Genius, Inc.

Strange and condoned has been the existence of Architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Erotic and impulsive, he deserted his wife and six children to live with a Mrs. Mamah Bostwick Cheney and her two children, family of a Chicago businessman. For himself and them he built a splendidly original home on a rocky hill at Spring Green, southern Wisconsin. A thin-lipped Barbados Negro, their butler, one day chopped Mistress Cheney, her children and four neighbors to death with an axe and burned down the house. When Architect Wright rebuilt it, Miriam Noel, English sculptress who had fallen in love with his picture, joined him first as mistress, then as wife. She was obliged, for lack of money, to use precious but musty draperies for clothes. she left for a "vacation," and her husband promptly took an ad interim companion. There followed divorce, his marriage to a Montenegrin dancer, Olga Milanoff, for a span his mistress, a second burning of his hill house, a third building thereof. Who's Who in America this year dropped him from its roster of reputable notables.

Widely condoned have such episodes been, for Frank Lloyd Wright is rated a very original, great and influential architect indeed, although personally impulsive and improvident. Last week certain of his Chicago friends decided that they could at least overcome his improvidence. They made him become an institution with a charter. Frank Lloyd Wright, Inc. has issued $50,000 worth of preferred stock. He himself is no stockholder.

Architect Wright was born in 1869 on a Wisconsin farm where he spent his precocious childhood tending sheep. With no formal education he informally studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin. Although he received no degree he became unusually proficient in that profession. Twenty years ago his reputation in architecture was worldwide.

The basic philosophies of his buildings are: 1) They, especially homes, should be constructed as integral parts of their landscapes and of the materials of the neighborhood. His thrice-built home at Spring Green seemed a rocky outcropping of the hill itself. 2) Buildings (factories, theatres, hotels) should interpret the spirit as well as suit the use of their occupancies. This has created blocky, mechanistic, "modernistic" structures. His most representative factory building is that of the Larkin Co. at Buffalo; his best hotel the Imperial at Tokyo, famed for octagonal copper bathtubs and "skyscraper" furniture. People for whom he builds homes yield to his artistic bullying. His commissions--and therefrom the profits on which Frank Lloyd Wright, Inc. can count on--enable him to maintain offices at Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo.