Portal:Wisconsin/Selected biography/3

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Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 – 1959) was one of the most prominent and influential architects during the first half of the 20th century. He developed a series of highly individual styles over his extraordinarily long architectural career (spanning the years 1887-1959) and influenced the entire course of American architecture and building. To this day, he remains probably America's most famous architect.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in the agricultural town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, United States, on June 8, 1867, of Welsh descent just two years after the end of the American Civil War. As a child he spent a great deal of time playing with the kindergarten educational blocks by Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel (known as Froebel Gifts) given to him by his mother, Anna Lloyd Jones. These consisted of various geometrically shaped blocks that could be assembled in various combinations to form three-dimensional compositions. Wright in his autobiography talks about the influence of these exercises on his approach to design. Many of his buildings are notable for the geometrical clarity they exhibit.

Wright began his formal education in 1885 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering, where he was a member of Phi Delta Theta Fraternity International, Inc. Wisconsin Alpha chapter. He took classes part-time for three semesters, while apprenticing under a local builder and professor of civil engineering. In 1887, Wright left the university without taking a degree (although he was granted an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the university in 1955) and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he joined the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Within the year, he had left Silsbee to work for the firm of Adler & Sullivan.