Addding Wright´s Scottsdale Complex to Historic Register May Prove Useful to the City

Scottsdale, Arizona is the home to the Taliesin West complex designed by world renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and now the city´s Historic Preservation Commission is working to get the precious Scottsdale complex on the Historic Register.

The Historic Scottsdale complex was built in the McDowell Mountains foothills in the 1930´s to serve as a residential enclave and architecture studio. To this day it is "home to architects, teachers and other members of the Wright fellowship and houses the Wright school of architecture and the main repository of his archives."

The highly visited Scottsdale complex draws 120,000 visitors a year and "was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and eight years later given the distinction of being named a National Historic Landmark."

It is only normal that the city should want to add the Taliesin West to its historic register, but aside from reasons of preservation, adding the Scottsdale complex to the register would allow the city to control the use of land around it. The city would then have "some legal standing to discourage whatever it might consider as inappropriate development of the property."