The Abraham Lincoln Center in Chicago

Abstract

The Abraham Lincoln Center was Frank Lloyd Wright9s first large public commission. Wright was chief designer of the project from 1898 until 1903. The client was his uncle, the Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones, with other members of Jones9s All Souls Church-the leading center of liberal Unitarian religious and civic life in Chicago at the turn of the century. All Souls was a prominent example of a new kind of urban ministry known as an institutional church because of its emphasis on social and educational programs. Jones wished to create a unique building as an expression of his church9s nonsectarian values. He sought a design that would depart from conventional church architecture in terms of both program and symbolism. From 1898 until 1903, Wright collaborated on the project with architect Dwight H. Perkins. Designs for the building in those years recall the tall office buildings of Adler and Sullivan. Yet Jones9s letters reveal that he was an assiduous critic of his nephew9s ideas, which he wanted simplified for economic and ideological reasons. When he and Wright failed to agree on the center9s exterior form, he turned to Perkins, who revised the design according to Jones9s wishes and saw the project through to completion in 1905. The Abraham Lincoln Center reveals formal and spatial ideas that Wright explored in his subsequent Larkin Building and Unity Temple. The center was thus a pivotal project in Wright9s emergence as an architect of public buildings.