He liked steel buildings, stone buildings, tall buildings, low buildings.
He liked new buildings and old buildings.
He like dry buildings and damp buildings.
He liked buildings on mountaintops.
He liked buildings on deserts.
He liked buildings broken by suffering
And buildings that were happy from morning till night.
He even liked buildings built on top of other buildings.
Frank Lloyd Wright sure liked buildings.
What Frank Lloyd Wright thought made a city enduring was the height and the heft and the light and the depth of its buildings. He took it for granted that on the day his dream of a building a mile high could be linked with a triple-deck expressway making righthand turns without a stoplight into infinity his name would be remembered forever. What Mr. Wright forgot was that a village ragged tents pitched on the open prairie may be a city more enduring than a million-windowed metropolis rising a mile high on foundations a mile deep in which nobody knows who he is.
That a name carved on a cornerstone may be less enduring
Than a secret remembrance inscribed on the heart.
Mr. Wright forgot that on the heart it don’t matter how you spell it.
Novelist and architect, anti-hero and hero. What sticks in my mind is “buildings broken by suffering,” tender line, what was Algren referring to? Contrast between the cold materiality of a building and the warm materiality of the psyche is deftly handled, really like this. I’m currently researching Algren’ s friendship with music critic Ralph Gleason for a book I hope to write. Never heard him speak before, thanks for posting this –
mr. algren made chicago “his trade” and his poem proof that the city was built on the working mans back.
for more on this: http://www.nelsonalgren.org
and there will be a documentary released soon…. denis mueller and mark blottner are working on it now.
warren leming
vice chair the nelson algren committee