the villain in the piece,
Mr. Hoffmann replies- past seventeen years or more ... ." I know being misinformed or misled by his moth-
The figure in Engineering of"seventeen
that the London, years or more" is not er? Would a young man of twenty attempt
since it was the figure accepted by Octave
factually correct. I arrived at Taliesin in the to appear younger in age when seeking
Chanute in Chicago, is theearly
more fall of relevant
1939 and left in the late sum- employment? I would have thought that
even if it may be slightly mer of 1955. According
erroneous: it isto my arithmetic the effort might seem to have been to seem
this is somewhat
the figure Chicago was competing less than sixteen years.
against. older rather than younger.
I don't regard this error as an endeavor But who knows-or who can say?
to generate a myth. I regard it as either Perhaps architectural historians can spec-
Sir: poor arithmetic or-more probably-as an ulate!
I have tended to regard the great con- attitude on Mr. Wright's part that exact CURTIS BESINGER

cern of architectural historians with re- dates were not all that important. (I write University of Kansas
gard to the two-year mislocation of Frank this perfectly aware of Mr. Wright's friend-

I59

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