Wright, Frank Lloyd

203. Wright, Frank Lloyd. Typed Letter Signed "Frank Lloyd Wright" to Lewis Mumford advising Mumford on his approach to writing about architecture. 4to, written on a single side of Albert Chase McArthur Architect stationary, with holograph corrections and annotations; light wear, staple holes to upper left corner, verso soiled, creased at folds, Mumford's receipt docket at head.

Phoenix, AZ?, April 30, 1928 [1000/1500]

"My dear Lewis Mumford: -Fiske Kimball has just sent me a copy of his new book,- a well written brief for the "Classic" bracketing McKim, Meade and White's thought in Architecture with Lewis Sullivan's. God save the mark! And this is "History".It would be hard to beat that for grave-robbing, I say. I write this because of a note from the Century Company, asking for views of. "Taliesin" to illustrate your article on "American Architecture" in which you make "a kindly reference to me". (See copy of enclosed letter to Fiske Kimball)I am heartily sick of the historical falsifying of the real course of ideas in the Architecture of our country, unconsciously done as most of it is. A true concept of "modernism" in origin or effect is so far almost wholly lacking.Why don't you record it? No man has yet stood up to this task, learning anything further West of Manhattan, -the commercialized monstrosity, -than Buffalo, New York.Why not you? Come afield and see for yourself the healthy undergrowth coming through this rank obscuring growth of pseudo-classic weeds. A healthy undergrowth rising from seed planted in the prairie soil thirty years ago? Pseudo-Classic has only been a "cash-crop",???? as the farmers say, for that future harvesting!You will write what you please, as you please, but until now you have "come" afield, "led by myself," you will not write with more than the artists instinct which is dangerous [sic] in a historian, unless based upon the fundamental acts contributing to the subject he views and records. Pardon the seeming attempt to "preach". It is perhaps uncalled for and an egotistic assumption on my part, but I am just smarting from Fiske Kimball's well-meant "obituary."Why allow Corbusier - et al to "beard us"??? in our own day?Faithfully yours,"

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