Staying Fit
People often travel with a purpose, such as visiting art and cultural sites.
Frank Lloyd Wright, a pioneer of the Prairie style who has been called the greatest American architect of all time, inspires such travel.
Most of his roughly 400 remaining buildings are houses, including Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, the Frederick C. Robie House in Chicago, Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.
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But Wright also designed many nonresidential buildings where visitors can tour, dine or stay overnight. Several still function in their original capacity, such as churches and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City; others are National Historic Landmarks or on the National Register of Historic Places.
Mostly self-taught, Wright stretched boundaries in his professional — and personal — life, using unconventional forms and materials.
“Wright was certainly among the first celebrity architects,” says John Waters, an architect and preservation programs manager for the nonprofit Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy in Chicago. “He had a genius for self-promotion and had several dramatic events in his life that catch the imagination. Ultimately, his buildings are what his enduring legacy [is] based on.”
Beth Sikkema, 70, of Cocoa Beach, Florida, has visited dozens of Wright-designed sites across the country. “His architecture just speaks to my soul,” she says. “Even though [his nonresidential buildings] are designed for multiple people, there’s still a feeling of intimacy to them in the way they’re designed.”
Here are five iconic Wright-designed commercial sites to visit: