I have a fondness for Frank Lloyd Wright, perhaps the most famous American architect. I’ve visited several of his buildings over the years, including his original studio in Oak Park, Illinois, in the suburbs of Chicago, and more recently Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. Seeing his work at The Met was an unexpected surprise.

The room you see here is an authentic Frank Lloyd Wright room removed from an actual house and reinstalled at The Met, with some reconstruction to recreate its original architectural context. Unlike the other displays, where you can only look into a room, here you can actually walk into part of it for a more immersive experience. There are also multiple vantage points from which to see and photograph the space.

Architecturally, you can see the evolution from the Aesthetic Movement I featured yesterday, along with much of the simplified Craftsman-like wood detailing. And while the layout looks fairly contemporary, it still has the warm wood trim that modern houses typically lack.

While I greatly appreciate Wright’s style and his contribution to architecture, I don’t think I could live in a Wright house. The wood detailing and ornate windows are still too prominent for my tastes. The oak used in many of Wright’s interiors has a pronounced grain that I find a little too heavy. I much prefer smoother, less prominent woods like cherry or beech.

On the other hand, living in one of the limited number of Wright houses would be a real honor. Fortunately, that’s not something I realistically need to concern myself with.

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