THE GEIGER DATABASE

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Frank Lloyd Wright commissions

Frank Lloyd Wright Commission Titles

The information presented here exhibits the extent to which John Geiger considered many points of reference related to a given Frank Lloyd Wright project. Aside from basic information such as title, location, and project date, Geiger extended his interests to types of floor and roof plans, types of construction and building purpose, and where possible the dates of the various stages of development in the design process and construction. Geiger often included citations for bibliographic references as sources for the recorded information in an elaborate but unevenly developed series of attributions.

Project Information

House for Mr. and Mrs. Frank Wright Thomas, "The Harem" [Oak Park, Illinois] (1901)

Note: The following information concerning this project represents original research and analysis by John Geiger, and is based in his long and detailed study of the Frank Lloyd Wright literature as well as personal contacts with members of the Taliesin Fellowship and architectural historians. In addition, he added his own categories of building type and compositional form, as well as other points of consideration that he deemed important to understanding of the design. As with any primary archival source material, the references and sources of attribution should be consulted where possible to affirm the data provided. Sometimes there is an indication of attribution for which there is no matching footnote recorded. Some understanding of the intended source may be discovered in remaining notes or frequently cited publications which appear in the comment field.

Name of client: Thomas, Frank Wright.

Sobriquet or alternative place name: The Harem.

Design Status (as of 2011): Executed.

Occupancy form or use: HOUSING/Residential/Single Family.

Principal building materials: WOOD/Wood frame, stucco.

Number of drawings for this project detailed in the database: 16.

Drawing Number and Description

0106.??1     Perspective from front left, two floor plans (in Ausgefurte Bauten, 1910)
0106.??2     First and second floor plans, probably for Hitchcock
0106.001     Perspective from street
0106.002     Basement floor plan and chimney details
0106.002     Basement and foundation plan
0106.003     First floor plan
0106.003     Floor plan main floor
0106.004     Floor plan second floor
0106.004     Second floor plan
0106.005     Front and rear elevations
0106.005     Front and rear elevations
0106.006     North and South elevations
0106.006     North and South Elevations
0106.007     Wall sections and details
0106.009     Interior elevations, dining room and pantry
0106.016     First floor plan and perspective

Roof type: Hipped2.

Note: Records a category devised by Geiger to classify the types of roof structure found in Frank Lloyd Wright projects. These terms were applied consistently through a choice list on Column [ROOFTYPE] in Table MMTFDRAWINGS FILE, and may be searched.

Project Drawing Date Range

Note: Dates for preliminary and working drawings, as well as the start and completion of construction, appear here only when present in the database. Through careful study of original, reproduced, or published Wright drawings, John Geiger developed an elaborate granulation for design process dates and their attributions. Such information is largely available only for Wright projects dating from the mid-1930s until 1959.

Date recorded by John Geiger for chronological sorting: 4/14/1901.

Working drawings date: 9/14/1901.

Notes and References

Comments by John Geiger and/or sources of attribution: (a) GEO0106 I have written about Thomas in WP/JGGOE2. Geiger 08/20/00 (1) Drawing .003 signed this date. Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks and Futagawa, Yukio. Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph 1887-1901 (Volume 1) (Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita, 1986), p. 180, fig. .

Note: The information shown above is collected from a series of data table columns intended originally to record not only comments or notes, but also to cite sources of attribution for dates assigned to the various stages of drawing preparation in the design process. As with any primary archival source material, the references and sources of attribution shown here should be consulted where possible to affirm the data provided.

This commission is referenced and/or illustrated in the following publications:

Hitchcock, Henry-Russell. In the Nature of Materials: The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright 1887-1941. Boston, Mass.: Da Capo Press.
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell. In the Nature of Materials: The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright 1887-1941. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce.
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph 1887-1901 (Volume 1). Tokyo: A. D. A. Edita. [ISBN: 4-87140-512-5].
Wright, Frank Lloyd. Buildings, Plans and Designs. New York: Horizon Press. [ISBN: 0790979667].
Wright, Frank Lloyd. Frank Lloyd Wright: Drawings and Plans of Frank Lloyd Wright, The Early Period (1893-1909). New York: Dover Publications, Inc.. [ISBN: 0-486-24457-1].