Wright Before the "Lloyd"

Update: Note: All in-person visits have been suspended at EAM due to the new Department of Public Health stay-at-home advisory. Go to our Museum From Home resource page for various hands-on activities, online guides, and videos.

Wright Before the “Lloyd” is curated by Chicago’s cultural historian Tim Samuelson, who has been called a Chicago treasure in his own right. Exploring early work by the young architect “Frank L. Wright,” Wright Before the “Lloyd” is a journey via images and artifacts that portray the myriad of ways Wright flirted with styles including modernism, classicism, Tudor, Colonial and Japanese. What followed these eclectic, youthful explorations was the career of one of the world’s greatest architects, which continued to evolve over seventy years until his death at age of 92. In cases where fire and decay left only fragments and shards, cutting-edge technologies have been deployed to make Wright’s home designs whole again.

This show complements Elmhurst History Museum’s upcoming exhibition Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture of the Interior, which opens October 23, 2020 and will explore the interior spaces and objects found inside Wright’s homes.

The exhibit is a journey via images and artifacts highlighting exploratory work by the young architect “Frank L. Wright”. Many original materials were damaged and lost due to demolition, fire, and decay, but fragments were saved and reassembled by Chicago’s cultural historian Tim Samuelson. Cutting-edge technologies have made the designs whole again to tell this story of Wright’s youthful work of melding eclectic influences into a vital architecture of his own.

Image: Roloson Window, Roloson House (1894). On loan from Tim Samuelson.