Have we reached peak Frank Lloyd Wright? Have we reached peak New York City? How many more books do we need on these two subjects? None, unless the book should break new ground and offer new information and fresh perspectives. And that’s the case with Wright and New York: The Making of America’s Architect by Anthony Alofsin. The subject of Frank Lloyd Wright’s complicated relationship with New York City has been the subject of two other books I’ve read. Herbert Muschamp’s Man About Town: Frank Lloyd Wright in New York City appeared from the mit Press in 1983, nine years before Muschamp became the architecture critic of The New York Times. Frank Lloyd Wright in New York: The Plaza Years, 1954–1959, by Jane King Hession and Debra Pickrel, was published by Gibbs Smith in 2007.

The fascination with the subject of Wright and New York has two sources. One is that Wright never let slip an opportunity to attack, or to heap calumny upon, New York City, which he set in opposition to everything he championed “In the Cause of Architecture” (the title of his March 1908 essay in Architectural Record). At the same time, he could not resist the allure of New York, a city to which he repeatedly returned throughout his long life, and one that he found indispensable to the crafting of Frank Lloyd Wright, the Monument. This seeming paradox fascinates. So too does the period of his early forays into