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 Laura R. (Mrs. Thomas H.) Gale [Oak Park, Illinois] (1909)

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: Gale, Laura R. (Mrs. Thomas H.).

Sobriquet or alternative place name: None.

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: 11.

Drawing Number and Description

0905.??1     Perspective and first and second floor plans (in Ausgefurte Bauten, 1910)
0905.??2     First and second floor plans, probably for Hitchcock
0905.001     Perspective from street from left showing entrance door.
0905.006     Leaded glass panel for living room bookcase
0905.014     Elevation, West
0905.015     Elevations, North and South
0905.015     Elevation, East
0905.016     Second floor plan
0905.016     Cross section longitudinal
0905.017     First floor plan
0905.017     DEtails of North wall

Individuals recorded as contributing to project:

Note: Not everyone who contributed to a project may be named; only those whose participation has been confirmed from a source appear above. Occasionally names presented as contributors to a project may seem chronologically anomalous. This usually occurs when an individual prepared drawings for publicity, exhibition, or publication long after the original date of a commission.

Individuals recorded as producing drawings for this project:
Mahony, Marion

Construction supervision: Van Bergen, John Shellette
Construction supervision: Mahony, Marion

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: 5/1/1909.

Notes and References

Comments by John Geiger and/or sources of attribution: Kruty Paul, and Sprague, Paul E. Marion Mahony and Millikin Place, Creating a Prairie School Masterpiece, with the Help of Frank Lloyd Wright, Herman Von Holst and Walter Burley Griffin (Walter Burley Griffin Society of America, 2007), p.18.

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:

Cleary, Richard (editor). Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward. New York: Skira/ Rizzoli. [ISBN: 978-0-8478-3262-0].
Drexler, Arthur. The Drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Horizon Press. [ISBN: 0-8180-0019-8].
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 Drawings: Masterworks from the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives. New York: Harry H. Abrams Inc.. [ISBN: 0-8108-1773-4].
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph 1907-1913 (Volume 3). Tokyo: A. D. A. Edita. [ISBN: 4-87140-515-X].
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph, In His Renderings 1887-1959 (Volume 12). Tokyo: A. D. A. Edita. [ISBN: 4-87140-523-0].
Siry, Joseph M.. Unity Temple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Architecture for Liberal Religion. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. [ISBN: 0-521-49542-3].
Sloan, Julie L.. Light Screens: The Complete Leaded-Glass Windows of Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Rizzoli. [ISBN: 0-8478-2306-7].
Wright, Frank Lloyd. Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright. Berlin: Verlegt bei Ernest Wasmuth A. G..
Wright, Frank Lloyd. Buildings, Plans and Designs. New York: Horizon Press. [ISBN: 0790979667].
Wright, Frank Lloyd. Early Work by Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Bramhall House.
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].
Wright, Frank Lloyd. Frank Lloyd Wright: Ausgeführte Bauten . Berlin: Verlegt bei Ernest Wasmuth A. G..