To celebrate Frank Lloyd Wright’s 150th birthday and the opening of our interactive installation, Wright on the Walls, National Building Museum curators provided their favorite fun facts about one of the most esteemed architects in history.
• Oscar-winning actress Anne Baxter, who played Eve Harrington in All About Eve, was Frank Lloyd Wright’s granddaughter, and is buried in the Unity Chapel Cemetery near Taliesin in Wisconsin.
• “Cherokee Red” (Pittsburgh Paints Color #6432-7) is widely regarded as Frank Lloyd Wright’s favorite color.
• The same “floating” foundation design of Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which helped to save the building from destruction during the city’s devastating 1923 earthquake, also eventually contributed to the building’s dramatically uneven settlement into its muddy site, leading to its demolition in 1968.
• Frank Lloyd Wright was a fan of early animated film. He loaned Walt Disney his personal copy of the 1934 Russian cartoon “Tsar Duranday” and shared it with Disney’s animation staff during a visit to the studio in 1939.
• Wright never officially retired, working until his death at age 91.
• In the 1930s and 40s, Frank Lloyd Wright hosted weekly film screenings at Taliesin for Fellows, special guests and area residents. Titles included foreign films, documentaries, musicals, silent-era comedies, and commercial Hollywood fare selected from his private collection or rented from MoMA and other film libraries.
• FLW has built work in 33 of the 50 states. Considering that there were only 37 states when he was born, and the last 2 of the 50 added in the year he died, that’s pretty remarkable!
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, John Lloyd Wright, invented Lincoln Logs in 1920.
• Wright once proposed The Mile High Illinois, a skyscraper that would be a mile tall with 18 million square feet. If built, it would still be the tallest building in the world.
• In 1956 Wright appeared on the panel game show What’s My Line?, moderated by John Daly, as one of the mystery panelists. The other was Liberace.