College Has Wright Stuff And Big Plans

By JESSICA GRESKO The Associated Press

Published: May 29, 2007

LAKELAND - Frank Lloyd Wright died more than four decades ago, but he taught a class at a small college here.

Wright's students at Florida Southern College were all somewhat familiar with his work. Wright designed 12 structures on the college's campus, the largest collection of the architect's work on a single site.

Students reflect in the architect's chapels, move from class to class under more than a mile of walkways he designed, attend lectures in his classrooms, even use bathrooms lined with his concrete textile blocks.

It can be easy to forget that the campus is a work of art, administrators and students said. This year, as the college prepares for major restoration, students in one class studied the buildings they study in, examining and organizing Wright's plans for the college as well as letters, photographs and other documents in the school's files.

"Everybody pretty much agreed that Frank Lloyd Wright would have liked the idea, maybe just from an egotistical perspective," said the class's professor, James G. Rogers Jr.

Wright hasn't always received so much attention at the school, a private college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. During the approximately 50 years since the buildings were constructed, concrete blocks cracked and steel supports rusted, and upkeep sometimes was neglected or done without regard to Wright's style. That's changing.

Over the next year, Florida Southern will complete a plan to preserve Wright's buildings, using a grant from the Getty Foundation. Its esplanades, the name for the covered walkways, are being restored, as is a massive Wright-designed fountain called the Waterdome that will be finished this summer.

As part of the Getty grant, students taking a freshman honors class were asked to organize the campus's Wright documents, studying and separating material on each of his buildings for reference by preservation architects.

The effort changed the way some students looked at their campus. After studying Wright's entranceways, Drew Weseman says, he recognized the architect's signature style across campus, low entrances preparing visitors for more open spaces.

He also understood why he was drawn to looking out the window during class in one Wright building, he said. It was Wright's concept of organic architecture, integrating site and building, not boredom.

Weseman's classmate, Keri Smith, said students learned so much about Wright, they felt they knew him. "He's practically my best friend," she said.

Familiarity only went so far. Students donned white gloves to handle Wright material and generally referred to the architect as "Mr. Wright" during class. They scanned and cataloged pictures and other material and started to build a Web site on Wright for the college.

Their research led to some surprises for architect Jeff Baker, who is leading the preservation work. In one instance, students found a photograph of an original Wright skylight that had collapsed, a picture architects weren't sure existed.

"There have been a lot of things like that, a lot of little discoveries," Baker said.

Florida Southern's campus largely was orange groves overlooking Lake Hollingsworth when Wright arrived to view the site in 1938. The college's president, Ludd Spivey, had asked him to design the campus, though Spivey had little money for construction.

Wright had just finished one of his most famous buildings, Pennsylvania's Fallingwater, but he agreed, perhaps swayed by the site and Spivey himself.

With plans drawn, Spivey enlisted students for construction. Some paid their tuition by working on the campus three days a week, but when a big job came up, everyone got out of class to help.

Former student Maryse Dale, now 85, helped haul cement to construct the school's original library. She remembers Wright's visits and boring speeches. At the time, students didn't think much of him or his buildings, she said. His first building, Annie Pfeiffer Chapel, was mocked.

"We were all country kids, ... but we knew what a chapel looked like, and that was not it," Dale said. "We would have been much more pleased with a New England-style chapel."