Down with the East

Works of genius can really mix up a neighborhood, or so some residents of West Hartford, Conn, maintain. Two years ago the nation's most noted architect, 81-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright, designed a theater for West Hartford, and ever since then the townspeople have been squabbling about whether it should be built. Wright's backers recently proposed a referendum to decide the issue, but last week his opponents got a temporary injunction to stop it. That brought the old man himself roaring down on them out of the West.

Wright's design called for a hexagonal, unornamented theater built of lightweight metal. To eliminate what he calls "the peep-show character" of conventional theater productions. Wright had eliminated the proscenium arch, set the stage far out into the auditorium. His theater, Wright rumbled last week, was not just one more place to stage shows: "We are fighting to save the theater which needs new tools if it is to come abreast of the medium of movies. We thought this was a good place to begin our crusade."

But Wright was wrong, he decided on second thought. "The East," said he after he was told of the injunction, "is finished. Its best material went west. In the East the old ladies sit around knitting and waiting for the young to grow up and when they do they won't let them do anything . . . This is a disgrace and it will go on record as an indictment of this region of the United States." With that, Wright jammed his porkpie hat on his head and took off for Wisconsin.

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