The Last Wright (2008)

THE LAST WRIGHT - Description By 1908, Frank Lloyd Wright was considered the most innovative architect in Chicago. He traveled to Mason City, Iowa, to design a unique business block- a bank and an adjoining hotel, facing a park. Soon, scandal and tragedy would ruin his career, but the Park Inn Hotel would remain, one of his last Prairie style structures. We trace the life, death, and possible rebirth of a Midwest downtown through the prism of The Park Inn. From 1909 to 2008, The Park Inn witnessed alterations and downgrading, while Mason City dealt with a Dillinger Bank robbery in the 1930s, an economic downturn in the 1960s, and the label 'Porn City' in the 1970s. While the city struggled to fund renovations of The Park Inn in the 1990s in an effort at heritage tourism, it also attempted an economic revival with a 20 million dollar tribute to the musical comedy, 'The Music Man,' based on Meredith Willson's boyhood in Mason City.As a last resort, the city decided to place the Park Inn on Ebay. Through an intoxicating blend of rare archival footage, period music and a first look at stunning Wright masterpieces in the Midwest and Japan, THE LAST WRIGHT offers a provocative, ironic tapestry of an American century.