A Timeline of My Life
- June 8, 1867: I was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, U.S.
- 1885 - 1886: I discover my passion for architecture and enroll into the University of Wisconsin, taking engineering courses because there was no instruction in architecture.
- 1887: I leave the University without taking a degree for Chicago, where I find employment with J.L. Silsbee as a draftsman.
- 1888: I leave Silsbee for more rewarding work in the architectural firm of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, the latter of which took me under his wing and gave me great design responsibility.
- 1889: I had become chief assistant to Sullivan and marry Catherine Tobin.
- 1890: I began accepting independent commissions for buildings at this time, unbeknownst to Sullivan. By the time I left Sullivan, I had designed at least nine houses.
- 1893: Sullivan finds out that I had been accepting independent commissions, leading him to fire me due to my contract forbidding me from any outside work.
- 1896: A few young architects and I with the same vision and philosophies in architecture create our own architectural practice. This practice would eventually come to be known as the Prairie School. One of my first independent projects I made after founding the Prairie School, the Winslow House, was impressive enough to attract the attention of the most influential architect in Chicago, Daniel Burnham. He offered to subsidize me for several years if I would study in Europe to become the principal designer in Burnham’s firm. It was an appreciated compliment, but I refused the offer, with my determination to search for new midwestern architecture strengthening.
- 1900: The Prairie school is mature, with myself, a mostly self-taught architect, as it's chief practitioner. It became widely recognized for its radical approach to building modern homes, using mass-produced materials and equipment. It also became known for how it achieved comfort, convenience, and spaciousness in an economic manner.
- 1901: I lectured often in this period, with my most famous talk, The Art and Craft of the Machine, printed in 1901.
- 1901 - 1910: I create more than 50 Prairie houses in this time, with their defining features being a wide, low roof over continuous window bands that turned corners, and the house's main rooms flowing together in an uninterrupted space. I begin having an affair with Mamah Cheney, the wife of one of my former clients, somewhere in this period of time.
- 1911: My career suffered due to the unfavorable publicity from my affair with Cheney.
- 1912: I designed my first skyscraper, it was never built, though.
- 1913: I designed and built a new Tokyo hotel in a western style called Midways Gardens, but right before it opened, Cheney and her children were killed by an insane houseman at Taliesin, with the living quarters of the house devastated in a fire. He began to rebuild his home and was soon joined by the sculptor Miriam Noel, who became his mistress.
- 1915: I constructed the Imperial Hotel, large with lavish comfort, and was one of the only large buildings that withstood the earthquake that struck Tokyo in 1923.
- 1922: Wright's original wife, Catherine, finally divorced him.
- 1925: Taliesin again burned due to a lightning strike, and I once again rebuilt it.
- 1924 - 1928: I meet and marry Olgivanna Hinzenberg. Taliesin is seized by the bank, and I begin to write my autobiography.
- 1932: I published my autobiography and open the Taliesin Fellowship, which was a training program for architects and related artists that operated and lived in Taliesin. About 20-60 apprentices worked with Wright each year. Around this time I also developed a system for constructing low-cost homes.
- 1935 - 1937: I design and construct Fallingwater, perhaps my most-admired and remembered work in my career. The building was later given to the state and opened to visitors. I also design the administrative centre for S.C. Johnson at this time, creating one of the most human workrooms in modern architecture. These two buildings showed I was as innovative as younger designers and a master of unique expressive forms.
- 1943: I am contracted to design and create a building to house a permanent collection of abstract art, called the Guggenheim Museum.
- 1955: I was granted an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the University of Wisconsin.
- 1956: Construction of the Guggenheim Museum begins.
- April 9, 1959: I passed away in Phoenix, Arizona.
- 1959: The Guggenheim Museum is opened.
- 2019: The UNESCO designated eight of my works, including Fallingwater, as World Heritage sites.