Review: The Architecture of Barry Byrne: Taking the Prairie School to Europe, by Vincent L. Michael, John H. Howe, Architect: From Taliesin Apprentice to Master of Organic Design, Jane King Hession and Tim Quigley

Abstract

Vincent L. Michael The Architecture of Barry Byrne: Taking the Prairie School to Europe Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013, 248 pp., 11 color and 99 b/w illus. $60 (cloth), ISBN 9780252037535 Jane King Hession and Tim Quigley John H. Howe, Architect: From Taliesin Apprentice to Master of Organic Design Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015, 232 pp., 157 color and 55 b/w illus. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 9780816683017 In a bitter diatribe published in the May 1914 issue of Architectural Record , Frank Lloyd Wright harshly criticized former employees for plagiarizing his architecture. While the accusation may have been justified in the cases of some of Wright's draftsmen, Barry Byrne and, later, John Howe stepped out of the master's shadow and successfully developed their own personal interpretations of organic architecture. Byrne worked in the Oak Park studio during the early days of Wright's independent practice. Howe, years later, became the “pencil in Wright's hand” at Taliesin. The positions of these two men in the story of midcentury modern architecture have remained largely overlooked until now. While a generation separated Byrne and Howe, numerous parallels connect them. Both came from relatively poor families in the Chicago area and developed their interest in architecture as young boys, spending free time visiting modern buildings. Both talked their way into Wright's office as teenagers without any formal training and then quietly learned the trade by listening and observing, eventually rising to become central members of the studio staff. Both were industrious and diligent workers, “lacking the architectural ego” of their employer, as Vincent L. Michael observes of Byrne in The Architecture of Barry Byrne (2). And both went on to have successful independent careers, producing their own aesthetically accomplished, functional architecture. Two recent monographs provide new insights into the careers of these designers. Both books are valuable resources for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of midcentury modern architecture and, more specifically, the work of these former Wright employees. Francis Xavier Ignatius Loyola Walter Barry Byrne (1883–1967) came to Wright's Oak Park studio with no previous training in architecture or construction. Having experienced the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition as a child, Byrne later recalled, he would have been “desperately unhappy” had …