Smart Lecture
Daniel Bluestone: Saving Wright's Robie House, 1957
Architectural historian and director of the Preservation Studies Program at Boston University Daniel Bluestone (PhD ’84) explores the contentious yearlong international preservation campaign spurred by the Chicago Theological Seminary’s 1957 plan to demolish Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and replace it with a married student dormitory. With assistance from Frank Lloyd Wright and officials of the University of Chicago, the successful campaign to save the Robie House reflected critical economic and racial tensions in post-war American culture, memory, and urban renewal. The debates over the Robie House transformed the very nature of the preservation movement in the United States.
Audience Q&A and reception to follow.
Free
Presented by the Department of Art History, in collaboration with the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, as part of the 2018/19 Smart Lecture series supported by the Smart Family Foundation