Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West in Scottsdale added to World Heritage list

PHOENIX – Eight buildings designed by renowned American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, including his winter retreat, Taliesin West in Scottsdale, were named to the UNESCO World Heritage list, his foundation announced Sunday.

The buildings cover 50 years of Wright’s career and “mark the first modern architecture designation in the United States on the World Heritage List,” the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation wrote in an online post.

Wright bought the land near the McDowell Mountains to create a school and community for his apprentices.

The site opened in 1937. Wright lived there during the winter until his death in 1959, at 91.

Besides Taliesin West, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City; Los Angeles’ Hollyhock House; the Unity Temple in suburban Chicago; Frederick C. Robie House in Chicago; Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin; the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin; and Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, also were inscribed on the list.

The eight places are considered one cultural site, the 20th Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.

“Each of these buildings offers innovative solutions to the needs for housing, worship, work or leisure,” the World Heritage Committee said after the announcement.

“Wright’s work from this period had a strong impact on the development of modern architecture in Europe.”

The committee met in Baku, Azerbaijan.

World Heritage listing is primarily honorary, and the sites don’t receive government funding. But making the list, the organization said, generally improves tourism and betters the chances of preservation and protection.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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