From Coops to Cathedrals: Nature, Childhood, and the Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright

Experiment, tinker, play, and “learn by doing” just as Mr. Wright did throughout his life.

Explore Frank Lloyd Wright’s childhood bedroom, farm, and architecture studio, but more important, use your imagination and creativity to play, design, build, and invent, just like he did.

• Create patterns, shapes, and designs with Froebel blocks.
• Build a limestone brick wall for the farm.
• Race iceboats across the lake.
• Make a print at the printing press.
• Explore the patterns of nature.
• Finish building the chicken coop.
• Build a cathedral, school, museum or doghouse with blocks and building boards.
• Plant and harvest vegetables on the farm.
• Take care of chickens and a small calf.
• Lift hay bales into the hayloft.
• Assemble a stained-glass window.
• Explore the science of cantilever design.
• Complete an architectural blueprint.

“Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.” Frank Lloyd Wright

Major support provided by Dan & Natalie Erdman, Eliot Butler and the Great Dane Pub & Brewing Co., and J.H. Findorff & Son Inc.

Generous funding provided by Darcy Kind & Marc Vitale; Francesca Moore Colver & Martin Colver; Future Foam; and Dane Arts with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, the Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of the Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation, and Wisconsin Humanities.

This exhibit was designed and developed by Madison Children’s Museum in partnership with