happy birthday, william wesley peters.

William Wesley Peters- Frank Lloyd Wright's "pencil in hand."

San Jose Center for the Performing Arts (San Jose Community Theater) by William Wesley Peters and Aaron Green, San Jose, California. [CC BY 2.0. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/], from Flickr.

Born on June 12, 1912, William 'Wes' Peters, the protégé and son-in-law of Frank Lloyd Wright, spent most of his career carrying out (and preserving) the vision of America's most famous architect. Though the Indiana-born Peters is often (unfairly) relegated to the footnotes of his mentor's narrative, he was a gifted architect in his own right, responsible for much of the complicated engineering of Wright's most iconic designs (like Fallingwater, the Johnson Wax Administration Building, and the Guggenheim Museum) and designing more than one hundred projects as the chief architect for Taliesin Associated Architects.

So in honor of Peters' birthday this week, here's a look at two of his designs. Enjoy.

a Wrightian bank by Wes Peters

Carol M. Highsmith, photographer. This 1972-vintage BMO Harris branch bank building in Spring Green, Wisconsin, was originally known as the Bank of Spring Green. Sauk County, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 2016. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, 2016631376.

the snow flake motel

Carol M. Highsmith, photographer. Abandoned Frank Lloyd Wright motel, St. Joseph, Michigan. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, 2011630167.

Image at top:
Van Wezel Performing Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photograph by G.E. Kidder Smith.