Collection ID: MS.0022.0001

Collection context

Summary

Creator:
Wright, Frank Lloyd, 1867-1959, Fyfe, William Bye, Hare, Michael M., and University Archives
Abstract:
Correspondence between Michael Meredith Hare, architect, philosopher and author, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Taliesin Fellowship member, William Bye Fyfe, when Hare was an architecture student at Yale in 1933, concerning Hare's inquiry into a Fellowship at Taliesin and Wright's views on architectural education. Also includes a 1940 autobiographical sketch of Hare.
Extent:
.88 Linear Feet and 1 flat box
Language:
Collection material in English.
Preferred citation:

[Description and dates], Item number, MS 22.1, Frank Lloyd Wright correspondence with Michael Meredith Hare, 1933, 1940, University Archives, State University of New York at Buffalo.

See the Special Collections' preferred citations instructions for additional information.

Background

Scope and Content:

Collection contains correspondence dated 1933 from Frank Lloyd Wright

to Hare, from a Wright apprentice, William Fyfe, to Hare, and a handwritten

draft from Hare to Wright, shedding light on Hare's disillusionment with Yale's

architecture program and Wright's encouraging him to join his architecture

school at Taliesin. Also included is a 1940 autobiographical statement and a

resume updated by hand circa 1960 which offer insight into Hare's transition

from architecture to philosophy.

Biographical / Historical:

Michael Meredith Hare was born January 7, 1909 to Montgomery Hare and Constance Parsons Hare in New York City. He attended Groton School from 1921 to 1927. He entered Yale College in 1927 and transferred to the department of architecture in 1929. Following a leave of absence to study architecture in France in 1931, Hare returned to Yale in 1933 to complete his degree. But Paris had changed him:

[H]e was completely out of sympathy with the philosophy then prevalent at that school. In Paris, Mr. Hare had become converted to the Contemporary viewpoint, quite different from that held at Yale, through the good offices of the now Chicago architect, William Deknatel, who had formerly been a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Both then and today Mr. Hare has differed seriously with the philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright, but despite the differences this influence acted as a breath of fresh air." [quoted from Michael Hare's autobiographical statement, 1940]

Hare was asked to leave Yale and he completed his degree at Columbia in 1935. He was a Special Consultant to the Board of Design for the New York World's Fair in 1939 where he pushed for the Fair to be contemporary rather than colonial. His theme, "The Fair of the Future", was modified to "The World of Tomorrow." He practiced as an architect until 1956 when began to devote himself full time to philosophy. He died in 1968.

Acquisition information:

Collection donated by former University at Buffalo Distinguished

Professor of Philosophy, Peter Hare, November 1975.

Processing information:

Collection was processed by Archives staff.

Arrangement:

Collection is arranged in chronological order.

Accruals:

No further accruals are expected to this collection.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access

RESTRICTIONS:

Frank Lloyd Wright correspondence with Michael Meredith Hare, 1933,

1940 is open for research.

TERMS OF ACCESS:

Copyright of papers in the collection may be held by their authors,

or the authors' heirs or assigns. Literary rights to letters written by Frank

Lloyd Wright or his associates are own by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

Researchers must obtain the written permission of the holder(s) of copyright

and the University Archives before publishing from materials in the collection.

Please see Archives staff for information on obtaining copies of

photographs.

PREFERRED CITATION:

[Description and dates], Item number, MS 22.1, Frank Lloyd Wright correspondence with Michael Meredith Hare, 1933, 1940, University Archives, State University of New York at Buffalo.

See the Special Collections' preferred citations instructions for additional information.

LOCATION OF THIS COLLECTION:
420 Capen Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260, United States
CONTACT:
716-645-2916
lib-archives@buffalo.edu