Wright Chat

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Joseph Lyman Silsbee had a greater impact on FLW, as short a time as he worked for him, than Sullivan had. The principal impact Sullivan had, which didn't last all that long, was in the nature of applied ornamentation. As a residential architect, Sullivan was inept; not only did FLW learn about residential layout from Silsbee, he refined the slapdash, disorderly nature of Silsbee's work into the Prairie idiom. And FLW's first work, virtually if not literally independent of Sullivan, was Charnley.