Frank Lloyd wright did not take criticism lightly. He was furious at the stinging denunciation of his revolutionary Larkin Building in Buffalo that was published in Architectural Record in April 1908. Its author, Russell Sturgis, an eminent architect and historian who had written for RECORD since its inception in 1891, called Wright’s office building for a mail-order soap company “ungainly” and “awkward.” This “extremely ugly” structure of unadorned brick lacked “a play of light and shade” through moldings, and was without “a variety of color pattern.” Wright retaliated in an unpublished reply that it was “pathetic” to see a well-respected critic “picking over bit by bit his architectural ragbag for architectural finery wherewith to clothe the nakedness of the young giant.”
Apart from Wright’s arrogance, it’s easy to understand why he was upset: the month before, RECORD had published the largest presentation of his work to date (34 projects, with 87 illustrations). Wright’s accompanying essay, “In the Cause of Architecture,” set forth his organic approach to the design of open, flowing spaces, and the expression of natural materials. It was the first of a series of theoretical essays he would write over the years for the magazine. In 1908, however, the magazine just did what it would continue to do to this day: publish a serious critic’s point of view, even if the editors did not necessarily agree with it.
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