Frank Lloyd Wright And Trouble In River City

If Frank Lloyd Wright had not deserted his wife, six children and left for Europe with his next-door neighbor, Mamah Cheney, who deserted her husband and two children to be with Wright, Mason City, Iowa might have become the country’s greatest repository of Wright’s Prairie School architecture.

During the first decade of the 20th century, business was booming in Mason City. In 1909, a group of local attorneys and businessmen decided to develop a street corner to meet three needs: for a new, much needed hotel, a bigger building for the City National Bank and offices for their corporation.  To design their tripartite new building, they turned to the hottest architect of the day, Frank Lloyd Wright.

The previous year, Dr. G.C. Stockman had hired the architect to design a house; for their mixed-use development, the attorneys and businessmen wanted more of the voguish new Prairie Style. Wright took on the work in Mason City, which had been settled in 1853.

The town moved through several names before locals settled on Mason City. At the confluence of the Winnebago Rivers and Calmus Creek, it has, however, always been known as the “River City.” Today this appellation is familiar to lovers of the town’s musical heritage. Meredith Willson, Mason City’s favorite son, created the Broadway musical “The Music Man,” which is based on places and people here.

When Stockman’s house influenced the town’s business community, Mason City’s accumulation of Prairie School architecture began. Today, Mason City is home to the largest concentration of Prairie School homes in a natural setting in the world: at least 32 houses were built in the style between 1908 and 1922. 17 are on the National Register of Historic Places; eight more are contributing properties to a historic district, the Rock Glen and Rock Crest National Historic District. But, other than the Stockman House and the Park Inn Hotel and City National Bank Building, none were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

When he scandalously eloped with Mamah Cheney in 1909, Wright put an end to his Mason City career. Local citizens with money to spend on new homes turned to other architects, including Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, Francis Barry Byrne, William Drummond, Einar Broaten and Curtis Besinger.

The upright citizens of River City were not the only ones who felt that way: Wright did not get another commission until 1916, in Japan.

The 1908 Dr. G.C. Stockman House and the Park Inn Hotel and City National Bank Building, built in 1909 and 1910, still stand, though they suffered years of neglect and remuddeling before community organizations saved them. The Stockman House is a museum open to the public, while the hotel and bank building underwent a 20 million dollar renovation and re-opened in August 2011 as a boutique hotel and conference center with 27 guest rooms, of which no two are alike.

This post first appeared on Forbes.com. To see the original, click here.