BOOK REVIEW
Frank’s Last Stand
Frank Lloyd Wright in New York: The Plaza Years, 1954–1959, by Jane King Hession and Debra Pickrel (Gibbs Smith, 2007)

Reviewed by Garo Gumusyan, AIA

Summary: Frank Lloyd Wright, the suave, romantic playboy, at 85 years old, has one last mission—to seduce that faithless woman of a certain age, New York City. She has been on his list for a long time. This time, though, he will do it his way. Everything is meticulously planned … down to the Plaza Hotel’s Suite # 223, which Wright will completely make over; for Christian Dior’s previous “inferior desecration” of the room simply will not do.

The time is the ‘50s, and New York City, the object of his desires, is getting a major make-over—International Style. And who are the ones busy reshaping the grand corporate headquarters that line Park Avenue? None other than the Mies van der Rohe-clones, for whom Wright has nothing but contempt!

Two avenues west, ensconced in his Plaza suite, Wright, anointed the “greatest architect of all time” by House Beautiful, sits stewing, yearning, waiting, having yet to build a single structure in the burgeoning post-war Capital of the World.

This is the dramatic setting for Jane King Hession and Debra Pickrel’s recent survey of Frank Lloyd Wright’s time in New York between 1954 and 1959. As their story unfolds, Wright, the aging playboy, has one more trick left up his sleeve, the magnificent Guggenheim Museum, which would indelibly leave his mark on the city he loved to hate.

Hession and Pickrel are terrific storytellers and they know their subject well. Along the way, we discover little gems such as when Marilyn Monroe comes to Suite # 223, without then-husband Arthur Miller, to privately discuss a house they were planning to build together in Connecticut. Wright, sensing his opportunity to be with the starlet alone, asks his secretary to take his own wife out shopping.

Wright wasn’t always so smooth for “when he ordered his favorite spirit, Old Bushmills, neat, the waiter usually incorrectly delivered his Irish whiskey in an ice filled glass. Wright would pick up a spoon … lift the cubes out one by one, and proceed to flip them across the green carpeted floor, to the astonishment and pleasure of the other patrons.”

Insightful little stories like these illuminate this late yet significant period in the American master’s life. This is a cleverly written book and delicious read. Which raises the question: A half a century has passed since his death, why hasn’t there been another Wright? What does this say about the current American Architecture? Makes you reach for that Old Bushmills. Neat.