Bad Idea Department: F Lloyd Wright and the Goodness of the Bombing of Britain

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1866  

[I've written earlier on a related and very bad idea, Atomurbia, for atom-bomb-proofing American cities, here.]

Reading Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke I found a set of very unflattering and semi-unbelievable quotes from the unpretty Frank Lloyd Wright.  Present at a MoMA exhibition he was sharing with D.W. Griffith (detailed in the publication Two Great Americans published by the museum in 1940), Wright chose the background of the Battle of Britain, in which German bombs were falling on English cities killing thousands, to promote his city design idea of Broadacre (among other things).

In development since 1932 (appearing in his book The Disappearing City) and kept on until his death in 1959, Wright's idea for city /suburban development spread a "city" ti its limits, nearly stripping it of its citiness and expanding it towards the horizon in a wide and low wave of a complete suburbia.  With this, Wright must have reasoned, Broadacre City must have seemed "bomb-proof" compared to the normal concept of the city, and decided to make the best of a horrible situation to promote his idea.

And with this, he was quoted in November 1940 in the New York Times, saying:

"I would not say that the bombing of Europe is not a blessing, because at least it will give the architects there a chance to start all over again"

To say that this was an idea best left to the imagination rather than in the pages of the Paper of Record goes without saying.

And what of the architects whose buildings were lost during the Blitz?  Say, like Christopher Wren?

"I don't think that anyone will miss Wren's work very much" (This, and the quote above, found in Baker, page 248.)

I've had a problem with Wright for a long time, but had never bumped into this part of his thinking before.

[Wright's wrongs on the Bombing of Britain are also recorded in Peter Shedd Reed (ed), The Show to End All Shows: Frank Lloyd Wright and The Museum of Modern Art, 1940 (MoMA 2004, here), and here, in the Milwaukee Journal for 22 June 1941, and also in the News Chronicle of London in"How I would Rebuild London"]

 

 

Comments

[Smut Clyde]

semi-unbeliale quotes from the unpretty Frank Lloyd Wright

Semi-Belial? Calling him half-demonic is surely a little harsh.

[John F. Ptak]

I agree--semi-belial was a typo. Big fingers/little keys/lousy editing.