The author details more than one hundred of Wright's buildings that no longer exist--lost to fire, natural disaster, changes in fashion or economy, or intended to be temporary.

Despite his grand achievements, Frank Lloyd Wright understood the needs of the typical American family. For them he designed the "Usonian Home" and proved that affordability and superb architecture could go hand in hand. With simple supplies and characteristic creativity, Wright devised elegant homes that belied their modest price tag. Take a fascinating tour of the best of these--including the inaugural Jacobs House (1936)--all built on the same principles, but subtly differing, depending on the occupants' lifestyles and local materials.

Usonia, New York is the story of a group of idealistic men and women who, following WWII, enlisted Frank Lloyd Wright to design and help them build a cooperative utopian community near Pleasantville, NY. Through both historic memorabilia and contemporary color photos, this book reveals the still-thriving community based on concepts Wright advocated in his Broadacre City proposals. Over the years, thousands of architects, scholars, planners, and students have visited the community, but no book has yet appeared on this remarkable site. Reisley, one of the original members of Usonia (and still a resident), has written the first full account to illuminate the events, problems, and passions of a democratic group of people developing a designed environment an hour from New York City and the ups and downs of working with America's most famous -and most famously volatile-architect.

The author's boyhood home in Alabama, one of Wright's Usonian houses, is the point of departure for the narrative, which interweaves intriguing details of Ford's interest in setting up a planned community and, later, of the development of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the single most important regional development in the United States. Just as the Roosevelt administration was putting together its plans for TVA, Wright was imagining an American utopia - Broadacre City - where every family would be guaranteed a lush green acre of land.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed and realized over 500 buildings between 1886 and 1959 for a wide range of clients. In Frank Lloyd Wright's Pope-Leighey House, architect Steven M. Reiss presents the updated and detailed story of one of Wright's few Virginia commissions. Designed and built for Loren and Charlotte Pope and later purchased by Marjorie and Robert Leighey, the Pope-Leighey House stands as a stunning example of an innovative form of shelter--which Wright called Usonian--for families beset by the Great Depression. Here, and elsewhere, Wright offered a unique and unprecedented approach for homes that would be small yet architecturally significant, carefully sited, and constructed of readily available local materials. He believed that anyone with an acre of land should have the opportunity to own a Usonian home. Set in Northern Virginia, the Pope-Leighey House has an unusual history in that it has been moved twice, first to the grounds of the National Trust's Woodlawn to rescue it from the path of Route 66 in Falls Church, then to re-site it to better correspond to its original orientation. Wright's mission was to remind us that "we need to see life in simpler terms." In this amply illustrated book, Reiss echoes Wright's reminder that small, carefully built structures should be the starting point of sustainable and environmentally responsible house design.

One of the architectural challenges for Frank Lloyd Wright was how to provide moderate-cost houses that were as good as expensive ones. His solution was the Usonian house--a term he coined for the United States of North America. With their horizontal floor-plans, open living spaces, walls of windows, carports, and patios, these houses became models for many houses that now cover the American landscape. Here are a dozen examples of Wright's Usonian house.