Inside the architect?s overlooked plan for Broadacre City If you read enough about Frank Lloyd Wright, a standard narrative begins to emerge: There?s early Wright, where the brash young architect breaks from his Chicago School mentors to create the Prairie style and design such early icons as the Robie House in Chicago and Tokyo?s Imperial Hotel. Then there?s late Wright, the mature genius who brought us Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum. In between, there?s a fallow period of personal scandal, a slowdown in commissions, and oddball musings, such as his 1932 plan for a utopian, libertarian community he called Broadacre City.

Though Wright remains America?s most famous architect, his Broadacre theories are often relegated to a footnote of his career; indeed, many biographies don?t mention them at all. But what if the Broadacre plan?a sweeping, individualized American ?anti-city? that fused Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian ideals into a seamless, Wright-designed, suburban landscape?was, in fact, the architect?s most enduring idea" Had Wright followed in the footsteps of an architect like his rival, Le Corbusier, who both theorized about master-planned cities and got a chance to design one in Chandigarh, India, the Broadacre concept might today be seen as more central to his career.
Even though Wright didn?t get the chance to bring a Broadacre City to fruition, many of his Broadacre ideas have become central to the American landscape. With today?s telecommuting an...