William Wesley Peters (June 12, 1912 – July 17, 1991) was an American architect and engineer, apprentice to and protégé of his father-in-law Frank Lloyd Wright.

Early life

Wes, as he was known to friends and associates, was born in Terre Haute, Indiana on June 12, 1912. He was the elder of two children born to Frederick Romer Peters and Claire Adelaide (née Margedant) Peters. His sister, Margedant Peters, was the wife of S. I. Hayakawa, the 9th President of San Francisco State University who served as a United States senator from California. His mother was an editor and activist and his father, an Ohio native and son of a Methodist minister, was the founding editor of the Evansville Press and Terre Haute Post, and was later inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.

Career

Instead of returning to MIT, Peters went to Spring Green, Wisconsin, to join Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship as, apparently, its first apprentice when it began in 1932. Wright wrote about Peters in his own autobiography: <blockquote>Among the very first to come in to the Fellowship, a tall dark-eyed young man turned up at Taliesin. He was the son of an Evansville editor…. The lad came from a course in engineering at Massachusetts Tech, was a fountain of energetic loyalty to the ideas for which Taliesin stood. He soon took a leading hand in whatever went on. His mind was alert, his character independent and generous. He was young—about nineteen….</blockquote>He remained extremely loyal to the Wright organization throughout his entire career.

  • Brandoch Peters (1941–2022), a cello prodigy who spent most of his adult life raising sheep. the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin, in a union arranged by his former mother-in-law, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. Before their marriage on April 12, 1970, Alliluyeva had defected from the Soviet Union, renouncing her father as a tyrannical ruler, and came to the United States in 1967. Before divorcing in 1973, the couple had one daughter:
  • Olga Peters (later known as Chrese Evans) (b. 1971).

Legacy

The William Wesley Peters Library at The School of Architecture headquartered in Paradise Valley, Arizona (formerly at Taliesin), which contains a collection of over 32,000 volumes, is named in his honor.

References

  • William Wesley Peters Memorial Library at Taliesin West
  • William Wesley Peters Papers at the Pacific Coast Architecture Database