I need some * Wright stats

[EJ]

Does anyone know the following:

#of total building (residential, commercial, anything) designs Wright made
# of these designs that were built:
# that have been torn down (counting Carr and the Mercedes Dealership, I believe it to be 120).

From those numbers, we would get what remains.

Thanks!

[SpringGreen]

I'm sure other chatters on here will come up with better answers, but this was what I came up with 10 years ago in answer to a question (so, it might not be correct any more, but gives us a starting point). What I wrote then quoted below

(1) How many Wright-designed houses still exist? I didn't know the number of Wright "bootleg" houses from his time with Louis Sullivan. Carla Lind, who wrote the book, Lost Wright: FLLW's Vanished Masterpieces, stated that Wright designed "about 500" buildings of all types. Looking on-line, I'd found a reference to FLW designing 532 buildings (all types). Wright himself sometimes said he built over 700. So, in order to come up with an answer to this question, I looked to William Allin Storrer's The Architecture of FLLW: A Complete Catalog, 2nd edition (1992), as he was the standard authority

(& 1992 gets us past all the peskiness of the things he keeps changing).

First, I had to decide what a residence was. In the end, I decided that anything that was designed to be a year-round residence was the best I could come up with. I eliminated garages that were part of the design for the original owner, but were detached from the main residence (and thus given their own number by Storrer). I also eliminated guest cottages, since I don't know what the facilities were like on the inside. Apartments buildings, however, were included as residences because they would be discrete designs that would serve all the salient needs of the occupants. They’re billed as 1 design each because I didn’t know how many units each had. Buildings that were not originally designed to be residences, but are now (such as the Coonley Playhouse, a kindergarten, now a house) were also eliminated.

In the end, there were many less extant Wright houses than I thought. There are 436 designs numbered by Storrer in the 1992 ed. (when his corrections and additions were taken into account)
# that are/were not residences: 118
# that were demolished residences (as of 1992): 21
# that were demolished apartment buildings: 3

Add to that: 1 residence destroyed late 2004 (that would be the Carr), and at least 1 destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. There is another Wright home that was in the same area, but we do not know at this time whether it can be saved. Its owner described it, on Sept. 8, as "severely damaged". Let's keep that one in the "survivor" pile for the moment. The article is reprinted at this link: http://www.savewright.org/talk/viewtopic.php?t=199

SO! After all that, the total count in 2005, based on all these factors is: 292 Wright-designed houses still extant.

I've not gone looking for the new ones discovered, but there was the one found by Mike Lilek earlier this year (reported in Wright in Wisconsin;
http://www.wrightinwisconsin.org/Wright ... oodWI.aspx

And the one announced last week, documented by MJ Hamilton:
http://host.madison.com/entertainment/a ... 546f8.html

This is definitely not canon, but it's a place to start.

[jmcnally]

To complicate the inquiry, you have to define what Wright "designed." A project may have only had preliminary sketches, or it could have gone to full drawings ready for construction.

At Florida Southern College, he "planned" more than 3 dozen structures, but the common theory there is that he designed about 18 buildings and about 12 were constructed.

Also, some of them weren't buildings. He is also credited (in various states) with designing walkways (esplanades), bridges, fountains, and monuments. Prof. Storrer treats them as separate entries in his books.

[Roderick Grant]

Then you have to wonder if Adler and Sondern are one or two houses?

[SREcklund]

In response to this question a year or so ago, I dug through Storrer and my Heinz guidebook and put together my own map. It's ConUS only, but I believe it's a pretty accurate listing of both extant and demolished structures. But corrections are happily accepted!

The Wright List - Google Maps

[SDR]

Is it time to ask what EJ's * was meant to be ? (Technical hint: you can post the word with a space between each letter . . .)

SDR

[Paul Ringstrom]

Stan,
If YES means you actually got into the house.... I noticed that you marked Alsop as one you had gotten into. How did you manage that? Almost no one has done that.

[SREcklund]

Stan,
If YES means you actually got into the house.... I noticed that you marked Alsop as one you had gotten into. How did you manage that? Almost no one has done that.

Being an anal-retentive sort, there's actually 4 layers of yes - "yes", the house exists,;"yes", I've visited the site; "yes", I've photographed the building; and "yes" I've toured the structure. In this case, only the first is true, which is why the pin is red - anything more and it would be green.

[EJ]

SDR, the word was HARD to the very CORE put together.

[SDR]

Heh-heh. Thanks, EJ. All we can do is try . . . !

SDR