Over a quarter of a century, Frank Lloyd Wright showered the city of Buffalo with a series of remarkable designs. These houses, commercial buildings, and unbuilt projects, devised between 1903 and 1929, link the architect's early Prairie period to his magnificent reaction to Modernism,exemplified by Fallingwater and the Johnson Wax Building. To convey this story, author Jack Quinan introduces a cast of characters linked by their association with the Larkin Company, the client that first drew Wright to New York State. Not long after sketches for a Larkin Administration Building had arrived in Buffalo, commissions for grand houses were whistling from Buffalo to Wright's studio in Oak Park, Illinois. Wright's close friend Darwin D. Martin, his most fervent supporter at the Larkin Company, steered crucial jobs Wright's way and afforded him generous loans. Only when the fortunes of the Larkin Company - and its executives - ebbed did Wright move on to new fields, in Arizona, California, and farther from home. But the traces of the Buffalo years may be seen in much of his subsequent work. Drawing on materials from archives in California, Arizona, Washington, and New York, interviews conducted over several decades, and previous studies, State University of New York at Buffalo distinguished service professor Jack Quinan brings to light one of the most significant periods of Wright's long career. With an introductory essay, insightful entries discussing each building, and more than 125 historical and contemporary photographs and architectural plans and drawings, Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo Venture is the first exhaustive survey of Wright's Buffalo projects, expertly chronicling a little-known chapter in architectural history.
