CATHERINE REAGOR

Frank Lloyd Wright's lasting mark on metro Phoenix house styles

Catherine Reagor
The Republic | azcentral.com
  • The 1952 house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for his son was gifted to Taliesin West
  • From ASU’s Gammage Auditorium to his signature concrete and circular homes, Wright gave Phoenix its own architecture style
This is the David and Gladys Wright House near 52nd Street and Camelback Road, Thursday, April 16, 2015. It was designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

When Frank Lloyd Wright, who would transform housing in Phoenix, first moved to Arizona, he was nearly broke and the economy had crashed.

Like many of Arizona’s real-estate legends, the iconic architect rose from the ashes of a boom and bust.

He began making his winter trek to the Valley during the Great Depression of the 1930s and created lasting designs for our desert that can be found in historic neighborhoods and new million-dollar homes.

Last week, the controversial 1952 house Wright designed for his son, David Wright, in Phoenix's Arcadia neighborhood was gifted for the use of the architecture program at Taliesin West, the school and winter camp he founded in 1937.

TIMELINE:Saving the David Wright house in Phoenix

The gift came in time for what would have been Wright’s 150th birthday, an apropos event to also celebrate his profound impact on metro Phoenix’s building style.

Lasting blueprint

From Arizona State University’s grand Gammage Auditorium, originally designed for a Baghdad opera house, to his signature concrete and circular homes and the First Christian Church with its 77-foot spire, Wright gave the Valley its own architecture style.

"He (Wright) was drawn to Arizona by a certain magic of the desert environment,” growth expert and attorney Grady Gammage Jr. told me. “It presented a kind of clear canvas on which he wanted to paint with his organic architectural style.”

RELATED:200-mile Frank Lloyd Wright Trail showcases architect's diverse works

His father, former ASU President Grady Gammage, was friends with Wright and commissioned him to build the university's auditorium in 1957.

Wright's style and design weren't new to me when I came from the Midwest to go to ASU in the late 1980s. My grandpa, an engineer and architect, had told me about Gammage Auditorium, and I was still awed when I saw it for the first time.

I grew up spending many weekends in a home my grandpa designed in Wright's prairie style with strong horizontal lines and big picture windows for my grandma.

The Wright house style

“That style, low buildings using concrete, wood and lots of shade, evolved into an adaptation of the ranch-house style that became the hallmark of Phoenix,” said Gammage Jr. “It is sometimes hard to see his style embedded in those houses — but drive around and look at the remaining ranches and you see his influence.

“Drive a Ralph Haver neighborhood (Haver homes can be found throughout central and east Phoenix as well as south Scottsdale), and you see smaller, open floor plan houses with low-pitched roofs and Wrightian bones. Visit the Wyndham resort on Scottsdale Road, or the Doubletree in Tempe and you see echoes of the Arizona Biltmore’s textile block,” he told me.

RELATED:Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired homes going up in Cave Creek

Wright is often credited with designing the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. But though the concrete blocks were his design, the hotel’s architect was one of his former students, Albert Chase McArthur.

I made the mistake once in a story about the Biltmore’s sale and heard from many angry Wright enthusiasts. But the various plans for Wright's Arcadia house developed for his son has drawn many more passionate responses.

Arizona Wright

“We claim him (Wright) as ours but really he claimed us as his place to pursue his belief at a time when few understood the desert,” Mark Stapp, executive director of the Master of Real Estate Development program at ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business, told me.

He has deep ties to Taliesin and Wright. Stapp served as chairman of the board of Taliesin Architects Inc. for 10 years starting in the mid-1990s. And now he is developing the Cahava Springs in Cave Creek with homes designed by architects from Taliesin.

“He is best known for his house designs. He pursued the idea of open floor, opened the house,” said Stapp. “His designs are as relevant today as they were when he designed them.”

Just take that drive around the Valley that Gammage suggested to see Wright’s enduring mark on metro Phoenix’s housing market.

READ MORE:

Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture in Scottsdale keeps accreditation

Will Frank Lloyd Wright House donation end Arcadia feud?

Phoenix ends city effort to preserve David and Gladys Wright House

Historic buildings in Scottsdale you need to see