So the other night I was picking up a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread at the grocery store around the corner. It was late and Stephanie would be coming home from her dance rehearsal in a bit. Nobody was in line at the registers, which was a welcome discovery because sometimes at night they’d only have two registers open and lines form with a dozen or more people.

Anyway, so I came up to the registers, and three clerks were all talking in this moment of peace, and I sort of overheard mention of “Frank Lloyd Wright”. Then a guy came up behind me as I was leaving, and I heard him say “Oh yeah, Frank Lloyd Wright designed this building. Man it was exquisite, you can’t really tell now, you can just sort of get the sense…” At which point I found myself taking note of the sloped ceiling I hadn’t noticed before and the odd external support beams I as walked out into the parking lot.

I got home and Stephanie had already made it back. I told her what I’d heard and immediately tried to look up something that might corroborate that Frank Lloyd Wright had some part in designing the otherwise pedestrian grocery store at California and Hyde—the one that’s currently occupied by a Cala Market.

And I couldn’t find a thing. According to the List of Frank Lloyd Wright works by location in Wikipedia (and other sources), he’s only credited with designing something called the V. C. Morris Gift Shop in San Francisco, which was apparently a “proof of concept for the circular ramp at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.” I did however find information that the location at California and Hyde used to be the site of a cable car barn and powerhouse prior to 1954.

Anyways, if there are any budding Frank Lloyd Wright scholars out there who could shed some light on this intriguing urban legend, please leave a comment.

In the meantime, this whole episode got me thinking about about a lazy web idea (which I sorely miss, btw) perfect for all those Frank Lloyd Wright fans: a Google Maps + Frank Lloyd Wright mashup! It’d be dead simple and so cool, great for scholars and sightseers alike. Basically every Frank Lloyd Wright designed structure plotted on a map, with name, description, picture, etc.

But then I thought, why stop there? Why not create a more complete architecture browsing platform, allowing people to plot the locations of famous architecture all over the globe, filterable by date, style, architect, etc. How cool would this be for a building geek? I don’t know, maybe this sort of thing exists already (not Wikimapia, it’s too general), if so, google maps famous architecture doesn’t find it. Maybe someone will stumble upon this post and decide to build it for us all.

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