“In the early 1920s, Wright bought a 1929 Cord L-29, which he praised for its sensible front-wheel drive. Besides, “It looked becoming to my houses,” he wrote in his book “An Autobiography.” He seemed to have a special bond with the Cord. “The feeling comes to me that the Cord should be heroic in this autobiography somewhere,” he wrote.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
(p. 9) Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect whose birth in 1867 preceded the gasoline-powered automobile’s by about 20 years, was an early adopter of the internal-combustion engine and an auto aficionado all his life.
He was also eerily prophetic in understanding how the car would transform the American landscape, and his designs reflect this understanding. Wright often designed both for and around automobiles, and his masterpiece, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, owes its most distinctive feature, the spiral of its rotunda, to his love for the automobile.
. . .
Wright was seduced by the combination of beauty, power and speed, whether powered by hay or by gas. He owned horses, and his first car, a yellow Model K Stoddard-Dayton roadster, was the same model that in 1909 won the very first automobile race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Called the Yellow Devil by his neighbors, this was a 45-horsepower car capable of going 60 miles an hour. Wright and his sons seemed to enjoy that horsepower with abandon: “Dad was kept busy paying fines,” his son John observed. So enamored was Wright of his automobile that he installed gas pumps in the garage of his home and studio in Oak Park, Ill.
. . .
In the early 1920s, Wright owned a custom-built Cadillac and later bought a 1929 Cord L-29, which he praised for its sensible front-wheel drive. Besides, “It looked becoming to my houses,” he wrote in his book “An Autobiography.” He seemed to have a special bond with the Cord. “The feeling comes to me that the Cord should be heroic in this autobiography somewhere,” he wrote.
Wright’s Cord can be seen today at the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Ind.
For the full story, see:
INGRID STEFFENSEN. “Frank Lloyd Wright: The Auto as Architect’s Inspiration.” The New York Times, SportsSunday Section (Sun., August 9, 2009): 9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date August 6, 2009 and the title “The Auto as Architect’s Inspiration.” There are some small differences between the print and online versions, although I think the sentences quoted above are the same in both.)
Wright’s autobiography, mentioned above, is:
Wright, Frank Lloyd. An Autobiography. New York: Horizon Press, 1977.