Lloyd Wright

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Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr. (1890–1978), commonly known as Lloyd Wright, was an American architect who did most of his work in Southern California. He was fathered by, overshadowed by, and frequently confused with Frank Lloyd Wright.

Wright came to California as a landscape architect, trained by the Olmsted brothers and put to work at the San Diego World's Fair of 1915. In the mid-1910s, his father delegated many of the responsibilities for designing the Hollyhock House for Aline Barnsdall in Hollywood, California, the first California project of the elder Wright, to him. (Lloyd Wright would later supervise the 1946 renovation of the Hollyhock House when it was converted into a USO facility.) In 1923 he served as his father's construction manager for four simultaneous, difficult Los Angeles-area projects: La Miniatura in Pasadena, the Storer House, the Ennis House, and the Freeman House. Lloyd Wright helped develop the distinctive concrete textile-block used on those structures.

Wright built a number of houses in Hollywood in the late 1920s: a house for silent film star Ramon Novarro, the Taggart House, the Mayan-looking Sowden House, and his own residence. His most famous solo work is probably the 1951 Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes. All of these structures reveal his training as a landscape architect. The most prominent feature of the chapel, for instance, is the bower of redwood trees integral to the effect of the building.

He is also well known as the designer of the second and third shells at Hollywood Bowl. The original shell, built by a group known as the Allied Architects as part of the 1926 regrade of the Bowl, was considered unacceptable both visually and acoustically. Wright's 1927 shell had a pyramidal shape, and a design reminiscent of Southwest American Indian architecture. (According to Charles Moore, it was a leftover from Wright's sets for the silent film version of Robin Hood.) Its acoustics were generally regarded as the best of any shell in Bowl history, but its appearance was considered too avant garde for its time, or perhaps only ugly, and it was demolished at the end of the season. His 1928 shell had the now-familiar concentric ring motif, but it was made of wood, covered a 120-degree arc, and was designed to be easily dismantled and stored between seasons. It was left out in the rain after one season, and rotted, making way for the 1929 Allied Architects shell, which stood until the end of the 2003 season. Lloyd Wright is the father of architect Eric Lloyd Wright.

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