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By Julie Rausch

Among the hundreds of designs of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright that include skyscrapers, bridges, gas stations, museums, churches, resorts and government offices are two buildings in Kansas: the Corbin Education Center on the WSU campus and the Allen-Lambe House Museum, 255 N. Roosevelt, which was briefly owned by WSU’s Endowment Association.

The Corbin Education Center, off 21st Street, houses many of the College of Education’s administrative offices and classrooms. Wright designed several tables, desks, lecterns and benches still occupying Corbin, as well, according to George Platt, a Wright expert who served several years as WSU’s planner.

How did WSU come to have a Wright-designed structure? In 1957, Jackson Powell, the education dean, thought the college deserved a prominent building that would reflect the role education should play in a community, Platt said. He and then-university president Harry Corbin visited Wright designing such a building. Some time later, they were surprised to find plans and a bill for $8,000 in the mail.

Planning for the Corbin Education Center was completed in 1959, the same year Wright died. The Corbin Education Center was not completed until 1964, due to financing problems. The building cost nearly $1 million, expensive for that time. Wright’s widow attended the building’s dedication in June 1964.

Wright had envisioned what he called the Juvenile Cultural Center as two structures. The other structure would have been a lab school located southwest of Corbin, but it was never built due in part to financing and a decision to drop the lab school concept.

The lab school design emerged later in Wichita in Century II, done by Wright’s student John Hickman, according to Platt.

What is now the Allen-Lambe House Museum was designed in 1915 for Henry J. Allen and his wife, Elsie, an arts patron. Allen was owner of the Wichita Beacon, a two-term Kansas governor and a U.S. senator.

One of Wright’s apprentices for the project was WSU alumnus Don Schuler.

The third owner of the house, a local banker, left the house to the WSU Endowment Association after his death in 1988. WSU sold the house in 1990 to the Allen-Lambe House Foundation.

Many pieces of the furniture in the home, including the dining room table and chairs, are still owned by the Endowment Association and are on loan to the foundation.