With Pencil or Tongue, Wright Was Adept With a Sharp Line

Frank Lloyd Wright was as adroit at delivering a line as he was at drawing one. To wit:

“It would be cheaper to abandon Pittsburgh than rebuild it.”--Wright’s urban renewal recipe.

“A colorful, happy environment abundant with music.”--Wright’s elegiac description of a San Francisco funeral parlor that never got built.

“He should have been a painter. He was a bad one, but he should have kept on.”--Wright’s verdict on Swiss architect Le Corbusier.

“Those skinny glass boxes! Why, I wouldn’t dare walk on the same side of the street with them. The fool things might explode. That’s from a fellow who knew what architecture was when all these glass-box boys were just so many diapers on a line.”--Wright’s opinion in the New Yorker magazine of modern architecture and architects.

“If you look after luxuries, the necessities will take care of themselves.”--Wright’s philosophy of extravagant living.

“Let ‘em call out the militia!”--Wright defies the building code bureaucrats in going ahead with the now-classic Johnson Wax building in Racine, Wis.

“Move the dining room table.”--Wright’s solution when Hib Johnson, who had commissioned a family residence, telephoned to complain the roof was leaking onto their Thanksgiving dinner.