A Model House and a House's Model: Reexamining Frank Lloyd Wright's House on the Mesa Project

Abstract

This article examines Frank Lloyd Wright's House on the Mesa project, which, despite its familiarity to most historians of twentieth-century architecture, has never been thoroughly studied within the general context of Wright's expansive oeuvre and the specific circumstances of the Museum of Modern Art's 1932 Modern Architecture: International Exhibition. Numerous drawings for the project survive in the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives at Taliesin West, although only photographic evidence survives of the original model. Scattered references to the project appear in Wright's writings, most notably his correspondence with wealthy Denver businessman George Cranmer, whose family served as a kind of inspirational muse for the architect. Of special importance is a letter from Wright to critic Lewis Mumford recently discovered in the Lewis Mumford Papers at the University of Pennsylvania. Handwritten on the back of a photograph of the project's model, Wright's letter sheds new light on some of the project's technical innovations, which included textile-block walls, cantilevered roofs, and stepped casements. Less a response to the International Style, as is commonly held, the project was Wright's model of individualized, machine-age luxury for a merit-based democracy.