A pictorial history of Frank Lloyd Wright\'s late, great Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

1. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel A masterpiece of oriental aesthetics and seismic engineering that should have endured the test of time as well as tremors

3. “ The time of awakening must come sooner or later. And then the country will be face to face with the costly necessity of getting rid of all these modern architectural monstrosities and evolving a style more in consonance with Japanese traditions and really characteristic of the people.”

5. Imperial inspiration The Ho-o-oden Temple World Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893

6. Imperial integration The new Imperial Hotel was also to represent Japan’s emergence from an isolated island of primitive folkways into the modern nation it had become since U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry had opened it up to American trade in 1854. To these ends, Wright conceived the hotel as a hybrid of eastern and western design.

7. Imperial innovation Remembering the 1894 earthquake’s damage of Tokyo’s first Imperial Hotel, Wright placed the new one on a floating concrete foundation he devised to withstand tremors.

8. Imperial impression The hotel adapted the overhanging clay-tiled roofs of Japanese temples and teahouses, the earth-hugging horizontality of Wright’s American Prairie Style homes such as the Robie House in Chicago from 1910, and the stepped, setback ziggurat form of the ancient Mexican Mayan shrines that inspired his California home designs. Poured concrete and concrete block were the principal building materials.

9. “ But in its scale, and in its play with surprise elements, the Imperial Hotel is completely Japanese…There were little terraces and little courts, infinitely narrow passages suddenly opening into large two- or three-storey spaces…And there were many different levels, both inside the rooms and outside the buildings, including connecting bridges between the two long, parallel wings of guest-rooms.” — Peter Blake, Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture and Space Imperial inhabitation

10. On the very day of its dedication, Sept. 1, 1923, the great Kanto earthquake struck Tokyo and Yokohama, destroying more than 570,000 homes and claiming more than 100,000 lives, but leaving the Imperial Hotel intact with minimal damage. The floating foundation assured its salvation. Thus the hotel opened its doors to foreign embassy staff, foreign correspondents, and thousands of earthquake refugees, who were fed there until relief supplies arrived from the United States. Imperial imperviousness

11. Nor did the earthquake impede the Imperial from becoming Tokyo’s social center for travelers, tycoons, movie stars and heads of state from all over the world. Distinguished guests included Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, and General Douglas MacArthur. Imperial international

12. Arriving guests were cooled by the reflecting pool out front and received under the porte-cochere, which reminded some of them of the old Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. A soft Japanese lava stone called Oya enabled Wright to proliferate the hotel with Mayan-style carving, including geometric abstractions of scarabs, turtles and peacocks . Imperial incredulity

13. Imperial impenetrability The copper rain gutters atop the perimeter of the building drained through elaborately patterned grills, which in turn shaped the falling rain water into 50 to 70-foot-high patterns of its own as it fell to the ground below.

14. Imperial introduction Guests were awestruck by the three-story lobby’s palatial extravaganza of Mayan and Japanese embellishment, executed in green volcanic rock, pierced terra cotta grillwork and golden brick.

15. Imperial interiors The lobby’s beige and turquoise Native American carpets, woven in Peking, led guests through a labyrinth of quirky staircases and narrow passages (including “Peacock Alley,” pictured above) into a double-height dining room, theater, lounge and ballroom, all full of whimsical geometric designs.

16. Imperial intake

17. Imperial impresario

18. To some, these designs recalled ancient Egyptian, Mayan, Native American or Asian cultures, depending on where you were coming from. Imperial intercultural

19. To others, the designs were ‘Wright’ in step with the Art Deco jazz age that was sweeping America in the ’20s and ’30s. Imperial in style

23. Imperial immolation By 1968, floods, earthquakes, pollution and wartime bombing had critically damaged the hotel’s structural foundations, which a team of seismic specialists declared unsafe to endure future tremors. Besides, the hotel’s low scale and vast outdoor space didn’t stand a chance against Tokyo’s rising land values. Despite a plea from Wright’s widow Olgivanna to save and restore the building, the hotel management decided it was more cost-effective to tear it down. And so they did, along with its annexes.