Everybody, I assume, is aware of “educational toys.” They’re things that are not just supposed to entertain children, but cost more than regular toys. No, wait, I mean they’re supposed to help children learn — by which we mean “learn the things we want them to learn” rather than everything else they’re learning anyway.
But never mind that; I’ve found an example of educational toys actually working. In the late 1800s, in the US, there was a product called Froebel Gifts that was a set of wooden blocks in geometric shapes and specific sizes. A woman named Anna Lloyd Jones saw them in 1876. Her son had been born in 1867 (on June 8), and she thought they would be an excellent toy for him. He later agreed, writing in his autobiography: “For several years, I sat at the little kindergarten table-top… and played… with the cube, the sphere and the triangle – these smooth wooden maple blocks… All are in my fingers to this day… ”
The kid with the blocks was Frank Lloyd Wright, declared “the greatest American architect of all time” by the American Institute of Architects, and still one of the most famous and influential architects in the US (and possibly beyond). He had a very long working career (70 years) during which he designed over 1000 structures, many of which are still standing.
Wright’s approach to design was “organic architecture,” which tries to harmonize human dwellings with their environment. There are a couple of other distinctive aspects of his designs — he designed everything, so if you were fortunate enough to llive in a Wright house, the furniture, the windows (often stained glass), the rugs, even the dinnerware and silverware were all decided for you — and a lot of it was built in, so you couldn’t change it if you wanted to! Not only that, but if you were unfortunate enough to live in a Wright house you might have to worry about rain, because while Wright’s designs are transcendent, his execution was not always up to par. That is to say, the roof probably leaked.
Wright didn’t receive a college degree until his honorary doctorates started to arrive, starting in 1955. He got his start in architectural work in Chicago, where he settled in 1887. The city was still recovering from the Great Fire of 1871, and was growing like crazy, so there was a great deal of building work to be found.
He started as a draftsman, worked his way up to architectural designer, and then the famous architect Louis Sullivan took Wright into his firm and served as his mentor. All of this, by the way, happened within just one year. Wright initially referred to Sullivan as Lieber Meister (“Dear Master”), but the two split over a dispute about house designs Wright had been completing in the evenings at home. They quarreled, Wright stomped out, and the two didn’t speak again for over a decade. Wright opened his own design studio (in a building designed by Sullivan, in fact) and was flooded with business; more than 50 buildings of his design were built over the next five years or so.
By the turn of the 20th Century he was getting pretty famous, and began to get commissions for large buildings and public works. Between 1917 and 1922 he worked in Japan, and among other structures designed the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. The city suffered a huge earthquake in 1923, but thanks to Wright’s structural work, the hotel wasn’t damaged. There’s a famous photo taken just after the earthquake of the hotel standing unscathed in the middle of a vast area of nothing but rubble.
Wright’s personal life, beginning in childhood, was often pretty tumultuous, but his designs — including construction techniques — influenced mid-century US life to an astonishing degree. He worked in urban planning as well as architecture, and his influence is still being felt in that field as well.
In his copious spare time, Wright became a significant art dealer, specializing in Japanese art. His personal collection was so valuable that he used it on several occasions as collateral for business loans when his company was short on funds. When he died at 91 he left behind a vast archive of drawings, photos, manuscripts, correspondence, and architectural models. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of items, here.
His archives are maintained in several sites, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Avery Architectural Library in New York, libraries in Chicago, and at the Frank Lloyd Wright foundation’s two sites in Wisconsin and Arizona. And if you’d like your own set of Froebel’s Gifts, they’re still available.
