2021 JCC Chicago Jewish Film Festival

The Last Wright

Expired June 14, 2021 12:00 AM
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Join JCC Chicago and award winning filmmaker, Lucille Carra, on Sunday, June 13 11am CDT for a LIVE Q&A. The discussion is included with the purchase of your ticket. Use this Zoom link to join the discussion.

In 1908, when Frank Lloyd Wright was considered the most innovative architect in Chicago, he traveled to Mason City, Iowa, to design a unique, mixed-use city block - a bank and adjoining hotel facing a park. By 1914, scandal and tragedy would ruin Wright's career. By 1926, The Park Inn Hotel would begin a serious decline, but still standing, it remained one of his last Prairie style structures. Although little known, and vulnerable to the economic changes in Mason City, The Park Inn influenced the Bauhaus Movement and served as inspiration to one of Wright's most famous designs - The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Through rare archival footage, period music and a comparative look at famous Wright structures, The Last Wright offers a provocative, ironic tapestry of an American century, tracing the life, death and rebirth of a Midwest town through the prism of The Park Inn.


During the 20th century, the forgotten Park Inn faced alterations and degradation while Mason City drew unwanted national attention with a Dillinger Bank robbery in the 1930s, an economic downturn in the 1960s and the label Porn City in the 1970s. In an effort to promote heritage tourism, the city struggled to fund renovations of The Park Inn in the 1990s while attempting an economic revival with a $20 million tribute to the musical comedy, The Music Man, based on Meredith Willson's boyhood in Mason City.

  • Year
    2008
  • Runtime
    52 minutes
  • Language
    English
  • Country
    United States
  • Director
    Lucille Carra