Andrew Willatsen

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Andrew Willatsen (1876 - 25 July 1974) is chiefly remembered for bringing the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School to the Pacific Northwest.

Andreas Christian Peter Willatzen was born in northern Germany in 1876 and came to the United States in 1900. By 1902 or 1903 he was working in the office of Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park, Illinois. Willatzen moved west in 1907 and joined the office of Cutter & Malmgren in Spokane. A year later he moved to the firm's Seattle branch office. In 1909, Willatzen subsequently formed a partnership with another former Wright apprentice, Barry Byrne (1883-1967). Willatzen & Byrne were responsible for numerous houses in Seattle reflecting the influence of Wright and the Prairie School. Early in 1913, the partnership had dissolved; Byrne moved to California and eventually returned to the Midwest. Willatzen completed additional Prairie style houses in Seattle under his own name.

During the First World War, responding to anti-German sentiment, Willatzen changed the spelling of his name to "Willatsen," and subsequently emphasized his Danish ancestry. After 1918, Willatsen's work began to reflect the dominant, historically eclectic, styles of the interwar period. He was also involved after 1915 with occasional alteration projects in Seattle's Pike Place Market.

Willatsen retired from practice in the 1940s. He died in 1974 at age ninety-seven.

[edit] References

• Brooks, H. Allen, The Prairie School: Frank Lloyd Wright and his Midwest Contemporaries, University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1972; ISBN 0802052517
• Hildebrand, Grant, and Giessel Jess M., "Andrew Willatsen," in Shaping Seattle Architecture: A Historical Guide to the Architects (ed. Jeffrey Karl Ochsner), University of Washington Press, Seattle and London 1994, pages 168-173, 312; ISBN 029597365X