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Blaine Drake Collection 1930s-1990s

MS MSS 16

Biographical Note

Blaine Drake was born in Ogden, Utah on September 10, 1911. After graduating from high school in Ogden he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley, he attended a lecture by the noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright and was inspired to pursue an apprenticeship with Wright, becoming one of Wright's original apprentices at Taliesin, Wisconsin in 1933.

Drake continued his apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Arizona, where he met his future wife Hulda Brierly, who had come to Taliesin West in 1935. The two were married in 1936. The Drakes moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1941, where Blaine Drake worked for an engineering company before returning to the Arizona desert in 1943, when Drake accepted a job with Goodyear Aircraft.

Drake established his own architectural practice in Phoenix in 1945. Over a long career, he designed approximately 200 projects, nearly two-thirds of them built. Most of his work was in the Phoenix area and focused on residential architecture. However, he also designed office buildings, medical facilities, apartment buildings, and churches. One of the few Wright apprentices to pursue a successful independent practice, Drake was an advocate of energy-efficient design in the desert. He received national and international recognition for his work. Blaine Drake retired from architectural practice in 1985. He died on March 12, 1993, survived by two sons, Peter and Eric.

Scope and Content Note

Collection holdings include a wide variety of drawings as well as textual records (mostly job files) and photographs. A total of seven series are present in the collection.

Series One, Drawings and Presentation Boards, contains oversize materials organized generally by project sets (arranged sequentially by project number or alphabetically by client name) that may include perspectives, floor plans, site plans, elevations, sections, detail drawings, and specifications. Original drawings on tracing paper and presentation drawings/boards comprise the bulk of materials in this series, which is included in 48 oversize folders.

Series Two, Job Files, is comprised of 22 boxes that contain materials such as correspondence, specifications, financial and legal documents, miscellaneous printed materials, photographs, receipts, and invoices for the various Drake projects. Original Drake labeling has been retained for the folders in this series.

Remaining series in the collection are housed in 2 boxes. Prominent among the latter are the following: Series Three, Biographical/Personal, which contains a comprehensive list of Drake's projects as well as manuscript writings (most notably "F.L.L.W.: My years With Frank Lloyd Wright"), handwritten poems, and sketches; Series Five, Printed Matter, which includes clippings from various newspapers and magazines relating to Blaine Drake and his work; and Series Six, Photographs, which consists of 15 folders containing numerous photo prints, negatives, and slides as well as some textual materials related to Drake-designed buildings.

Arrangement

Restrictions

Access Restrictions

To view this collection, make an appointment at least five business days prior to your visit by contacting Ask an Archivist or calling (480) 965-4932. Appointments in the Design and the Arts Special Collections Reading Room at the Design and the Arts Library on the Tempe campus are available Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Access Terms

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], Blaine Drake Collection, MS MSS 16, Arizona State University Library.

Provenance

The collection was donated to Arizona State University in November 1992 by Blaine Drake.

Container List