In the Shadow of Frank Lloyd Wright: The Albert Chase McArthur Collection

If you asked 100 randomly selected people to name an architect, the most popular response would likely be Frank Lloyd Wright. The imprint of Frank Lloyd Wright is evident in Arizona, where you can visit Taliesin West (Wright's winter headquarters and architecture school), attend a play at ASU's Gammage Auditorium (a Wright-designed building) or drive on Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard in Scottsdale to view a spire based on a Wright design for a new state capitol building. Several collections in ASU Library's Design and the Arts Special Collections are also associated with Frank Lloyd Wright but deserve a look on their own terms. One of these is the Albert Chase McArthur Collection.

A native of Iowa, Albert Chase McArthur attended Armour Institute of Technology (later renamed the Illinois Institute of Technology) and Harvard University. He worked at Frank Lloyd Wright's studio in Oak Park, Illinois from 1907 to 1909. He established an architectural firm with Arthur S. Coffin in Chicago in 1912 before moving to Phoenix in 1925. Warren and Charles McArthur (brothers of Albert Chase McArthur) had pursued development of a major tourist hotel in Phoenix since the 1910s. By 1928 all the pieces were in place for what would become Albert Chase McArthur's signature project and a Phoenix landmark, the Arizona Biltmore Hotel.

The Albert Chase McArthur Collection includes a set of photographs documenting the construction of the hotel in 1928-1929.  While designing plans for the Arizona Biltmore, McArthur wanted to incorporate a textile-block slab construction technique developed by Frank Lloyd Wright. So at McArthur's request, Wright worked as a consultant on the project for three months in 1928. Wright's presence in Phoenix during construction created the false but persistent impression that Wright was the architect of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, and the collection thoroughly documents this attribution controversy. McArthur requested from Wright a statement that would dispel the notion that the Arizona Biltmore was a Frank Lloyd Wright building. Wright obliged with a 1930 letter in which he wrote "All I have done in connection with the building of the Arizona Biltmore, near Phoenix, I have done for Albert McArthur himself at his sole request and for none other. Albert McArthur is the architect of that building—all attempts to take that credit from him are gratuitous and beside the mark." In later years, however, Wright would claim a larger role in the project, helping to keep the controversy alive.

By the time the Arizona Biltmore Hotel opened in 1929, Warren and Charles McArthur had sold their financial interest in the hotel to William Wrigley and would relocate to Los Angeles a few years later. Frank Lloyd Wright found inspiration in the desert while working on the Arizona Biltmore Hotel and would make the area his winter home with the establishment of Taliesin West in 1937. Albert Chase McArthur joined his brothers in Los Angeles, moving there in 1932. Perhaps disillusioned by the Arizona Biltmore controversy, McArthur avoided architectural commissions and instead conducted research in color theory. Much of McArthur's research focused on a long-held interest in the interplay of color, music and design, a subject documented in the collection. Albert Chase McArthur is not a household name, but his story is an important one in Arizona architecture. I will share more about him in future posts.

— Harold Housley, Archive Specialist, Design and the Arts Special Collections