Article: What FLW said about Frank Furness

DavidC · Post by **DavidC** » Thu Mar 05, 2015 8:48 am

The Frank Furness You'll Never See in Center City

David

Macrodex · Post by **Macrodex** » Thu Mar 05, 2015 9:48 am

I would expect praise from Wright of Furness, if not solely due to Sullivan's connection to him.

DRN · Post by **DRN** » Thu Mar 05, 2015 10:15 am

I don't believe Wright's comment was necessarily dismissive or derogatory. I read Wright as admitting that though Furness' grammar or style was not to his taste, or termed "ugly", he believed that the work had a richness of ideas.

Roderick Grant · Post by **Roderick Grant** » Thu Mar 05, 2015 12:36 pm

It's often difficult to know whether FLW was excoriating, damning by faint praise or actually complimenting the work of other architects.

SDR · Post by **SDR** » Thu Mar 05, 2015 1:24 pm

"Frank Furness was the designer of a bold, unabashed, ugly, and yet somehow healthily pregnant architecture."

I hadn't heard Wright speak of Furness before -- like him, an iconoclast and an original. If a true quote, it's an interesting and unusual one, and certainly not a dismissal of the man and his work ?

SDR

pharding · Post by **pharding** » Fri Mar 06, 2015 7:33 am

First there was innovative work by Frank Furness. Then Louis Sullivan built upon the the wotk of Frank Furness. Then Frank Lloyd Wright built upon the work of Louis Sullivan.

Not all of Frank Lloyd Wright's personal and professional traits were admirable. He would not have been expected to speak well of another architect. It just wan't in his nature.