Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, Frank Lloyd Wright scholar, former apprentice, dies
Lily Altavena
Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, a prolific scholar and former apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, has died.
Pfeiffer passed on Dec. 31, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. He was in his late 80s.
He began as an apprentice, joining Taliesin Fellowship in 1949 in Scottsdale. Pfeiffer later became the director of the foundation's archives. Pfeiffer's life's work became compiling a comprehensive record of Frank Lloyd Wright, authoring more than 50 writings about the American architect.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation announced Pfeiffer's death Tuesday, writing, in part:
"Bruce was a sustaining force in ensuring that the legacy of Wright’s work and words are available to all of us, and to future generations."
Wright first caught Pfeiffer's attention in 1946, from a Life magazine article, he told The Republic in 2002. Another decade-old article notes that the archivist had earned a second-degree black belt in taekwondo, an activity he took up during a bout of arthritis.
So captivated by Wright at a young age, Pfeiffer left college and traveled from Massachusetts to Taliesin in 1949.
"I had the funniest feeling (that) I'm not going somewhere," he said in 2002 of first coming to Taliesin. "I'm coming somewhere. This is where I'm going to spend the rest of my life."
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