Wright designed two projects for San Diego clients, though neither were built: Cinema for San Diego (ca. 1905) was designed as a downtown movie and live performance space and the Harvey Furgatch Residence was planned for construction in Spring Valley in 1959.
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect credited for designing more than 1,000 structures, over 500 of which were completed. A leader of the Prairie School movement, Wright would share his philosophy of organic architecture, ideas of urban planning through his Usonian houses and innovate across all building types. Wright wrote 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. Well respected during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the AIA as "the greatest American architect of all time.”
Frank Lloyd Wright designed two projects for San Diego clients, though neither were built. Wright’s first project for the area was Cinema for San Diego. Confusion around this project remains as it has been listed as ‘Motion Picture Theatre – 1897’, ‘Moving Picture Theatre – 1900’ as well as being dated by Wright himself in 1905 and 1908.
For decades, what was thought to be Wright’s second project for San Diego has been dismissed, by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, as likely drawn in La Jolla rather than intended to be built there. Recent scholarship has concluded that School for the Rosenwald Foundation was designed for the Hampton Institute in Virginia rather than La Jolla as stated on the drawing. Wright and wife Olgivanna were staying in La Jolla about the time the architect became involved with this project at the request of his client, patron and friend Darwin Martin (of Wright’s Darwin Martin House in Buffalo, NY). This may have led to ‘La Jolla’ in the initial title - Study for Schoolhouse for Negro Children: Rosenwald Foundation (La Jolla, 1928).’
Though Frank Lloyd Wright did not sign the blueprints, the Harvey Furgatch Residence was planned for construction in Spring Valley in 1959. With Furgatch hiring Wright weeks before he died, the project was largely posthumous with drawings signed by Taliesin Associated Architects' Aaron Green. The Furgatch design was based heavily on Wright’s Jester Residence (1938), and built as the Norman Lykes Residence in Phoenix after Furgatch's unbuilt design was shopped around to several clients. Harvey Furgatch would ultimately hire Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellow Sim Bruce Richards to build a home on the oceanfront in Del Mar.
Cinema for San Diego (1905)
Unbuilt, San Diego
Furgatch, Mr. & Mrs. Harvey Residence (1959)
Unbuilt, Spring Valley
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