Ayn Rand, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Anthem

[orpheus]

When I first read Anthem, when Rand describes the house Equality finds in the Uncharted Forest, the description of the house immediately made me think of Falling Waters by Frank Lloyd Wright. I dismissed the idea as mere coincidence.

Afterwards I discovered that Rand did indeed admire Frank Lloyd Wright and even based her character Howard Roark loosely on him, which got me to thinking:

Does anyone know of any evidence that Rand might have been inspired by Falling Waters when she describes the house in Anthem. The way the house seems to be built into the natural landscape itself and the flat roof and windows all around brought the FLW reference to mind:

Then today, at sunrise, we saw a white flame among the trees, high on a sheer peak before us. We thought that it was a fire and we stopped. But the flame was unmoving, yet blinding as liquid metal. So we climbed toward it through the rocks. And there, before us, on a broad summit, with the mountains rising behind it, stood a house such as we had never seen, and the white fire came from the sun on the glass of its windows. The house had two stories and a strange roof flat as a floor. There was more window than wall upon its walls, and the windows went on straight around the corners, though how this kept the house standing we could not guess. The walls were hard and smooth, of that stone unlike stone which we had seen in our tunnel.

[Steve D'Ippolito]

When I first read Anthem, when Rand describes the house Equality finds in the Uncharted Forest, the description of the house immediately made me think of Falling Waters by Frank Lloyd Wright. I dismissed the idea as mere coincidence.

For the record it's "Fallingwater" one word, stress on "fall". At least, that's how everyone who works there today pronounces it.

[Reidy]

I think you're right about the house in Anthem; the Wynand country house has even more of Fallingwater in it. The Stoddard Temple in several important respects resembles Unity Temple, and the Enright House, the St. Mark's project.

Your best sources on the Wright-Rand nexus are her Letters and Journals as well as the published biographies. You could also take a look at an article on the topic. Franklin Toker, in Fallingwater Rising, makes a convincing circumstantial case that she became aware of the house through the 1938 special exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. He also makes several dubious and undocumented speculations about Wright's influence on Rand. Donald Leslie Johnson's The Fountainheads is not worth your time. It's one of the worst books ever written about either figure.