Free Frank Lloyd Wright by Charles River Editors Page A

Frank and Jane spent their first few years in a Boston suburb, far from the family’s Wisconsin home. But it was a Baptist church, and very much in contrast to the Unitarian teachings Frank had previously learned from his mother and her family.
    It was while the family lived in Boston that Anna Lloyd-Jones Wright discovered Friedrich Froebel's concept of kindergarten, which was a new and foreign concept to her. Anna decided her very young children would benefit from Froebel’s approach. She discovered that, in the United States, Milton Bradley had embraced Froebel’s concept, well before kindergarten had become a part of the American school system, and had begun to manufacture learning products. Milton Bradley created blocks of different shapes with which to teach basic skills, and called them Kindergarten Gifts. Anna Wright eagerly bought these Kindergarten Gifts in order to teach preschoolers Frank and Jane, but as far as Anna was concerned, there never seemed to be enough education, so Frank also attended Miss Williams’ private school, a fashionable school in the Boston suburbs, for some years.
    At home, Anna taught Frank the writings of William Longfellow, the radical William Ellery Channing, [3] Waldo Emerson, the sermons of Theodore Parker, and the works of Henry David Thoreau, favoring the transcendentalism of the East. In his autobiography, Wright describes his childhood as a lonesome one, where he would rather read, listen to music, draw, and “make things,” than to sleep—and to dream.
    When Frank’s father became a minister, his mother longed to return west to Wisconsin and her family, the only home she had ever known. Soon Frank’s youngest sister, Maginel, was born, and then the family of five did return west, to a new home on the shores of Lake Mendota, near Madison, Wisconsin.
    In Wright’s opinion, this was when his education began, but it had nothing to do with school or formal education. When he was only 11 years old, Frank was sent to his Uncle James in the Ixonia valley of Wisconsin, to learn farm work, or, as Wright said, to learn to “add ‘tired’ to ‘tired’.” His greatest regrets were that he had to leave behind books, music, idle dreams, and city streets. He also left behind his mother, father, little Maginel, and Jane, and went to work on his Uncle James’s farm, forty miles away.
    As he worked the farm, Frank pondered about the fact that much of his time there was devoted to the dairy herd, yet the family never included cream with their meals. Frank’s mother distrusted doctors, and believed that food could cure anything, especially in its plainest forms. Apparently, her brother James held the same belief, because after a long day of work splitting rails and doing other things that seemed a bit too hard for such a young boy, he listed the array of foods for breakfast, but, no cream. Again, a list of food served at noon, but without cream. Finally, dinner, with no cream.
    By April, Frank was yearning for September 17, and the beginning of the school year. Regardless of the fact that he adored Uncle James, the older man was not kind to Frank. As a result, the young boy ran away from home, only to be found by his uncle, who compassionately explained to Frank how to adjust to hard work. Years later, he recalled his uncle explaining that, “Adventures make strong men and finish weak ones.” Little, pre-pubescent Frank had only begun to learning to see the beauty in the world around him.
    Back in Wisconsin, Frank’s father returned to teaching music to help make ends meet. It was shortly after his time on the farm that Frank befriended Robie Lamp, a physically handicapped boy his age, who studied music under the tutelage of Frank’s father. Frank and his new best friend remained close until Robie died at the early age of only 44 years. One of Wright’s lesser-known structures was a little cream-white brick house he'd designed for Robie where he lived until he died, which