Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture for Chicago Boxed Notes

The city of Chicago played an important role in Frank Lloyd Wright’s long and prolific career. It was here that he first found architectural work, in 1887. At that time, the entire country was witnessing rapidly expanding industrialization, and Chicago, still rebuilding after the devastating fire of 1871 and strategically located in the middle of the country, was booming. The twenty-year-old Wright worked first as a draftsman for Joseph Lyman Silsbee, then soon landed a job with the prestigious firm of Adler and Sullivan. Wright quickly rose within the company’s ranks, gaining experience, expertise, and self-confidence. In 1893 he established his own office in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, which would serve as his primary place of practice for the next two decades.

Wright’s precepts of organic architecture crystallized during this period, and these principles are manifest in Chicago area projects undertaken throughout his career. His Wolf Lake Amusement Park (1895), designed for a nearby lakeside site on the Illinois-Indiana border, is a forward-looking rebuke to what he considered the backward-looking World’s Columbian Exposition design of 1893. The Lexington Terrace Apartments (1901) and his own studio-residence on Goethe Street (1911) reflect Wright’s desire to open up interior spaces to accommodate the contemporary, changing American lifestyle. His high-rise Golden Beacon building serves to foil 1950s glass-box modernism with designs that are both visionary and functional.

Twenty assorted 5 x 7" blank note cards (5 each of 4 styles) with envelopes and decorative box.