Lost Wright

Despite Frank Lloyd Wright's renown as America's most celebrated architect, more than one hundred of his buildings -- one of every five built -- have been destroyed. Thirty-one burned, two fell to natural disasters, four were shops or offices that changed use, and twenty-two were meant to be temporary. But the majority were razed either for economic reasons or because fashions changed.

Gone are his majestic Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and the playful Midway Gardens in Chicago. Buffalo, New York, has lost the innovative Larkin Administration Building. Residents of Madison, Wisconsin, near Wright's own home, no longer have his delightful boathouse on Lake Mendota. Gone, too, are notable residences such as the palatial Little house in Minnesota and the stables in Mississippi he designed for his mentor, Louis Sullivan. Ocatilla, his ethereal camp in the Arizona desert, was meant to be temporary, but it is gone nonetheless. Apartment buildings, houses large and small, retail spaces, resort colonies, garages, garden structures, and monumental high-profile commissions -- all have been lost to future generations.

"How could it happen?" asks author Carla Lind in Lost Wright. She then proceeds to show exactly how and why each of these buildings is no longer here. Illustrated with fascinating and often rare photographs, descriptions are arranged by building type from houses to apartments, recreation to business, even some of Wright's own properties that have not survived. Gone but not forgotten, these revolutionary buildings come back to life in the pages of Lost Wright.