Wright and New York

“Anthony Alofsin’s Wright and New York traces the transitive relationship of the architect and the city, as well as the genesis of the bohemian culture of the East Village."—Patti Smith, New York Times

“Meticulously researched, highly readable . . . Alofsin recounts this disastrous series of events in great detail before chronicling Wright’s gradual rebranding from pariah to hero, a long process that culminated in 1940 with a sweeping retrospective at MoMA.”—Fran Leadon, Gotham 

“What makes Alofsin’s book so immensely valuable is its deep dive into the Wright archives held by Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art. There is much in his book that was new to me. Best of all, Alofsin manages to present as fine-grained a picture of Wright’s times in New York (and in many other places) as we have ever had while never falling into the archive-diving biographer’s vice of long-windedness and needless discursiveness.”—Francis Morrone, New Criterion

Of the many Wright biographies, Anthony Alofsin’s Wright and New York: The Making of America's Architect is unusual in focusing on the period in which the well-known, though not yet famous Midwesterner—broke, nearly broken, and vulnerable—started again from scratch[ . . . ] New York gave the architect opportunities that transformed a vulnerable, humbled figure into a Mount Rushmore-scale icon, an enduring American monument that Wright himself chiseled and shaped through his own prose.”—Joseph Giovannini, Interior Design Magazine

“Illuminating.”—Anthony Paletta, The American Conservative

“The remarkable story about an extraordinary architect whose other greatest achievement may be how he sustained and elevated such a long and meaningful career.”—Stanley Stark, Oculus

“In his meticulously researched, highly readable Wright and New York, Anthony Alofsin outlines Gotham’s influence on America’s foremost twentieth-century architect.”—Fran Leadon, Gotham Center for New York City History (blog)

Finalist in the PROSE Awards Architecture and Urban Planning category, sponsored by the Association of American Publishers

“Anthony Alofsin engagingly examines Frank Lloyd Wright’s previously unexplored relationship with New York City and the influence one had over the other. Illuminating an atmosphere of turbulent change and a burgeoning bohemian culture, this is the perfect book to read when navigating a city that seems, more than ever, a victim of heartless reconstruction.”—Patti Smith

“A watershed investigation of Wright’s life in the 1920s, when he landed, adrift, in New York. The city proved antagonistic, irresistibly so, and transformed him. Alofsin’s erudition, compelling prose, and first-rate detective work will alter how you perceive both Wright and Manhattan.”—Judith Dupré, New York Times bestselling author of Skyscrapers

"Alofsin chronicles the relationship between America’s greatest architect and its greatest city with the precision of a detective, the perspective of a historian, and the flair of a novelist."—Thomas Mellins, author of New York 1930: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Two World Wars