A Local Guide
A self-guided walking tour of the 13 Wright buildings at Florida Southern College
One block from Swan Suites sits the world's largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. In 1938, college president Dr. Ludd Spivey told Wright he had no money to build a modern American campus — but if Wright would design it, Spivey would work night and day to raise the means. Wright, 70 at the time, accepted. He envisioned buildings rising "out of the ground and into the light, a child of the sun." Over the next twenty years he drew up 18 structures for the "Child of the Sun" campus; 13 were built. The campus has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1975.
You can walk the whole loop in about an hour. We start at the Water Dome — the geometric heart of the campus — sweep through the chapels, esplanades, and seminar pavilions, and finish at the Usonian House across from the visitor center. Begin by crossing at the intersection of Frank Lloyd Wright Way and Johnson Avenue, a two-minute walk from our front door (and the crosswalk FSC asks visitors to use).
The ★ marks where to start. Orange line shows the suggested order; tap a numbered pin to read about each stop.
The first pair of buildings on campus built by an outside construction firm, with Wright himself supervising. A courtyard pool between them shows Wright's organic-design instinct — using water to bind two buildings and frame the open space between. The copper trim of the surrounding Esplanades carries straight through into the interior ceilings of the Fine Building, dissolving the line between outside walkway and inside hall.
The geometric heart of the Child of the Sun campus and the largest water feature Wright ever designed — 160 feet across, conceived as a symbol of the fountain of knowledge. The pump technology to actually form the dome didn't exist in 1948, so for decades it sat as an open pool. A 2007 restoration finally delivered Wright's vision: high-pressure nozzles arc water as high as 45 feet. To conserve water it only runs at set intervals during the day (roughly 9:30–12:30, 1:00–3:30, and 4:00–5:30), so check before you go.
Now the Thad Buckner Building, originally the campus library. The circular William M. Hollis Room — once the main reading room — still holds the original Wright-designed desks and is used today for lectures. Conversion to offices stripped out a lot of the airy original plan, but the signature clerestory windows and "light wells" that funnel skylight all the way down to the bottom floor are still intact. Stop in at TûTû's Cyber Café here for coffee or a snack mid-tour.
The first Wright building completed on campus, and the one most often called a true paradigm of his work — every trademark element is here. Cantilevered wings make the chapel look like it's floating just above the ground. The openwork concrete tower, nicknamed by students "the bicycle rack in the sky," carries a bowtie motif that became the college's trademark symbol. Inside, thousands of small colored-glass inserts catch the late-afternoon light through the textile blocks — go between 4 and 5 PM if you can.
Small, intimate, and many locals' favorite — even more than the famous Pfeiffer Chapel next door. This is the only place on campus where you'll see Wright's work in leaded art glass. The chapel is framed in native Florida tidewater red-cypress and still holds the original Wright-designed pews and cushions, built by industrial-arts and home-economics classes from the period.
The last building constructed in Wright's lifetime, completed just before his death in 1959. Wright's first use of aluminum for decorative purposes is here, and the long, low profile is pure organic architecture. The lab ventilators bristling on the roof aren't his — they were added later to meet chem-lab safety standards. Inside is the only planetarium Wright ever designed.
The first three Wright-designed buildings actually constructed on campus, built largely by student labor during the war years and often paid down by students working off tuition. They were originally three separate pavilions with a courtyard between them. The textile blocks were cast on site from sand dug out of the orange-grove subsoil — Wright changed his sand mix three times, and you can still spot color variations in one section. Skylights and small panes of colored glass are set directly into the block system.
Over a mile of low, covered walkways tying every building on the west campus together in a geometric pattern — Wright's signature on the campus as a whole. The slender supports are said to evoke the orange trees that once filled the site. Copper trim along the roofs has weathered to its natural green patina, exactly as Wright intended. Open to the public; just mind your head — in places the ceiling is only 6'8" so the open courtyards feel monumental by contrast.
Originally meant as a classroom and refectory, the Ordway ended up serving as an industrial arts center and later a student lounge. Two parallel arms hold the classrooms and offices with a quiet interior courtyard between them. At the end of one arm is the only theater-in-the-round Wright ever designed. The building is sometimes compared to Taliesin West, and Wright himself favored it for its simplicity.
The centerpiece of the Sharp Family Tourism & Education Center, and the newest Wright building on campus — designed in 1939 as affordable faculty housing for about $5,000, but not actually built until 2013, more than half a century after Wright's death. The only Wright-designed Usonian in Florida. It's constructed of nearly 2,000 hand-cast interlocking textile blocks with roughly 6,000 pieces of hand-placed colored glass set into them. Paid guided tour, and worth it — you're encouraged to sit in the Wright-designed chairs.
Reservations recommended: 863-680-4597 or fllw@flsouthern.edu. Open daily except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day.
Book official guided tours on FSC's site ↗FSC's official Wright site ↗Stay one block away
Three historic short-term rentals one block from the Frank Lloyd Wright campus, between Lake Morton and Lake Hollingsworth.