Wright Chat

I quite enjoyed the Quarterly's feature on FLLW and his automobiles. I was curious about the 1911 Stoddard Dayton that is mentioned. This web link shows a picture of a restored "Red Devil" http://www.conceptcarz.com/view/photo/1 ... photo.aspx

From my opinion this was the best looking model he owned. Makes me wonder what car would FLLW drive today?

Well, if both Frank and Olga were still around, perhaps, in honor of her homeland, the former Yugoslavia, they would drive a Yugo.

Can you post the article...or is there a web link? I've always wondered what happened to his cars....were they all sold off after his death, or are they in some warehouse somewhere? It goes to a larger curiosity of mine, which is what other materials besides drawings and letters are in the archives. Models? His elevated shoes? A cape and pork-pie hat?

Deke

The Cord Museum http://www.automobilemuseum.org/Pages/default.aspx has two of his vehicles and Joel Silver has two of his Lincolns. Quarterly articles are not available online.

From son John's "MY FATHER, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT" -- the end of the chapter called "DAD THE PAPA" (pp 50-53):


Excitement ran high. The four-cylinder, "three-seater" Stoddard Dayton sport roadster arrived! It was one of three automobiles in all of Oak Park.
Dad had the factory remake their original body according to his design. There were two individual seats in front, one directly centered behind,
reached by a step from the rear. The upholstery was brown leather. A cantilever convertible canvas top streamlined from the back to well in
front of the dashboard. The trimmings were brass, the body enameled a straw yellow. When the top was down there wasn't anything to hold one in
except a rise of about four inches at the side of the seat.

The good citizens of Oak Park called it the Yellow Devil, and not many days passed before the Oak Park police threatened to confiscate it. The
speed law was twenty-five miles an hour. The Yellow Devil could go sixty. The factory borrowed it once to run in a race.

Dad took his sister Jenny, a nervous person, for a ride in the back seat. He drove a block after turning a sharp corner before he discovered that
he had left Jenny on the grass plot at the corner's curb. Jenny wasn't hurt, but she didn't go riding with Papa any more.

Dad was kept busy paying fines. The day after I had been warned for the last time by the police, my brother Lloyd was exceeding the speed limit --
but not much. The police, thinking he was I, locked him up. Lloyd couldn't convince them that they had mistaken him for his brother John. Papa had
to leave his work and walk ten blocks to pay one hundred dollars to get Lloyd out of the jailhouse.

I think this car had something to do with Papa's leaving home. I know it added new values to his life, for it was at that time that an attractive
young woman fell in love with him, or he with her, or both with each other. They went riding often. I knew it was often because it interfered too
many times with my plans to use the car.

One night I swiped the Yellow Devil to take my best girl riding, but ran into a two-foot-wide trench across the road before reaching her house. The
front wheels went into and out over the trench, smashing them both, stripping the gears, and cracking my watch.

I sat motionless with grief in the middle of the street for an hour. I loved that car. I walked home to break the news to Dad. It hurts my feelings
even now to think of it. He didn't say one word in reprimand -- that made it worse. It cost him three hundred and fifty dollars for repairs.

Papa was a handsome figure in the driver's seat with linen duster, goggles and his wavy hair dancing in the breeze. One night he took his fair
companion riding and kept right on going. That was the second great mystery of my life.

Where did this man go, the Papa I now called Dad?

_____________________________________________________________

It's a little hard to believe that in 1911 there were only three autos in Oak Park. . .

SDR

If anyone would like for me to acquire a copy of the latest FLW quarterly,
" FLW and His Automobiles" I would be happy to do so, as they are available at T-W for $5.00 a copy. Send an e mail with your mailing info to:
[email protected]

michael perrino

Suzette Lucas does a marvelous job as editor of the Quarterly for her readers. As a contributing photographer, I also find her a great pleasure to work with.

Mark Hertzberg

Mark : Suzette IS the Quarterly. The success it has enjoyed, its professionalism and diversity is all due to her input. Michael

Mr. Wright's Stoddard Dayton was what was called in the teens a "Mother in Law Roadster" the third seat was for a adult to supervise a dating couple. My hobby is antique cars. My friend Pete Eastwood owns a Stoddard Dayton and he is President of that club. there seem to be no known extant Stoddard Dayton Mother in Law roadsters. There were few Stoddards to begin with and its amazing they survive, but they are wonderful fast great handling cars, PARTICULARLY for their time!

I am building a custom 1940 Ford truck along the lines of "What would Frank Lloyd Wright have done?" I'm turning it into a roadster pick up with a severely raked and chopped windshield, dropped low on the suspension and with moon covers painted in geometric designs that resemble Imperial Hotel caberet china and Seats upholstered with Massilink designed throws and a big red square on the truck bed canvas cover...

I'm also looking for a Stoddard Dayton chassis. Mr. Wright left beheind drawings of that car in some of his renderings and Rootlieb could build that body easily.

TRed-

Be sure to post some photos of your truck when it gets to a point where you feel like sharing. Sounds interesting.

I can see him buying a Bugatti Veyron, and then having it seized by the bank 5 months later.

Then, perhaps he'd have a Mercedes SL convertible for the wife, and a Porsche Cayenne Turbo for himself.

Bugatti sounds interesting. I'd vote for a Maybeck for FLW & Olga. Wes would have a Maserati Quattroporte and the apprentices would be driving Smart Cars.....

I suppose a mere Bentley would not be extravagant enough for the Wrights ?

In fact, I don't believe that the cars Wright chose over his lifetime represent the costliest selections available during the various eras in
question. Was the Stoddard an exceptionally expensive car in its day ? In the early and later 'thirties, neither Cord model model which Wright
owned was nearly as expensive as a Packard or Pierce, to say nothing of foreign exotica like Hispano-Suiza. Neither was the handsome early
Lincoln Continental. (The fact that Wright tried to own such cars without paying for them is neither here nor there, in the present argument -- is it ?)

Style seems to have meant more to the man than mere extravagance; Wright never cared either for Cadilllac or Rolls Royce, as far as I know;
he seems to have been drawn more to the unusual, the exotic, and (to his eye) the handsome. Rarity was an important part of the equation, I
acknowledge. . .

SDR

A Stoddard-Dayton was indeed a very high quality and expensive car in its time. As was Mr. Wright's Packard touring that he owned while at Ocotillio, his first L-29 Cord (Although not as expensive as the very stoggie Pierce Arrow) and the 1937 Cord was priced with mid model Packards and below a Pierce, and far below a Duesenburg.

Almost as good looking as a Cord were things like Graham Shark noses, 1936 Ray Lowey designed Studebaker, and later a 1950 Studebaker starlight coupe or the marvelous Lowey 1953 Studebaker coupe. Surely had he lived long enough Mr. Wright would have lusted after a red Studebaker Avanti R-2.

Mr. Wright did of course have several Crosely's, a car also near and dear to my heart whose engine designer I used to know when he was old And I young...and fleet of the biggest baddest pre war land yachts the marvelous V-12 Lincoln Continental. Way back in the 1970's a photo of one of Mr. Wright's lincoln's appeared in Hemming's Motor News, clearly a nearly abandoned hulk sitting out in the Arizona desert, asking price five grand at a time when a really good running decent looking from three feet away car could have been had for that. Wish I'd had the money...She'd be my daily driver today if I had...I Hear Joel Silver paid over a million for it, more or less restored. See Mr. Wright NEVER got paid what he was worth........