St. Louis Dispatch, 1930
“Frank Lloyd Wright Center of a New Row“
Whether from a sense of fear or mediocrity, the Chicago World’s Fair architects prefer to leave Wright. Out of the grandest architectural scheme since the Columbian Exposition of 1893, when Louis Sullivan Wright’s “master,” won fame with his Transportation Building. Harvey Wiley Corbett, a member, says that Wright’s architecture does not conform to any particular type and might not harmonize with that of the committee.
“Styles,” says Wright, “once accomplished, soon become yardsticks for the blind, crutches for the lame, the recourse of the impotent. As humanity develops there will be less recourse to styles and more to style. Style is a consequence of character. The rear of the New York Public Library has something of this quality of style, while the front has only styles. The Woolworth Building would have had style to a degree but for professional Gothic prejudices and predilections. The suspension bridge from New York to Brooklyn has it.”
Can a man who discovers style in “the rear of the New York Public Library” properly be admitted to the company of great architects? The Chicago committee stays its choice. They make much of another trait of genius, to wit, a stubborn vanity which covets exhibitions as one-man shows. By the persuasive eloquence which genius alone commands, the sheer imagination behind a Wright building at this fair would undoubtedly elevate him in this country.
Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, © 1930.
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