A Child’s Toy Changes Architectural History
Before Frank Lloyd Wright was a world-famous architect, he was just a kid who loved to play with blocks. His mother, Anna Lloyd Jones, just knew he was going to be an architect. She would take pictures of grand cathedrals from Harpers Weekly, frame them, and hang them on the wall of his nursery. She encouraged his love of building by giving him a block set when he was nine. The blocks his mother gave him, though, were not regular building blocks. Friedrich Froebel, the man who invented kindergarten in 1830, created these blocks. Wright credits the blocks, and Froebel’s philosophy as significantly influencing his design work. The Froebel blocks showed him how all architecture and construction is based on a simple geometry, and that the important part of the building was the space within it. This would be a cornerstone of Prairie style architecture.