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Education and first Chicago years (1885-1888)

Wright attended a Madison high school but there is no evidence he ever graduated. He was admitted to the University of Wisconsin–Madison as a special student in 1886. There he joined Phi Delta Theta fraternity, took classes part-time for two semesters, and worked with a professor of civil engineering, Allan D. Conover. In 1887, Wright left the school without taking a degree (although he was granted an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University in 1955).

In 1887, Wright arrived in Chicago in search of employment. Resulting from the devastating Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and recent population boom, new development was plentiful in the city. He later recalled that his first impressions of Chicago were that of grimy neighborhoods, crowded streets and disappointing architecture, yet he was determined to find work. Within days, and after interviews with several prominent firms, he was hired as a draftsman with the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Wright previously collaborated with Silsbee — accredited as the draftsman and the construction supervisor — on the 1886 Unity Chapel for Wright’s family in Spring Green, Wisconsin. While with the firm, he would also work on two other family projects: the All Souls Church in Chicago for uncle, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, and the Hillside Home School I in Spring Green for two of his aunts. Other draftsmen that also worked for Silsbee in 1887 included future architects, Cecil Corwin, George W. Maher, and George G. Elmslie. Wright soon befriended Corwin, with whom he would live until he found a parmanent home.

In his autobiography, Wright accounts that he also had a short stint in another Chicago architecture office. Feeling that he was underpaid for the quality of his work for Silsbee (at $8.00 a week), the young draftsman quit and found work as a designer at the firm of Beers, Clay, and Dutton. However, Wright soon realized that he was not ready to handle building design by himself; he left his new job to return to Joseph Silsbee – this time with a raise in salary.

Although Silsbee adhered mainly to Victorian and revivalist architecture, Wright found his work to be more "gracefully picturesqu" than the other "brutalities" of the period. Still, Wright aspired for more progressive work. After less than a year had passed in Silsbee's office, Wright learned that Adler & Sullivan, the forerunning firm in Chicago, were "looking for someone to make the finish drawings for the interior of the Auditorium [Building]." Wright demonstrated that he was a competent impressionist of Louis Sullivan's ornamental designs and two short interviews later, was an official apprentice in the firm.

Adler & Sullivan (1888-1893)

Wright did not get along well with Sullivan's other draftsmen; he wrote that several violent altercations occurred between them during the first years of his apprenticeship. For that matter, Sullivan showed very little respect for his employees as well. In spite of this, "Sullivan took [Wright] under his wing and gave him great design responsibility." As a show of respect, Wright would later refer to Sullivan as Lieber Meister (German for "Dear Master"). Wright also formed a bond with office foreman, Paul Mueller. Wright would later engage Mueller to build several of his public and commercial buildings between 1903 and 1923.

Wright's home (1889) in Oak Park, Illinois

On June 1, 1889, Wright married his first wife, Catherine Lee "Kitty" Tobin (1871–1959). The two had met around a year earlier during activities at All Souls Church. Sullivan did his part to facilitate the financial success of the young couple by granting Wright a five year employment contract. Wright made one more request: "Mr. Sullivan, if you want me to work for you as long as five years, couldn't you lend me enough money to build a little house?" With Sullivan’s $5000 loan, Wright purchased a lot at the corner of Chicago and Forest Avenues in the suburb of Oak Park. The existing Gothic Revival house was given to his mother, while a compact Shingle style house was built alongside for Wright and Catherine.

By 1890, Wright earned a private office next to Sullivan’s own in the firm's new, 17th floor space atop the Auditorium Building. He had risen to head draftsman and handled all residential design work in the office. As a general rule, Adler & Sullivan did not design or build houses, but they obliged to do so when asked by the clients of their important commercial projects. Wright was occupied by the firm’s major projects during office hours, so house designs were relegated to evening and weekend overtime hours at his home studio. During this time, Wright designed Sullivan’s bungalow (1890) and the James A. Charnley Bungalow (1890) both in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, the Berry-MacHarg House (1891) and Sullivan’s townhouse (1892) both in Chicago, and the most noted 1891 James A. Charnley House also in Chicago. Of the five collaborations, only the two commissions for the Charnley family still stand.

The Walter Gale House (1893) is Queen Anne in style yet features window bands and a cantilevered porch roof which hint at Wright's developing aesthetics

Despite Sullivan’s loan and overtime salary, Wright was constantly short on funds. Wright admitted that his poor finances were likely due to his expensive tastes in wardrobe and vehicles, and the extra luxuries he designed into his house. To compound the problem, Wright's children — including first born Lloyd (b.1890) and John (b.1892) — would share similar tastes for fine goods. To supplement his income and repay his debts, Wright accepted independent commissions for at least ten houses. These "bootlegged" houses, as he later called them, were conservatively designed in variations of the fashionable Queen Ann and Colonial Revival styles. Nevertheless, unlike the prevailing architecture of the period, each house emphasized simple geometric massing and contained features such as bands of horizontal windows, occasional cantilevers, and open floor plans which would become hallmarks of his later work. Nine of these early houses remain today including the Thomas Gale, Parker, Blossom, and Walter Gale houses.

As with the residential projects for Adler & Sullivan, Wright designed his bootleg houses on his own time. Sullivan knew nothing of the independent works until 1893, when he recognized that one of the houses was unmistakably a Frank Lloyd Wright design. This particular house, built for Allison Harlan, was only blocks away from Sullivan’s townhouse in the Chicago community of Kenwood. Aside from the location, the geometric purity of the composition and balcony tracery in the same style as the Charnley House likely gave away Wright’s involvement. Since Wright’s five year contract forbade any outside work, the incident led to his departure from Sullivan’s firm. A variety of stories recount the break in the relationship between Sullivan and Wright; even Wright later told two different versions of the occurrence. In An Autobiography, Wright claimed that he was unaware that his side ventures were a breach of his contract. When Sullivan learned of them, he was angered and offended; he prohibited any further outside commissions and refused to issue Wright the deed to his Oak Park house until after he completed his five years. Wright couldn’t bear the new hostility from his master and thought the situation was unjust. He "threw down [his] pencil and walked out of the Adler and Sullivan office never to return." Dankmar Adler, who was more sympathetic to Wright’s actions, later sent him the deed. On the other hand, Wright told his Taliesin apprentices (as recorded by Edgar Tafel) that Sullivan fired him on the spot upon learning of the Harlan House. Tafel also accounted that Wright had Cecil Corwin sign several of the bootleg jobs, indicating that Wright was aware of their illegal nature. Regardless of the correct series of events, Wright and Sullivan did not meet or speak for twelve years.

Transition and experimentation (1893-1900)

After leaving Louis Sullivan, Wright established his own practice on the top floor of the Sullivan designed Schiller Building (1892, demolished 1961) on Randolph Street in Chicago. Wright chose to locate his office in the building because the tower location reminded him of the office of Adler & Sullivan. Although Cecil Corwin followed Wright and set up his architecture practice in the same office, the two worked independently and did not consider themselves partners. Within a year, Corwin decided that he did not enjoy architecture and journeyed east to find a new profession.

With Corwin gone, Wright moved out of the Schiller Building and into the nearby and newly completed Steinway Hall Building. The loft space was shared with Robert C. Spencer, Jr., Myron Hunt, and Dwight H. Perkins. These young architects, inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement and the philosophies of Louis Sullivan, formed what would become known as the Prairie School. They were joined by Perkins apprentice, Marion Mahony, who in 1895 transferred to Wright’s team of drafters and took over production of his presentation drawings and watercolor renderings. Mahony, the first licensed female architect in the United States, also designed furniture, leaded glass windows, and light fixtures, among other features, for Wright’s houses. Between 1894 and the early 1910s, several other leading Prairie School architects and many of Wright’s future employees launched their careers in the offices of Steinway Hall.

William H. Winslow House (1893) in River Forest, Illinois

Wright’s projects during this period followed two basic models. On one hand, there was his first independent commission, the Winslow House, which combined Sullivanesque ornamentation with the emphasis on simple geometry and horizontal lines that is typical in Wright houses. The Fancis Apartments (1895, demolished 1971) Heller House (1896), Rollin Furbeck House (1897), and Husser House (1899, demolished 1926) were designed in the same mode. For more conservative clients, Wright conceded to design more traditional dwellings. These included the Dutch Colonial Revival style Bagley House (1894), Tudor Revival style Moore House I (1895), and Queen Anne style Charles Roberts House (1896). As an emerging architect, Wright could not afford to turn down clients over disagreements in taste, but even his most conservative designs retained simplified massing and occasional Sullivan inspired details.

Soon after the completion of the Winslow House in 1894, Edward Waller, a friend and former client, invited Wright to meet Chicago architect and planner Daniel Burnham. Burnham had been impressed by the Winslow House and other examples of Wright’s work; he offered to finance a four year education at the École des Beaux-Arts and two years in Rome. To top it off, Wright would have a position in Burnham’s firm upon his return. In spite of guaranteed success and support of his family, Wright declined the offer. Burnham, who had directed the classical design of the World’s Columbian Exposition was a major proponent of the Beaux Arts movement, thought that Wright was making a foolish mistake. Yet for Wright, the classical education of the École lacked creativity and was altogether at odds with his vision of modern American architecture.

Wright's studio (1898) viewed from Chicago Avenue

Wright relocated his practice to his home in 1898 in order to bring his work and family lives closer. This move made further sense as the majority of the architect’s projects at that time were in Oak Park or neighboring River Forest. The past five years had seen the birth of three more children — Catherine in 1894, David in 1895, and Frances in 1898 — prompting Wright to sacrifice his original home studio space for additional bedrooms. Thus, moving his workspace necessitated his design and construction of an expansive studio addition to the north of the main house. The space, which included a hanging balcony within the two story drafting room, was one of Wright’s first experiments with innovative structure. The studio was a poster for Wright’s developing aesthetics and would become the laboratory from which the next ten years of architectural creations would emerge.

Prairie period (1900-1909)

Darwin D. Martin House (1904), Buffalo, New York

Between 1900 and 1901, Frank Lloyd Wright completed four houses which have since been considered the onset of the "Prairie style." Two, the Hickox and Bradley Houses, were the last transitional step between Wright’s early designs and the Prairie creations. Meanwhile, the Thomas House and Willits House received recognition as the first mature examples of the new style. At the same time, Wright gave his ideas for the American house widespread awareness through two publications in the Ladies' Home Journal. The articles were a answer to an invitation from the president of Curtis Publishing Company, Edward Bok, as part of a project to improve modern house design. Bok also extended the offer to other architects, but Wright was the sole responder. "A Home in a Prairie Town" and "A Small House with Lots of Room in it" appeared respectively in the February and July 1901 issues of the journal. Although neither of the affordable house plans were ever constructed, Wright received increased requests for similar designs in following years.

Wright's residential designs were "Prairie Houses" because the design is considered to complement the land around Chicago. These houses featured extended low buildings with shallow, sloping roofs, clean sky lines, suppressed chimneys, overhangs and terraces, using unfinished materials. The houses are credited with being the first examples of the "open plan." The manipulation of interior space in residential and public buildings are hallmarks of his style.

Many examples of this work are in Buffalo, New York as a result of friendship between Wright and Darwin D. Martin, an executive of the Larkin Soap Company. In 1902, the Larkin Company decided to build a new administration building. Wright came to Buffalo and designed not only the first sketches for the Larkin Administration Building (completed in 1904, demolished in 1950), but also homes for three of the company's executives including the Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo NY, 1904,

Other Wright houses considered to be masterpieces of the late Prairie Period (1907–1909) are the Frederick Robie House in Chicago and the Avery and Queene Coonley House in Riverside, Illinois. The Robie House, with its soaring, cantilevered roof lines, supported by a 110-foot-long (34 m) channel of steel, is the most dramatic. Its living and dining areas form virtually one uninterrupted space. This building had a profound influence on young European architects after World War I and is sometimes called the "cornerstone of modernism". However, Wright's work was not known to European architects until the publication of the Wasmuth Portfolio.

One such building is Unity Temple, the home of the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Oak Park. As a lifelong Unitarian and member of Unity Temple, Wright offered his services to the congregation after their church burned down in 1904. The community agreed to hire him and he worked on the building from 1905 to 1908. He believed that humanity should be central to all design.

Prairie Houses continued to be designed and constructed until 1917, but Wright was less involved in these houses and most did not receive the same level of detail.