On September 22, 1935, Edgar Kaufmann called Frank Lloyd Wright from Milwaukee to say that he was driving over to see the drawings for his new house. Wright had nothing on paper. “Come right along E.J., we’re ready for you,” he answered. According to his apprentice Edgar Tafel, Wright drew the plans while the apprentices watched, and finished shortly before Kaufmann arrived.
The story is famous and disputed. A popular version says the drawings took about two hours, and at least one critic doubts it. The Carnegie Magazine account adds that the plans “were not a spur-of-the-moment exercise.”