Free Frank Lloyd Wright by Charles River Editors Page B

featured a billiards room, a children’s playroom, and an entire servants' wing.
    As children, Frank and Robie not only learned violin, but they also learned how to run a small printing press in the Wright’s basement. The two, along with a friend, Charlie Doyon, formed Wright, Doyon and Lamp, Publishers and Printers. After a young lifetime of learning to respect the writers of literature, Frank now discovered that “Letters are works of art, or should be.” [4]
    Music and singing were what Wright called a “riot” at the Wright’s house, as it was always mixed with laughter. Frank decided when he was 16 that music was unmanly, and so he left it behind. He and Robie both replaced their childhood interests with construction and the design of inventions.
    Frank Lloyd Wright was only 16 years old when he entered the University of Wisconsin. Frank’s parents had divorced by then, his mother’s family considered her failed marriage a disgrace, and he never saw his father again.
    Wright enrolled in the university as a prospective civil engineer, but it proved to be a burden for his now single mother, left with three children to raise on her own, to afford tuition. During the 1886-87 school year, Frank Lloyd Wright attended the University of Wisconsin (Madison) where he had been a student during the latter part of 1885-86. By 1886-87, he was one of only four students who were referred to as a “Special Student in Engineering,” [5] and was working part-time to help his mother make ends meet.
    The Catalogue of the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity from 1888-94 listed Frank Lloyd Wright at his Oak Park, Ill. address as a graduate of the class of 1889 and a member of Wisconsin Alpha. [6] But in truth, Frank Lloyd Wright never earned his college degree.
    He left the University of Wisconsin for Chicago, with one semester left before graduation. He told his mother and sisters he was slipping out to get food, and simply never returned. In his own words, Frank was spared what he'd called the curse of the “architectural” education of the day, with its false direction in culture, and wrong emphasis on sentiment, partly because his mother could not afford for him to study architecture full-time.
    With no architectural experience, and only a partial education in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Frank was met with no kindness in Chicago. He was nearly broke before he was able to find work. Eventually, he was hired by Cecil Corwin of Silsbee’s architectural firm. It was pure coincidence that Silsbee’s was in the process of building All Souls Church for Frank Lloyd Wright’s uncle.
    Wright described his time at Silsbee’s as a very positive experience, save for Silsbee’s hesitance to approve a raise for him when he was earning less than lesser-talent staff, and he eventually quit.
    Wright was quickly hired by Silsbee’s competitors, Beers, Clay and Dutton, for the same rate of pay he had asked from Silsbee's. However, soon Wright realized he lacked the experience to produce the designs expected of him, and he returned to Silsbee's who met his wage demands, at a time when the architecture firm of Adler & Sullivan were building the Chicago Auditorium.
    Frank bounced around among the leading Chicago architectural firms, armed only with a partial education in civil engineering, for some years, before settling in to work for Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, styled as Adler & Sullivan, for seven years. During his tenure there, he met fellow architect Paul Mueller, with whom he would work in the future. Wright remained close with Adler, Sullivan and Mueller throughout his life, even after becoming an independent architect.

    Adler

    Sullivan
    In spite of having left college degreeless and disenchanted about institutions of learning, Wright devoted his life to learning, eventually opening his own university.
    Now that he no longer attended classes, he continued to learn everything he could on his own. It was about this