(static hissing) (gentle music) (TV clicks) - [Frank] Until it has one of its own.

You can't live your entire life on borrowed ideas, borrowed knowledge, on borrowed culture.

We must evolve something from within ourselves.

- Frank Lloyd Wright didn't believe in the quote common man.

He believed that everyone has created potential, has a creative spirit.

He tried to produce an architecture that would instill and allow that creative spirit to blossom.

He felt that each individual could also be an architect.

(gentle music) - Here at Florida Southern College, we have the largest concentration of Frank Lloyd Wright's work in the world for any one site, one client, one commission, it's his largest commission spanning about 20 years.

- The creation of this campus was created at a time when humanity was being forced into being seen as a number.

He felt that each individual could also be an architect, even though they weren't perhaps architects by profession, that they could shape the world around them to reflect their own minds, their own spirits.

Frank Lloyd Wright tried to provide a way for them to give them courage to go out and do things for themselves, to think for themselves, to think differently, to fully live life.

- The significance of the Frank Lloyd Wright architecture at our institution, I think goes back to the intention of when Mr. Wright was invited to design this campus.

So the president at the time, Dr. Ludd Spivey, had contacted Mr. Wright because he was so distinctly American, and between the two of them, they determined that they did not want architecture that would be a copy of anything in Asia or Europe, but it would be distinctly American reflecting the American spirit of innovation, independence, and relying upon distinctive talents in all areas of education.

- [Narrator] But it needed more if it were to realize fully its own destiny and inspire the other colleges of America with the practical necessity for a better balance between spiritual and scientific teachings.

- Let me add that I agree completely with you.

- Dr. Spivey is a fascinating individual.

He was very ahead of his time in a number of different educational ideas.

He championed the values of experiential learning long before it became a staple of higher education, and he was defined, first and foremost, above all by his ambition and drive.

- In 1935, I was over in Geneva, Switzerland, and I saw a famous monument after Protestantism, and this monument suggested to me to return home quick as possible and do something extraordinary here in America.

- Dr. Spivey was a visionary.

He wanted this architecture to be distinctive and attract national attention.

- In 1938, when Dr. Spivey reached out to Frank Lloyd Wright, Wright was nearly 71 years old.

He had just embarked on what would later be looked on as kind of the renaissance of his career with the completion of falling water.

And yet, I think Frank Lloyd Wright saw something really special about this project.

It was the ability to design an entire master plan of different buildings, a blank slate of sorts, where he could not only freely, openly express his ideas, but also create a sort of thesis of his ideas, a perfect summary of his various styles, his various movements from all corners of his work.

From the earliest stages of the planning process, Wright made it clear that he had the students and the students experience foremost in his mind.

Even in early letters to Dr. Spivey talking about his vision as it was forming, he seemed to express interest more in how the students would react than anyone else in the general public, and talked at length about the student experience that he wanted to create.

- [Narrator] America, the land of opportunity.

America is the richest country in the world.

America's standard of living is the highest yet achieved.

America spends more to educate her children than any other country in the world.

- A little before my time, the college had little money, and so they worked students to build the buildings.

- One must remember that this campus was designed and the construction started during the Great Depression.

A lot of people didn't have a lot of money particularly to go to college.

So Ludd Spivey came up with actually a brilliant idea.

Perhaps the students can work on these buildings for three days a week, and then they can study for three days a week and take Sundays off.

And in that way, a lot of students that couldn't have possibly dreamed of going to college were able to realize their dreams coming here.

And in the same way, they realize the dream of creating Frank Lloyd Wright architecture.

As a restoration architect, I work on these buildings every day and I know how they're put together, and I see the mark of the students' hands in these buildings, I'm incredibly impressed by what they were able to achieve.

If you were to give the plans for these buildings to a builder today, a builder would think that you're completely outta your mind.

But yet, these students were able to build the first few buildings on this campus almost by themselves, and it's a miracle that they're here at all.

- [Jack] The students building the buildings were overseen by trades professors, industrial arts professors from back in the day, and a lot of their learning in those departments extended into the construction of the Wright buildings and vice versa.

- The work done here by the students must have been incredibly difficult, backbreaking.

The sun was shining on them, no shirts, so they were sweating it out.

Extremely difficult work.

These blocks are very, very heavy, very exacting work.

The building that we're in right now is the old library.

It was built mostly by female students after the onset of World War II.

Most of the male students had to go overseas, but yet they didn't stop.

Ludd Spivey, the president of the college kept forging ahead and the female students built most of this building.

We have some great photographs of the women on bulldozers and cement mixers.

They were building this building using, again, very, very crude techniques, and it's a real testimony to their gut and grit to get it done.

- When I walk into the Wayfarers Chapel, it brings back a flood of memories.

Frank Lloyd Wright visit my graduation.

I probably sat on this row in graduation, graduated midyear, so a small class.

And it's always a place of filled with almost worship for me as I met my wife and she was a freshman, and I was a sophomore.

In a week, we'll be married 68 years, and all that floods my thoughts to see this beautiful place, as visitors call it a place of worship, and it truly is.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Jeff] Frank Lloyd Wright developed a concept of organic architecture.

Organic architecture is an architecture that's connected in nature, and is connected to its time and its place.

- As an architect, Wright practiced for over 70 years.

He started his architectural career in the 1890s.

He had several key goals to his work.

He primarily wanted to establish the central core tenets of organic architectural design.

He wanted an architecture that, as he put it, belonged on landscape that belonged exactly where you saw it, that respected and preserved the preexisting nature around it.

He also wanted to create a much more free flowing, easygoing more in his own mind, democratic architecture that was different from the overly stuffy, boxy, very formal revivalist and Victorian styles that were predominant at his time.

- I have the distinct pleasure of being the only college president in the United States that is in an office designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The story goes that Ludd Spivey contacted Mr. Wright to complain that there was this huge leak over his desk.

And to that, Mr. Wright replied, "Move your desk."

(gentle music) - One of Frank Lloyd Wright's great passions beyond architecture was classical music.

And I think that one can look at this campus as his largest symphony as an architect.

He often wrote extensively at the connection between classical music and architecture.

He thought that the mindset of composition and architect was one in the same.

And so, this campus is a symphony of different movements, different periods of his work, all brought together into one cohesive vision.

- I think Frank Lloyd Wright was aesthetically an architect ahead of his time.

These designs look modern now, so they must have been earth shattering at that time in their design brilliance.

- And his architecture here has something to teach all of us.

If we take the time to look at it, we can see that we ourselves can build something like this, that every time someone does something really daring, it gives us a certain level of permission to be able to do it for ourselves.

(gentle music) - [Frank] Now, look upon these buildings and look upon this little college, and look upon the wise doctor here as engaging in an adventure, the greatest, most important of all adventures.

An adventure in the realm of the human spirit, searching for a greater harmony, a greater truth of being.

And with it comes, God knows, a more blessed, richer life.

Thank you.

(crowd clapping) (static hissing) (static crackles) (TV clicks) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Greater Lakeland is supported in part by Lakeland Regional Health.