THE GEIGER DATABASE

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Frank Lloyd Wright commissions

CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Frank Lloyd Wright lived an exceptionally long and productive professional life. John Geiger was interested in the ebb and flow of architectural commissions in the Wright studio over time. This search shows Wright commissions for given decades and years, though the project dates often imply the completion date for a commission rather than the sometimes lengthy period involved with development of a design. Some entries also refer to drawings made by Wright earlier in his career prior to establishing his own practice.

Frank Lloyd Wright Project Titles for the year 1955

Monona Terrace Civic Center, project [Madison, Wisconsin] (1955)

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: City of Madison, Wisconsin.

Sobriquet or alternative place name: Monona Terrace.

Design Status (as of 2011): Unbuilt.

Occupancy form or use: CIVIC/Civic Center.

Principal building materials: CONCRETE/Poured in place.

Number of drawings for this project detailed in the database: 10.

Drawing Number and Description

5632.??1     Elevation from lake
5632.001     Aerial night perspective
5632.002     Perspective
5632.003     Cross section; auditorium
5632.004     Floor [lan at datum 0
5632.005     Floor plan at datum -27
5632.007     Floor plan at level "B"
5632.042     Cross section
5632.052     Perspective of concert hall

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.

Davison, Allen Lape
Howe, John

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. Sources were often footnoted by an alphanumeric system, but the references are sometimes missing from the locations where they were intended to be recorded; the relationship between footnote letter or numeral and reference is absent. In order to retain the presence of available information, citations are here shown grouped together in one comment field. Some understanding of the intended source may be discovered in remaining notes or frequently cited publications which appear in the comment field. The relevance of references provided by John Geiger can often be recovered through examination of the publications used in his research.See the list of principal bibliographical sources used for this purpose.

Preliminary drawings date: February 1, 1930.

Notes and References

Comments by John Geiger and/or sources of attribution: (a) McCarter, Robert. Frank Lloyd Wright (London: Phaidon Press, 1997), p. 357 (1) Besinger, p. 278.

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].
Kaufmann, Jr., Edgar. Frank Lloyd Wright: Drawings for a Living Architecture. New York: Horizon Press.
Lipman, Jonathan, and Levine, Neil. The Wright State: Frank Lloyd Wright In Wisconsin. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Milwaukee Art Museum.
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph 1951-1959 (Volume 8). Tokyo: A. D. A. Edita. [ISBN: 4-87140-519-2].
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete Works 1943-1959 (Volume 3). Cologne, Germany: Taschen. [ISBN: 978-8228-5770-0].