Unity Temple

Commissioned by the congregation of Oak Park Unity Church in 1905, Wright’s Unity Temple is the greatest public building of the architect’s Chicago years. Wright’s family on his mother’s side were Welsh Unitarians, and his uncle Jenkin Lloyd Jones was a distinguished Unitarian preacher with a parish on Chicago’s south side where Wright and his wife Catherine were married.  Wright identified with the rational humanism of Unitarianism, particularly as influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalism, uniting all beings as one with the divine presence.