Child of the Sun is a collection of buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright at Florida Southern College's (FSC) West Campus in Lakeland, Florida, United States. It contains twelve designs built during Wright's lifetime, including a set of esplanades and the Water Dome fountain. Two other designs were completed posthumously: a music building and a Usonian house within the Sharp Family Tourism and Education Center. The buildings, listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark, together form the largest collection of buildings by Wright at a single location.
Wright's FSC buildings share many stylistic details, differing greatly from previous collegiate buildings and older American styles. They incorporate details such as textile block facades, 30-60-90 triangle motifs, low massings, cantilevered upper stories, flat roofs, skylights, and terraces. Wright's original ten designs include the Pfeiffer and Danforth chapels, two administration buildings, three seminar buildings, the Buckner Building (originally a library), the Ordway Industrial Arts Building, and the Polk County Science Building. Wright intended for his esplanades to both physically and visually connect his structures. Wright's buildings adjoin several neo-Georgian buildings constructed during the 1920s and 1930s, along with later buildings designed by Nils Schweizer.
FSC president Ludd Spivey sought to construct the campus in a more modernistic style after cofounding the E. Stanley Jones Educational Foundation in 1937. Spivey hired Wright to design the campus in 1938. Although Spivey distanced himself from the Jones Foundation, Wright continued designing new buildings for two decades, eventually drawing up 18 designs. Due to chronic funding shortages, the buildings were constructed at different times, many using student labor. After Wright's death in 1959, construction of his designs largely ceased as other architects were selected to complete the campus. Over the years, his buildings have been modified and renovated; the Sharp Family Center was built in 2013.
Site Child of the Sun is part of the West Campus of Florida Southern College's (FSC) campus in Lakeland, Florida, United States. The West Campus occupies a slope along the north shore of Lake Hollingsworth, which ascends about over a distance of . There are 12 buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The structures are roughly bounded by the rest of the campus to the east, the lake to the south, Johnson Avenue to the west, and Frank Lloyd Wright Way (originally McDonald Street) to the north.
The site originally consisted of a grove of citrus trees planted in a grid. Though the grove was replaced with lawns in the 1950s, it inspired the positioning of Wright's buildings. The structures are arranged along paths that intersect at 30-, 60-, or 90-degree angles, or multiples thereof, and are centered around three features: the Water Dome, Pfeiffer Chapel, and Buckner Building. This arrangement contrasted with older college campuses, which tended to be arranged orthogonally (perpendicularly) and arranged around quads, and opened up diagonal views of each building, which orthogonal plans tended to avoid. The campus contains an urn memorializing former FSC president Ludd Spivey's son Allan (who died at age seven), as well as a bust memorializing Wright.;
Water Dome The West Campus includes the J. Edgar Wall Water Dome. The dome, intended by Wright as one of the campus's focal points, includes a basin completed in 1948 and originally surrounded by fountain jets. The basin measures in diameter and is tinted aqua, in contrast to Wright's buildings, which used a "Cherokee red" hue. Wright's original design called for the jets to create a dome of water, contrasting with the "arboreal hemicycle", an array of trees surrounding the northern half of the pool. Had the jets functioned as intended, they would have risen or .
The jets proved technologically infeasible for the 1940s. Sources disagree on whether the jets sprayed everywhere or were just never turned on. In the 1960s, the Water Dome's basin was split into several smaller basins, and the jets were removed, as was the arboreal hemicycle. The Water Dome was rebuilt in 2007 as a modification of the original design. Surrounding the restored basin are 74 or 76 jets, which measure or tall. The fountains operate four times a day.
Esplanades Wright designed of covered esplanades for the campus, which were not constructed to their full length. Built between 1940 and 1958, the esplanades connect all except one of the buildings. The only building not connected to an esplanade, the Danforth Chapel, abuts another building that does, the Pfeiffer Chapel. As planned, the esplanades cut through the citrus groves; one of Wright's biographers, Robert McCarter, likened the esplanades to "passages through a forest". The esplanades were also intended to visually blend with Wright's buildings, and Wright wanted passersby to enjoy views of his buildings from the esplanades. Functionally, they are similar to the pergolas in some of Wright's other projects, including the Darwin D. Martin House, Westcott House, Hollyhock House, and Taliesin West, as well as to the cloisters at the University of Virginia and Stanford University campuses. The esplanades' presence helped influence the construction of covered walkways in schools across Florida.
The esplanades are supported by columns measuring apart, the same spacing as the original orange trees. The columns have motifs that resemble trees, and several of the columns honor people affiliated with FSC. The esplanades' canopies are low to the ground, which Wright intended would give the esplanades a more human scale. They are cantilevered outward from the columns and are as low as . Where the paths slope up or down, the canopies change elevation in a zigzagging pattern. The canopies have stamped copper decorations at their edges, which are designed to drip water to the ground. Due to material shortages during construction, some canopies use concrete painted to resemble copper.
The esplanades are mostly freestanding structures, though some sections run through the walls of several buildings. The section of the esplanade leading to the Watson and Fine administration buildings is wide, twice the width of the other esplanades. The administration buildings' esplanade has a central trellis in the ceiling, under which are diamond-shaped planting beds.
Architecture Ludd Spivey commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to create 18 designs for the West Campus, of which 12 were built during Wright's lifetime, representing about a third of the campus's total structures. The 12 completed designs include 10 buildings, along with the esplanades and the Water Dome. The Wright designs' nickname "Child of the Sun" is derived from Wright's description of the buildings as having come "out of the ground and into the light, a child of the sun"; some official signs on the campus apply this name to the entire site. Wright's designs were also known as the "college of tomorrow". Because of the presence of the buildings, FSC branded its own campus as "the world's most beautiful campus" by the 1950s.
Other buildings on the West Campus include seven earlier buildings designed by Frederick H. Trimble, along with later structures designed by Wright apprentice Nils Schweizer. A Usonian faculty house, one of Wright's six unbuilt designs, was built posthumously (see ). These other architects' buildings are not connected by the esplanades.
Wright structures
Child of the Sun was the largest building complex Wright ever designed for a single client at one location; the village of Oak Park, Illinois, has more Wright–designed buildings, albeit for different clients. The West Campus was his largest single commission since the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, in 1922, and was one of two commissions he took in Florida, the other being the Lewis House in Tallahassee. Along with his Taliesin West studio in Arizona, the West Campus was one of Wright's two major commissions in the late 1930s, as most of his work during that era comprised lower-cost Usonian houses for middle-class families. The West Campus is the only college campus Wright designed in his lifetime. It also includes two of his seven religious designs, the first he had designed since Unity Temple over three decades earlier. Many buildings are named for people who had facilitated their construction.
Stylistically, Wright's FSC buildings differed greatly from brick and stone collegiate buildings designed in traditional styles such as the Gothic or Tudor. Wright regarded the campus's existing buildings as "boxes with holes in them", and he did not want to use an older American style (such as the Spanish Colonial Revival and Mediterranean Revival styles predominant in Florida), viewing such styles as unoriginal. Wright wanted to create the campus in a specifically American style, refining many details from his earlier Broadacre City design. The FSC buildings incorporate geometric shapes based on 30-60-90 triangles, an allusion to the campus's grid, and are built around grids of squares. Their massings (shapes) are constructed low to the ground. Many buildings have cantilevered upper stories and flat roofs; the roofs have copper edges similar to those on the esplanades. Pools, gardens, and terraces are also commonplace, along with low ceilings and red-and-green accents. Wright used skylights and clerestory windows to provide natural lighting.
Wright used locally-sourced materials, which were shared between different designs. For example, the buildings are clad with textile blocks, similar to those in his earlier textile block houses in California. The blocks use a mixture of coquina (crushed shells) and sand from Florida; the sand comes from St. Augustine on the state's east coast, since the sand from the site was unsuitable for construction. Each block is across, linked to adjacent blocks using steel rods; and incorporates multicolored cast glass cubes into its surface. The textile blocks created what some sources called a Mayan feel. Other concrete was poured in place, and the buildings also use materials such as red tidewater cypress, steel, copper, and glass. In response to criticisms that the materials looked unpolished, Wright said that he intended them that way because "nature doesn't polish things off".
Wright used organic architecture details extensively. Full-height windows, along with plants inside many buildings, were used to visually connect indoor and outdoor spaces. The building shapes were themselves influenced by topographic features, another tenet of Wright's organic architecture. He largely avoided using wood or stone because it did not match Florida's flat topography. Most of the buildings are low to the ground, except Pfeiffer Chapel, which has a tower. Wright conversely did not adjust his designs to meet practical needs. For instance, Wright told Spivey to move his desk in response to a complaint about leaky roofs, and librarians secretly ordered desk lamps (which were hidden during Wright's visits) because the original Roux Library was too dark.
Structure nameLocationBuilding typeDate completed, expandedNotesAnnie Pfeiffer ChapelChapel1941, 1945Administration buildings: Benjamin Fine Building Emile E. Watson BuildingAdministration1948Esplanades1940–1958L. A. Raulerson Building – Seminar buildings: Cora Carter Seminar Charles W. Hawkins Seminar Isabel Walbridge SeminarEducational1941Non-contributing property to NRHP districtLucius Pond Ordway Industrial Arts BuildingEducational1952Polk County Science BuildingEducational1958Thad Buckner Building (originally E. T. Roux Library)Administration1948Water Dome1948, 2007Non-contributing property to NRHP districtWilliam H. Danforth ChapelChapel1955
Pfeiffer Chapel