Frank Lloyd Wright’s Surprising Superfan: The Founder of Domino’s Pizza?

It was the winter of 1985 and Domino’s Pizza was on a hot streak. The franchise, founded two decades earlier by Thomas Monaghan, had become the country’s fast-growing pizza restaurant, and the first phase of Monaghan’s unique vision for the company’s headquarters was complete. This wasn’t a standard HQ: it was a sprawling office park on rolling farmland outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, and unofficial shrine to Monaghan’s longtime idol, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Frank Lloyd Wright appreciation verging on the fanatical is no rarity; people still buy his homes for millions, even though they’re notorious for aging poorly, and there’s a substantial web of organizations dedicated to the preservation of his work. Still, there has perhaps been no person more (unexpectedly) committed to the 20th-century architect’s vision than the Domino’s founder. As the story goes, Monaghan first discovered Wright’s work at a library in Michigan when he was 12, then admired his Imperial Hotel while serving in the Marine Corps in Tokyo. By the ’80s and early ’90s, once Domino’s had hit its stride, the founder was gobbling up Frank Lloyd Wright furniture at an unbelievable rate and cost. The volume was so high that Monaghan was considered a key factor in the hike in prices for Wright’s works, according to a 1988 New York Times story, and he was criticized by preservationists who believed deep-pocketed collectors were destroying the artistic value of Wright homes as they snapped up built-in details of the structures that would leave them with less of their original character. Though total amount for this yearslong spending spree are unavailable, another 1988 New York Times story reported that Monaghan spent over $14 million on Wright objects alone by that time, acquiring "the largest collection of the architect’s furniture, stained glass, and decorative objects anywhere." Never mind the $330,000 he spent a few years earlier on Wright’s 1941 Carlton D. Wall House (also known as Snowflake) and a 1953 Usonian that had been dismantled and stored away for decades. Or that $120 million office park.

Just outside Ann Arbor on a street named Frank Lloyd Wright Drive, Domino’s Farms is a behemoth structure that spans a half-mile long and over 400,000 square feet. Monaghan tasked architect Gunnar Birkerts (a former employee of Eero Saarinen) with designing the structure to evoke Wright’s Prairie style. "Tom is addicted to Frank Lloyd Wright without any reservation," Birkerts told the New York Times in 1985. The office building is pure postmodern pastiche: With its flat planes and red brick, it’s legibly Wright-inspired on the exterior, though largely unrelated to the Midwestern architect’s style on the interior, save for the chairman’s suite, with its brick hearth and wood-paneled walls.

At the time of the new HQ’s construction, the Domino’s owner (who’d recently bought the Detroit Tigers) was emphatic about Wright’s brilliance. "I’ve been evangelizing Frank Lloyd Wright all my life," Monaghan told the New York Times. "I’ve never met anyone yet who hasn’t been impressed." The business tycoon spoke about drawing attention to Wright’s genius as imperative, like the architect’s work might otherwise be completely forgotten. "Wright is the equal if not the superior of Michelangelo," he stated in an interview with historian Hugh Howard in the 1991 book Preservationist’s Progress. This wasn’t just a personal fixation, but in some ways, a strange offshoot of the Domino’s Pizza brand. For a roughly decade-long period, Frank Lloyd Wright—and architecture by extension—was a part of the Domino’s corporate identity. You could buy calendars that featured "Selections from the Domino’s Center for Architecture and Design" and read semifrequently about Monaghan’s latest auction exploits in the Times. There was a Domino’s-sponsored award for the "Domino’s Pizza World’s Top 30 Architects." Design historian David A. Banks wrote a 1989 book titled Frank Lloyd Wright: Preserving an Architectural Heritage, Decorative Designs From the Domino's Pizza Collection.

At the outset, Monaghan dreamed of Domino’s Farms growing to include a luxury home development, a freestanding museum of his extensive collection of Wright artifacts, and a cantilevered tower inspired by Wright’s unrealized 1956 Golden Beacon design. If completed as such, it would have been less of an office park and more of an homage to Wright’s unrealized utopian concept for Broadacre City. Architecture critic Vincent Scully draws the same comparison in the foreword of Domino’s Mansion, the fawning 1988 book about the office park.

Though the story of Monaghan’s Wright fixation could be one of mostly laughable extravagance, concurrent to his collection spree, Monaghan nurtured another passion—specifically for conservative causes. In 1989, the National Organization for Women called for a boycott of Domino’s Pizza after Monaghan donated money to a Michigan campaign that would cut off public funding for abortions. He then stepped down from being the company’s chairman and CEO, reportedly to funnel more of his time "to help various charities." By the end of 1991, he had returned to work as CEO with a new religious zeal. "He read a book, which inspired him, that said if you purchase things for pride, that’s sinful," Domino’s public relations director Mike Jenkins told the New York Times in 1991. "He’s determined that he’s done a lot of that, and for that reason he’s going to get rid of a lot of things." At the time of that article’s publishing, Monaghan had already sold three Frank Lloyd Wright houses. A year and a half later, an auction of his collection reportedly brought in $2.2 million—a large figure, but paltry compared to the $13 million he had spent.

Monaghan left Domino’s for good in 1998. In the time since, he’s combined his devotion to conservative politics and what we may liberally call urban planning in the form of Ave Maria, Florida. What began as a Catholic college founded by the multimillionaire that year in two disused elementary schools in Ypsilanti, Michigan, became the religious-centric Florida planned community, home to a university of the same name, by 2008. In a speech to a Catholic men’s group, per the New Yorker, when Monaghan described life in the town, he said: "We’re going to control the cable television that comes in the area. There is not going to be any pornographic television in Ave Maria Town. If you go to the drugstore and you want to buy the pill or the condoms or contraception, you won’t be able to get that." It was planned for a population of 25,000. As of the 2020 census, there are 6,242 citizens.

Time and again in coverage of Monaghan’s fanaticism for Wright, it’s mentioned that it’s a shame Wright wasn’t alive long enough for Monaghan to be his client. In light of his politics, it feels convenient that Monaghan hardly had to contend with Wright the person. Ever the nonconformist, Wright’s politics didn’t fall cleanly on the spectrum. He was known to have made homophobic comments, but he had many openly gay apprentices at Taliesin. It’s hard to deny his racism. Still, he was vocally anti-McCarthyism, he made pro-Soviet comments, and his very first employee and lead designer was a woman, at a time when few women worked as architects. Even his notorious philandering presents a problem by Monaghan’s standards—the Domino’s founder told Preservationist’s Progress author Hugh Howard that "[Wright] walking away from his wife was unpardonable."

But Wright is long gone, and even if Monaghan’s fanaticism has dulled, the ’80s are alive in his planned town of Ave Maria. Its central building is the Ave Maria Catholic Parish Church, a structure defined by its overarching steel beams that reportedly references works by Wright and one of his esteemed protégés, E. Fay Jones. Look a little closer, and you might notice a rather Wrightian low-pitched roof on the university’s Canizaro Library.

Top photo of an aerial view of Domino’s Farms in Ann Arbor, Michigan, courtesy Domino’s Farms

Related Reading:

What It’s Like to Stay at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Longtime Home and Studio, Taliesin

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Only Skyscraper Is in Danger. Where’s the Uproar?