UNITARIANISM
IN THE LIFE AND WORK OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
By
Max D. Gaebler
Minister Emeritus, The Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin
When I
arrived in August of 1952 to take up my ministry in Madison,
the congregation of the First Unitarian Society was still
settling into its striking new Meeting House designed
by its illustrious member Frank Lloyd Wright. The congregation
had occupied the still unfinished Meeting House much earlier,
having held the first service there on February 4, 1951.
On that Sunday morning a special dedicatory address was
delivered by another distinguished member of the Society,
the philosopher Max Otto, who chose as his title "To
Own or Be Owned?" His words were a challenge to the
congregation to be worthy of its new Meeting House, to
match the imaginativeness and beauty of the building with
a quality of congregational life that would reflect intellectual
boldness and ethical sensitivity.
courtesy
Horizon Press |
| Wright
and apprentices, 1938 |
D
uring that first
year I met Mr. Wright on several occasions. While I have
no claims to be an expert on Mr. Wright, surely not
on his architecture, I did enjoy the great privilege of
knowing him and of having been his minister during the last
seven years of his life. Mr. Wright was not merely a member
of our Society in Madison; he was part of a family with
deep roots in Unitarianism on both sides of the Atlantic.
His father, William Wright, was secretary of our Madison
congregation when it was organized in 1879. Mr. Wright,
a widower with three young children, had been, among other
things, a music teacher and a Baptist minister. He had met
Frank's mother, Anna Lloyd Jones, when she was a country
school teacher and he the superintendent of schools for
Richland County. Frank, their first child, was born in Richland
Center in 1867. Three years later, now with a year old daughter
as well, they began a series of moves that culminated in
Mr. Wright's acceptance of a Baptist pulpit in Weymouth,
Massachusetts.
courtesy
Horizon Press |
|
Uncle
Jenkin, whose sermons had a significant influence
on the development Wright's religiosity.
|
When William
resigned his pastorate in Weymouth after only three years,
he did so as a Unitarian. William and Anna and their children
returned to Wisconsin to be near the supportive family
out in the valley near Spring Green. They soon settled
in Madison, and it is scarcely surprising to find them
among the little band who organized our congregation.
Frank Lloyd Wright credits his mother with bringing the
new light of transcendentalism, the work of Emerson and
Parker, back with her from their years in Weymouth.
It was Uncle
Jenkin and his friends whom the family back in the valley
in Wisconsin listened to. Frank Lloyd Wright described
listening to his uncle: "When Uncle Jenkin preached
there was the genuine luxury of tears. Going gently to
and fro in the rocking chairs below the pulpit as tears
were shed and, unheeded, trickled down. His sermons always
brought the family to emotional state—but then—so
did readings from the transcendental classics or the singing
of the children. Tears, too, when all rose in strength
and in the dignity of their faith straightened themselves
to sing—'step by step since time began to see the
steady gain of man.' The faltering, the falsetto and the
flat would raise that favorite hymn to the boarded ceiling
and go swelling out through the open windows and doors
and—to the young mind looking out toward them—seemed
to reach far away and fade beyond the hills. This surrender
to religious emotion was fervent and sincere!"
Thus did Frank
Lloyd Wright honor his heritage from those deeply religious
forebears who believed in freedom and in tolerance along
with their unshakable faith in the goodness of God. How
did he respond to all this, what impact did it have on
him in his later career? How was he touched by Uncle Jenkin
and his transcendentalist friends, the "Unity men,"
who held high the banner of "Freedom, Fellowship
and Character in Religion"?
For one thing,
it led him to follow at least some of them to the periphery
of the organized church. "I believe religious experience
is outgrowing the church," he wrote—"not
outgrowing religion but outgrowing the church as an institution,
just as architecture has outgrown the Renaissance . .
. I cannot see the ancient institutional form of any churchbuilding
as anything but sentimental survival for burial. The Temple
as a forum and good-time place— beautiful and inspiring
as such—yes. As a religious edifice raised in the
sense of that old ritual? No."
This view didn't
turn out to be quite so radical as it might sound. What
he was really voicing was criticism of the kind of fossilized
rigidity his father had evidently struggled with in that
Weymouth church and the kind of narrow sectarianism against
which Uncle Jenkin railed, a sectarianism which then as
now could invade even Unitarian circles, a sectarian spirit
which William Ellery Channing had warned his hearers to
"shun as from Hell."
In the years
I knew him Mr. Wright was not a regular or even frequent
church attender, but he did come on occasion. My colleague
Dr. John Hayward, who taught for some years at our Meadville/Lombard
Theological School in Chicago and later at the University
of Southern Illinois, spoke from our pulpit one Sunday.
Dr. Hayward's principal professional interest has been
in the relationship of religion to the visual arts. On
this occasion he chose to describe our building as he
saw it. Dr. Hayward spoke that Sunday on "The World
of This House." What view of the universe, he asked,
did this Meeting House disclose?
courtesy
Phaidon Press |
| Interior
of the sanctuary of the Unitarian Church at Madison |
Those familiar
with the building will recall that its ceiling thrusts
diagonally upward to the prow, communicating a sense of
adventure as the ship braves the uncharted sea. That diagonal
ceiling, incidentally, is the first one ever incorporated
in a religious building. They are all over the world now;
whenever and wherever you see one, you'll know it has
been built since 1951. That diagonal line, Dr. Hayward
noted, is an active line, inviting the eye not to come
to rest but to follow it upward and outward into the unknown.
"As a kind of counterpoint to this adventuresome
dimension," he adds, "one need only face in
the opposite direction from the pulpit and focus attention
on the low-ceilinged Hearth Room, where, as its name implies,
there is a home-like atmosphere complete with welcoming
fireplace and an adjoining kitchen. 'Home' suggests stability
and the comfort of familial love." What a wonderful
embodiment of our faith, for ever searching and seeking
for the higher and more inclusive vision, while yet retaining
its firm anchorage in history and tradition. Mr. Wright
sensed this appropriateness deeply. "The Unitarianism
of my forefathers," he wrote, "found expression
in a building by one of the offspring."
courtesy
Phaidon Press |
| A
view from below of main sanctuary glass wall |
Although Mr.
Wright did not come often to Sunday services, he stopped
by unannounced to visit the building many times. Mr. Wright
would come in, not on a tour of inspection but to experience
the building yet again. He would sit quietly for a few
moments on one of the benches, then go up to the prow
and gaze out toward Lake Mendota over what was then a
cornfield managed by the College of Agriculture. At such
moments there could be no question of his special attachment
to that place. It was in every way his church.
Mr. Wright
died in 1959, and as minister of his church I was invited
to officiate at his funeral. Several longtime associates
carried his casket out of the house and placed it on a
horse drawn wagon. Wes Peters, his son-in-law and principal
assistant, and Gene Masselink, his secretary for many
years, got up on the wagon and drove the horses down the
hill and along the road to Unity Chapel. The rest of us,
led by his wife, Olgivanna, and their daughter, Iovanna,
walked behind the wagon. At the chapel a very brief and
simple service ensued. The following paragraph comes from
my personal tribute:
There is something very right
in our gathering here in this chapel to pay tribute to
Frank Lloyd Wright. His life and work spanned the globe,
yet those most intimate bonds of loyalty and affection
by which he was united with his native earth are poignantly
focused at this place, a place as dear to him as it is
filled for us with precious memories and with living hope.
Here we cannot but sense something of that clean simplicity
of thought and form, that unflinching honesty of word
and deed, that unfailing sensitivity to the monitions
of beauty which, like the tranquil loveliness of this
familiar valley surrounded by the sheltering hills, provided
the true setting for his life.
-From an address delivered before the
Friends of the Meeting House October 27, 1992
THE
CONSTRUCTION OF THE MADISON CHURCH
Wright’s
parents were among the earliest members of the Unitarian
Society when it was organized in 1879. Wright participated
in the church’s Contemporary Club as a youth and
later signed the membership register. He accepted the
commission to design the new edifice in 1946; the church
was essentially completed in 1951, often with the help
of the Taliesin Fellowship (particularly in the final
weeks before dedication), fund-raising speeches by Wright,
and an army of parishioners who willingly hauled the limestone
from a quarry 30 miles away. Marshall Erdman, who later
became involved in Wright’s last prefabricated housing
projects became the major contractor because local firms,
finding Wright’s construction methods too radical,
did not want to bid on the project.
courtesy
Horizon Press |
| Profile of the Unitarian Church at Madison, Wisonsin,
1951. |
The module
employed is the equilateral parallelogram (popularly called
‘diamond’) with a unit side of 4 feet scored
into the concrete floor. This diamond shape is repeated
in the largest forms of the building - the main auditorium
with the hearth room behind - as well as smaller elements
such as the stone piers. The original building covered
approximately 11,500 square feet.
The auditoriums
can seat 252 on Wright designed single and double benches,
removable for concerts and similar events. It faces the
morning sun and is triangular in plan, with the minister
at the apex, small choir loft behind and above. The hearth
room, differentiated from the auditorium by an overhanging
low ceiling, which it shares with the entrance lobby,
can be employed to enlarge this space when extra capacity
is needed. Originally, a drape woven by the women of the
Society from a design by Wright after a sample provided
by Olgivanna allowed these two rooms to be separated.
A bronze tablet to the right of the hearth room’s
fireplace, taken from the Society’s first building,
proclaims the Bond of Union - the statement of principle
of the first Unitarian Society of Madison. On the face
of low ceiling over the hearth room, there is an ‘ancient
parable’ dictated by Wright; “Do you have a
loaf of bread, break the loaf in two and give half for
some flowers of the Narcissus for thy bread feeds the
body indeed but the flowers feed the soul.”
The copper
roof rises from the hearth room to a prow (called belfry
on the plans); in later years, Wright would offer that,
at the exterior, the belfry suggested hands held together
in prayer. This design also obviated the need for a separate
steeple. The copper originally laid on was thinner than
specified, to save on cost, and thus led to brown rot
infection of the supporting wood members of the hearth
room, repaired in 1977-78. Trim is oak.
A loggia- gallery
with Sunday school rooms has been converted to offices.
The last Wright-designed part of the building, the west
living room, was originally intended to be the living
room of a parsonage, though it was never completed as
such. The education wing beyond the west living room is
by the Taliesin Associated Architects.
This structure
has been designated by the American Institute of Architects
as one of the seventeen American buildings designed by
Frank Lloyd Wright to be retained as an example of his
architectural contribution to American culture....
THE
UNITARIAN ABSTRACT : The Modern Essence
by Frank Lloyd Wright
Against
threatening forces of Nature and the merciless passions
of our fellow men, only a cultivated sense of organic
form can build for democratic man an appropriate state,
a deeper - therefore stronger- culture than mankind has
yet known.
The one word necessary to deal with reality is 'organic'
- but like the word Nature it is the word least understood
of any root-word in English.
The cult of the Unitarian abstraction is now salvation.
But if divorced from realities it, too, is bound to produce
failures, so let us turn the dogma - “Form Follows
Function” - inward. Use both the word organic and
the word Nature in deeper sense - essence instead of fact:
say form and function are one. Form and idea then do become
inseperable; the consequence not material at all except
as spiritual and material are naturally of each other.
Should
our democracy not determine to build for the freedom particular
to itself, our ideology could well serve for the emancipation
of humanity. I believe this nation will so build....To
be able to work at and for what one most wants to do well
should be gospel in our democracy. For a democratic slogan
try “what a man does that he has.”
The freedom of the new romance? Well... you will not find
it in Grecian art or mythology. Find it inside the modern
democratic man : “what a man does - that is his.”
His vitality as an individual is his reality in the new
romance: his honor and therefore the basis for creation.
Organic architecture comes with that romantic reality
to you today. As a man is, so must he build. Just as a
nation builds - so that nation is. We have the buildings
we deserve to have either as men or as man. There are
many ways in life to conceal a man’s true nature,
but when he builds he cannot hide. You have him as he
is.
Abridged
from The Unitarian Principle as Architecture; in
Genius and Mobocracy by Frank Lloyd Wright. New
York: Horizon Books, 1971
THE UNITARIAN PRINCIPLE AS ARCHITECTURE
Works of Frank
Lloyd
Wright
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Fallingwater
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