Frank Lloyd Wright enlisted the help of Dwight Perkins for his first public building, whose striking exterior was finished by Perkins alone after Wright had a falling out with the client (who happened to be his uncle). Originally the Abraham Lincoln Center, it contained a health club, training school, rental offices and a social center. The auditorium prefigures Wright’s later Unity Temple. Since 1966, Northeastern Illinois University’s Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies has used the building as a home base for urban studies.
