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b'Nobody blossomed late in life like Frank Lloyd Wright. He was written off as a has-been by middle age after a promising start. Between 1909 and 1929, Wright\\u2019s career was marked by personal turmoil and a roller coaster of career-related ups and downs. In these years, before he completed the buildings, we know him for today, Wright\\u2019s career was so far gone that most critics had written him off as a product of the 19th century.

But to everyone\\u2019s surprise, after the Great Depression, Wright, now in his seventies, emerged from total career chaos to create one of America\\u2019s greatest icons. From this time forward, his career surged, so much so that one third of all his buildings were constructed during the last 20 years of his life.

An oft-overlooked aspect of his life is that the Great Depression played a key role in Wright\'s resurgence. The Depression disrupted the practice of architecture substantially, to the extent that most architects of the 1920s simply closed up shop. Unwilling to give up, Wright instead figured out ways to practice architecture during the Depression without building any buildings. And, the choices he made during this period gave rise directly to the American icon, Fallingwater. In the end, Wright stands alone as the only \\u201cbig name\\u201d architect to survive the Depression years.

Today\\u2019s guest is Catherine Zipf, author of \\u201cFrank Lloyd Wright\\u2019s Fallingwater: American Architecture in the Depression Era.\\u201d We explore Wright\'s career at its lowest moment, the years of the Great Depression, before his comeback as America\'s greatest architect.'