My response is a guaranteed eyebrow-raiser: I grew up with Frank Lloyd Wright. Oh, yes I did. And so, without knowing it, did you. That gets the conversational ball rolling, and I like to think I've opened an eye or two in my time. No, I did not once occupy Fallingwater, nor did I work in the Johnson Wax Building, and my time in Wright's public buildings has been brief and recent. But I grew up with Wright- or rather, his influence- everywhere, and I never knew that until I was old enough to study what I pleased.

Where Frank Lloyd Wright came into my life was at the same point he likely came into yours, if you're of a certain baby-boomer age- the suburban tract house of the 1950's. Frank Lloyd Wright did not design those ranchburger houses, although it wasn't for lack of desire. Wright wanted to improve America's housing directly, by designing it himself. What with one thing and another, he never realized that goal, but he did- possibly without understanding it himself- do the next best thing. He influenced Mid-Century America's housing more than did any other single person, and he did it on the most favorable terms possible- he pioneered concepts that made better housing cheaper to build and to buy.

Wright's Prairie-Style houses of the early 20th Century are the direct antecedents of 1950's ranch housing. Look at Wright's hipped roofs, his sliding windows, his carports, his half-brick exteriors, and you see suburban ranches writ large. Look inside his houses, and you find open plans and the most minimal and elegant of interior finishes. Before Wright, American housing was a dark warren of small rooms, airless and claustrophobia-inducing. Wright's expensive, elitist houses began to change that for the wealthy; his plans demolished the walls that kept families compartmentalized into contingents of Master/Mistress, Offspring, and Servants. His sweeping windows led the eye to the landscape outside the house, allowing its occupants to enjoy the outdoors even when they were inside.

But Wright's houses at that period were, for the most part, for the very fortunate. Most of Middle America lived in farmhouses and bungalows, of no particular architectural style, and little architectural merit. What is astounding about those houses today is their singular wastefulness; they shut out their surroundings as if fresh air and greenery were abhorrent, and much of their building cost went into unlivable attic space. Visiting one, it seems that everywhere one turns, there's another wall; one room leads to another, and another, and another. There is nothing restful anywhere; doorways, moldings, mantelpieces, and scrollwork vie for the attention of the eye, which soon gives up and sees nothing any more.

At the time the houses were built, the wasteful, costly attics, the miles of moldings, and the expensive maze of walls helped see to it that not everything needed could be found inside them. Bathrooms were wainscoted in beadboard and linoleum-floored; easily-cleaned tiled baths were for the rich. Kitchens were little more than an empty room into which one might move in a collection of "Hoosiers"- small, ill-planned portable cupboards that are considered collectible and charming today, chiefly because today's home-makers need not rely on them for storage and utility. Although these houses were quite well-built, structurally speaking, their sanitary features were of the cheapest possible kind, and convenience was an afterthought. Change was needed, and change came.

What happened? Did Frank Lloyd Wright suddenly become the Oracle? Not at all; what happened was less direct than that. Governmental spending in World War II effectively ended the Depression, wartime rationing saw to it that newly affluent workers had little to buy, and as always happens in wartime, romance and marriage flourished. By the end of hostilities, the stage was set for a housing boom the likes of which America had never seen- bank accounts bulged, newly formed families abounded, and gargantuan amounts of building material were available, the result of wartime stockpiling. America needed a place to live, and it got it; the ranch house was born.

It didn't happen overnight; the year or two after the war was a time of insanely expensive and scarce existing housing stocks strained beyond capacity. But Americans could see a better way, in magazines like House & Garden, House Beautiful, Better Homes & Gardens, and even Family Circle. Dream houses were in nearly every issue, promising a better house in everyone's future, and the dream came as close to coming true as dreams ever do. Suddenly, the nation was exposed to bright, modern houses by the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Pierre Koenig, and on a slightly less rarefied level, Cliff May. Koenig's house for himself and Neutra's Bailey House were hugely influential, with their expanses of glass and their absence of interior walls, but it was Wright's Usonians and other designs- over fifty built residential projects in the five years after the war- that seem to have set America on fire. Prospective home-buyers began demanding the features they saw in magazines, and the nation's builders began making the ranch house happen.

It's true that the mass-produced ranch house was very different to its architect-designed forebears; the dream houses of the magazines had quite a number of features that were unaffordable or impractical for an average American family. The first thing to go was the idea of glass walls; window technology of the time was fairly primitive, guaranteeing that you could have glass walls, or low heating bills, not both. The compromise was the "picture window", six feet or so of uninterrupted, fixed window area in the living room. The rest of the ranch house got traditional double-hung units, or sliding casements, in small sizes that helped minimize heat loss in winter. The beamed, paneled ceilings of the dream houses went next; too much carpentry expense. The exquisitely crafted millwork Wright specified was jettisoned in favor of the simplest and fewest of stock moldings. And square footage was half, if not less, what an architect-designed house usually contained.

But a surprising amount of "dream house" was still to be found in the result; Wright's carports were hugely popular, giving shelter to a family getting in or out of its car, without the expense of a garage. Open plans were found desirable by buyers; a young mother could more easily keep track of children in a house whose kitchen was not closed off from the rest of the house. And the informality of a ranch house was perfectly pitched to the sensibilities of a nation engaged in the gleeful process of casting off prewar manners and mores. Even better, these attributes made it possible to spend money on upgrading the amenities of the houses. Every wall, every curlicue, every picture and crown molding eliminated freed that much more cash for tiling bathrooms, creating built-in kitchen cabinets, putting Formica on countertops. Suddenly, the average new house available to a blue-collar worker had much the same level of convenience and sanitation found in the homes of the wealthy. In 1935, Wright clients Jean and Paul Hanna had told their architect they "wished to be free of tending the furnace, regulating room temperatures, washing dishes, carrying out garbage," and that they wanted "a house so equipped that electricity, natural gas, and labor-saving devices would do the drudgery." Twenty years later, all America was making the same demands- and having them met.

The result was mass housing that was not merely new, but genuinely better than ever before. Suddenly, a young married couple could put in two or three years working and rounding out their savings. Hubby could put in his time on the assembly line and wifey could join the steno pool temporarily, and the couple would end up with a down payment on a three-bedroom, brick house with automatic central heating, a tiled bathroom, and an electric kitchen- while still in their early twenties. Today, that same young couple might not amass a down payment until their thirties, and there's little chance that either partner can leave a job to raise children; mortgage payments on today's bloated McMansions demand that everyone remain nose-to-the-grindstone.

Huge numbers of ranches still stand today, a tribute to a time when one man's vision spoke, however indirectly, to the masses. If the product inspired by that vision was ensmalled, cheapened, and dumbed-down a bit with fake shutters, it was still better than anything that had gone before. Better yet, Joe Lunchbucket could not only afford it, he could buy it early enough in life to pay off its mortgage well in advance of his retirement. Frank Lloyd Wright meant to put Usonian houses on all those quarter-acre lots, and that never worked out. But he did influence what was built, and I can never pass one of those little Fifties houses without a smile, and a flash of recognition. They aren't Usonia, but Wright was their inspiration, and that's how I grew up with his work.

Thanks, Mr. Wright.