“This recognition by UNESCO is a significant way for us to reconfirm how important Frank Lloyd Wright was to the development of modern architecture around the world,” recognized Barbara Gordon , the executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, the international organization that advocates for the architect’s structures and that oversees the committee set up to monitor the World Heritage inscription.

The lengthy effort undertaken by the stalwart supporters representing numerous properties associated with Wright offers the people working on the Civil Rights Movement Sites Serial Nomination and other properties on the Tentative List an example of the World Heritage process. In 1991 representatives of Wright’s two architectural studios— Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona—proposed the properties to the World Heritage Committee as the basis of a nomination only to be asked for a comprehensive “topic-by-topic study” of Wright’s work as a Serial Nomination.

A decade passed before Lynda Waggoner, the director of Fallingwater, Wright’s iconic house in Mill Run, Pennsylvania and a founder of the newly organized Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, undertook the challenge. She worked with others to prepare a Serial Nomination of 10 properties in seven states that the National Park Service Office of International Affairs recommended for the U.S. Tentative List in 2008. Over the next seven years, Waggoner headed the effort to prepare the formal dossier, submitting it to the NPS-OIA in 2015, after which it underwent review by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).

The Wright Serial Nomination of ten properties appeared before the World Heritage Committee at its 2016 meeting in Istanbul. There the 21 states-parties that comprise the committee as representatives of the 193 signatories of the World Heritage Convention agreed with the recommendations of ICOMOS and “referred” the Serial Nomination for revisions that included reevaluation of site selection, better management plans, and expanded buffer zones.

Over the next two years, the Conservancy restructured the Serial Nomination, dropping three of the original ten sites (and losing representation by one state), while adding a second site in Arizona. Stronger protective measures were adopted at the properties, with larger buffer zones that articulated streetscapes and view-sheds. This required rewriting the dossier to remove information about the dropped properties and to include the new materials.

The Serial Nomination argues for inscription under World Heritage Criterion II, “ to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time, or within a cultural area of the world on developments in architecture .” It does so by finding that “each [property] has strong individual characteristics, presenting a specific aspect or facet of a new architectural solution to the needs of Americans for housing, worship, work, and leisure. The buildings employ geometric abstraction and spatial manipulation as a response to functional and emotional needs and are based literally or figuratively on nature’s forms and principles.” While “adapting inspirations from global cultures, they break free of traditional forms and facilitate modern life,” thereby influencing “architecture and design throughout the world.”

Completed in 2018, the revised Frank Lloyd Wright Serial Nomination of eight properties went before the World Heritage Committee a second time last month to great acclaim by ICOMOS and the states-parties.

In addition to the two Taliesin studios and Fallingwater, the other properties inscribed are Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois; the Frederick C. Robie House in Chicago, Illinois; the Hollyhock House in Los Angeles, California; the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Stuart Graff, the head of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation noted, “It is an immense honor to have Frank Lloyd Wright’s work recognized on the world stage among the most vital and important cultural sites on Earth like Taj Mahal in India, the Pyramids of Egypt and the Statue of Liberty in New York.”

The complete nomination document can be downloaded here.

Mark your calendars!

World Heritage and U.S. Civil Rights Movement Sites Second Symposium

Atlanta April 16-18, 2020

This project is funded in part by:

The African American Civil Rights program of the Historic Preservation Fund,

National Park Service, Department of the Interior. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material do not constitute endorsement or necessarily reflect the views of the Department of the Interior or U.S. Government; and

Grants from the African American Fund and the Southern Intervention Fund of the

National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Questions? Comments?  

Visit:  worldheritage.gsu.edu .

Project Director Glenn T. Eskew: gteskew@gsu.edu or 404.413.6354

Project Manager Anne H. Farrisee:  afarrisee@gsu.edu  or 404.413.6353