THE GEIGER DATABASE

SEARCH OPTIONS
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

Hotel, Apartment Towers, Shops, and Theater for Roy S. Thurman, project [Washington, D.C.] (1940)

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: Thurman, Roy S..

Sobriquet or alternative place name: Crystal Heights.

Design Status (as of 2011): Unbuilt.

Occupancy form or use: COMMERCIAL/Hotel/Motel.

Principal building materials: Not assigned.

Number of drawings for this project detailed in the database: 8.

Drawing Number and Description

4016.001     Aerial perspective from sharp corner
4016.002     Connecticut Avenue elevation
4016.003     Elevation from Florida Avenue
4016.004     Perspective of linked towers, plaza, and parking levels
4016.005     Site plan
4016.007     Site and ground floor plan
4016.009     Floor plan,
4016.021     Elevation from Connecticut avenue

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:
Besinger, Curtis
Howe, John
Wright, Frank Lloyd


Plan type: St. Mark''s.

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

Notes and References

Comments by John Geiger and/or sources of attribution: (1) See drawing 4016.004 signed this date. Drawing 4016.001 is signed "FLLW/38" but I suspect that was done in the 1950's. Geiger 05/16/96.

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].
Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly: 2004, Vol. 15, No. 3. Phoenix, Arizona: Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
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 1936-1941 (Volume 6). Tokyo: A. D. A. Edita. [ISBN: 4-87140-517-6].
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph, In His Renderings 1887-1959 (Volume 12). Tokyo: A. D. A. Edita. [ISBN: 4-87140-523-0].
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete Works 1917-1942 (Volume 2). Cologne, Germany: Taschen. [ISBN: 978-3-8365-0926-8].
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Treasures of Taliesin: Seventy-Six Unbuilt Designs. Southern Illinois University Press. [ISBN: 0-8093-1235-2].
Riley, Terence and Reed, Peter (editors). Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. [ISBN: 0-87070-642-X].
Wright, Frank Lloyd. Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings Volume 4, 1939-1349. New York: Rizzoli. [ISBN: 0-8478-1803-9].
Wright, Frank Lloyd. Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings Volume 5, 1949-1959. New York: Rizzoli. [ISBN: 0-8478-1854-3].