“overrated/underrated”: The Readers Speak

The following story supports Catherine Clinton’s statement that Frank Lloyd Wright’s “genius for architecture was matched only by his genius for self-promotion.” It was told to me by the architect Eero Saarinen. In 1946 I briefly rented a room from Saarinen and his wife, Lily, in their beautifully restored Victorian brick farmhouse in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This was during the early design stage of the General Motors Technical Center north of Detroit.

Several years earlier, after dinner with Hero’s father, Eliel Saarinen, at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Bloomfield Hills, Wright was walking to the academy’s auditorium, where he was to give a lecture. Eero was right behind him. Noticing one of Eliel’s renderings on the wall, a major project in Finland, Wright stopped to better view the drawing. “My, what a great architect I am,” he exclaimed.