WRIGHT, FRANK LLOYD. (1869-1959). Architect and chief theorist and practitioner of the Prairie School of design; America’s greatest and most influential architect. Signed architectural plan. (“FLW”). 1p. Large Folio (34” x 52”). N.p., N.d. Foundation plan drawing for the unbuilt Wilson Shelton House, designed for Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, and signed in ink by Wright in a red box at the lower right of the sheet. Our detailed plan lays out the proposed home’s footprint. Basement areas and footings.

Known for his strikingly original designs, including New York’s iconic Guggenheim Museum and Fallingwater, the memorable weekend retreat in Pennsylvania, Wright remains America’s most influential architect. Minimally trained as an engineer, his determination to create a mid-western inspired form of architecture made him the leading innovator of the Prairie style and, beginning in the 1930s, the Usonian house. “His attempt at bringing designs of beauty and humanity within the range of ordinary people… [Usonia] came to symbolize for Wright an idealized way of living in a landscape, a vision in miniature of what a perfectly designed house could be,” (Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, Secrest). Between 1946 and 1959, Wright received 270 residential commissions, including ours which was never constructed. Ironically, the cheap imitation of Wright’s style by residential developers of the 1950s can be blamed for the proliferation of anonymous, box-like suburban architecture that dominates the American landscape, a testament to the appeal Wright’s design had for the American middle class. According to Columbia University’s Avery Library, Wright completed two designs for Shelton, Scheme 1 (Avery #5721) and Scheme 2 (Avery #5758), some of which have been digitized.

Wilson A. Shelton (1918-1982) was a vice president of American Home Products Corporation and president of Compton Advertising in New York City as well as Police Commissioner of Cove Neck, Long Island, where he lived with his wife, Vassilia G. Shelton (1915-1991).

In ink, graphite and colored pencil and in excellent condition with some minor wrinkling. A very attractive full-house rendering by America’s most famous architect.