ARCHITECT'S DEMOCRACY
Hesseltime, William B.
Architect's Democracy Frank Lloyd Wright's Blueprint WHEN DEMOCRACY BUILDS, by Frank Lloyd Wright. University of Chicago Press. ?4. Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine GREAT, strong, and...
...light, and sunshine in abundance...
...When Democracy Builds is the book of a prophet, a philosopher, and a poet...
...Full in the prophetic tradition b Frank Lloyd Wright...
...It is a city of useful work, in which men can attain beauty, develop talents, own their own souls, and practice democracy...
...From time to time, as the abominations of man offend- the nostrils of Heaven, the Lord raises a prophet to cry damnation upon mundane iniquities...
...hurls anathemas upon the sins of society and points an unerring fin ger towards the road to redemption...
...Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine GREAT, strong, and persistent in the Judeo-Chris-tian world is the tradition of the Prophet...
...Like Elijah Jeremiah, the 2 Isiahs, and the skin-clad John, the sage of Taliesir...
...They are to be thought about, and, IF Democracy builds, they must become the blueprint of its house...
...Its creator shows the same fine disdain for the Biiles of grammar and the niceties of formal style that he does for the conventions of "colonial" houses...
...Bureaucracy in government, the banking system, and the enslavement of men to machines have combined to rob individuals of self-respect, independence, the love of beauty, and the integrity of their souls...
...WHEN democracy builds, it will build a rent-free city...
...When democracy builds, it will build a civilization in which technology is not a tool of totalitarianism...
...It is a city as broad as the nation, and with air...
...When democracy builds, it will build homes whose organic architecture binds man and land together...
...And, so saying, the world's greatest architect presents the solution—decentralization...
...From time to time a voice in the wilderness cries for a straight road, and men close their ears and deny honor to the Prophet in hit-own country...
...The sins of modern society are many, but the primary one is centralization...
...The concentration of mankind in cities, the feudal exaction of rent, and the tyranny of predatory capital are alike symbolized in monstrous skyscrapers and in stinking tenements...
...The book's 131 intense pages are not to be skimmed hurriedly...
...In the true tradition of the race of prophets to which he belongs, Frank Lloyd Wright points to Broadacre City: an attainable paradise in which each individual will own his own home, upon its own acre...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 29
