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 1893

Lake Monona Boathouse [Madison, Wisconsin] (1893)

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: Madison Improvement Association.

Sobriquet or alternative place name: None.

Design Status (as of 2011): Executed.

Occupancy form or use: CIVIC/Boathouse.

Principal building materials: WOOD/Wood frame, wood shingles.

Number of drawings for this project detailed in the database: 4.

Drawing Number and Description

9308.001     Lakeside elevation
9308.004     Cross section
9308.006     First floor plan
9308.011     Detail showing roof truss

Roof pattern type: 0104 Circle/circular

Note: Records a category devised by Geiger to classify types of roof pattern from an aerial perspective found Frank Lloyd Wright projects.These terms were applied consistently through a choice list on Column [ROOFPATTERNTYPE] 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. 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.

Date recorded by John Geiger for chronological sorting: May 11, 1893.

Notes and References

Comments by John Geiger and/or sources of attribution: (a) GEO9308 The very strong geometry of a circle inscribed in a square is obvious. Geiger 08/20/00 (1) Wright and Madison, p. 29.

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:

Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph 1887-1901 (Volume 1). Tokyo: A. D. A. Edita. [ISBN: 4-87140-512-5].
Sprague, Paul E. (editor). Frank Lloyd Wright and Madison: Eight Decades of Artistic and Social Interaction. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin. [ISBN: 0-932900-22-4].