“Review of *Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building: Myth and Fact*, by Jack Quinan, and *Louis H. Sullivan: The Banks*, by Lauren S. Weingarden”

AboutEva Belik reviews two 1987 architectural monographs together: Jack Quinan's *Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building: Myth and Fact* and Lauren S. Weingarden's *Louis H. Sullivan: The Banks*. Quinan's book documents the commission, design evolution, symbolic program, critical reception, and 1950 demolition of Wright's 1904 Larkin Company administration building in Buffalo, and Belik notes its discussion of the initial influence of Sullivan — Wright's former employer — on the building's early design, later eliminated from the final scheme. Weingarden's study catalogs the eight rural bank buildings Sullivan designed between 1906 and 1920, organized into a historical survey, color plates illustrating their "jewel box" character, and an individual catalog of the banks with technical and critical detail; Belik summarizes Weingarden's account of Sullivan's late-career shift from "transcendental idealism" to "pragmatist realism." Belik contrasts the authors' approaches — Quinan's skeptical, evidence-driven reconciliation of Wright's autobiographical claims with the surviving drawings, versus Weingarden's more philosophical, "hidden meaning" reading of Sullivan's ornament, which Belik suggests some readers may find short on concrete definition. She frames the pairing as offering a direct comparison of Wright's and Sullivan's differing architectural concerns during the period when Wright worked as Sullivan's chief draftsman.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0024-094X%281989%2922%3A2%3C273%3AFLWLBM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J