Frank Lloyd Wright, Hollyhock House, and Olive Hill, 1914-1924

The decade 1914-1924 was crucial in the career of Frank Lloyd Wright. He was at work on two major projects, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and the Barnsdall commission for Olive Hill in Los Angeles. The Imperial Hotel, although vast and impressive in its grandeur as a finished building supervised closely by Wright, is not as revealing as the Barnsdall commission of the process of transition that these years represent. During the decade Aline Barnsdall called upon Wright to design for her 45 buildings, of which 2 were major theaters (one for Chicago, one for Olive Hill); 2 were her own residences (one for Olive Hill, one for Beverly Hills); 16 were stores; 21 were houses; 1 was an apartment building; 1 an entrance pavilion; 1 a motion picture theater; and 1 a playhouse-kindergarten. In addition, he designed a master plan for her property that included the majority of these buildings and anticipated his later theories of planning as developed in Broadacre City. These buildings span the range of Wright's designs from the late Prairie House to the fully worked out textile block system for concrete.