The Oak Park studio of Frank Lloyd Wright

Having been education director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation before she earned a PhD in history of architecture, Schrenk (Univ. of Arizona) is uniquely qualified to produce this comprehensive study of the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio in Oak Park, Illinois. The book's seven chapters look at the building's history from its design in 1898 to its closing (as a studio) in 1911, and consider changes to the building and its legacy. Six appendixes quantify the buildings designed in the studio in Oak Park, offer biographies of Wright's staff members, and provide such additional documents as a letter from Wright to his mother, a sales brochure, and a title record of the property relevant to the building's history. Schrenk's ability to synthesize the sociocultural history that swirled around Wright, her astute analyses of the building's ever-changing spaces, and her inclusion of the archaeological evidence of those changes--together with copious visuals that include architectural drawings and prints, historic photographs, and excellent contemporary photographs by James Caulfield--make this an invaluable addition to the Wright corpus. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. --Jack Quinan, emeritus, independent scholar

In this magnificent offering, Schrenk (Building a Century of Progress), an architectural historian at the University of Arizona, takes a remarkably detailed look at Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park Studio in Chicago. Established in 1898, the studio was "one of the most important sites in the development of modern architecture in the United States." Wright built it in a small space adjacent to his home and decorated it with plants and sculptures. The idea, Schrenk notes, was to avoid the sterility of office spaces and to create a space that would allow Wright and his staff to engage in lively and productive exchanges. Schrenk also discusses the common visual themes in the projects that Wright and his team worked on in the studio, among them the Dana residence in Springfield, Ill. (1902); the Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo, N.Y. (1906); and the Robie house in Chicago (1909), for which "Wright used varying ceiling heights, creating compressed hallways that open up to spacious, vaulted rooms." Nearly 200 gorgeous photographs of the building accompany the text--including a photo originally published in Ladies Home Journal in 1903 of the home's impressive dining room after a raised platform was added under a set of bay windows. Architecture buffs won't want to miss this extraordinary monograph. (Mar.)