Photographs showing "Octagon" and "Cube" at Frank Lloyd Wright's Midway Gardens. Taken from the book The Life-Work of the American Architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Missing Wright

Posted on 03/05/2023 | by admin

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Three photographs of statues at Midway Gardens, by Frank Lloyd Wright. The statues represent “attributes of geometry”¹. The two photos on the left show the Octagon statue, and the one of the right shows “cube”. I took this photo from my copy of the “Wendingen”.

No: not missing the man, Frank Lloyd Wright.

I’m talking about missing the building designed by Wright.

in other words:

Which destroyed Wright building would you like to see?

The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy says that ONE in every FIVE buildings he designed has been destroyed.²

Therefore, some Frankophiles play the game that they imagine which destroyed Wright building they want to walk through. So, it’s a chance to visit your favorite Wright buildings IN YOUR MIND.

Although, really, unless we live there or work there, most of us only have our minds as the vehicles to visit our favorite Wright buildings.
It’s a minor compulsion. We can deal with it if we want to.³

On that question

there are those who will vote for Taliesin 1 as their favorite destroyed Wright building. That is: his home, Taliesin, from 1911-1914.

btw, you can find Taliesin I in my blog here and at this link here, among posts of mine.

But, I am not one of them.

I mean: I do not think that Taliesin I was the “best” Taliesin.

That’s because I see Taliesin as a manifestation of Wright’s mental and artistic process, from the time he started it until the last day he saw it.⁴

Although, I have thought differently about Taliesin II in the last year or so. That was partially inspired by my thinking about Taliesin’s “unfinished wing” (like I wrote in the post of that title).

So, with Taliesin out of the running, which building do I wish I could see?

Midway Gardens

I have come to this conclusion recently. That is because I am currently reading Frank Lloyd Wright, The Lost Years: 1910-1922.⁴ This book from 1993 was by author, architect and architectural historian Anthony Alofsin. He developed it from his doctoral dissertation.

My husband gave me the book as a gift, so I’ve been underlining a lot and writing notes in order to maintain an understanding of what I’ve read.

Don’t worry, I’ve been underlining in pencil, so I’m not carrying on in some sacrilegious defacement. Although, I often keep my space in books by turning down the corners of pages.
I don’t know why I perform this mutilation. I guess you’ll have to deal with it.

What was Midway Gardens?

Edward C. Waller, Jr. commissioned Wright to design Midway Gardens as an entertainment, eating and drinking establishment in Chicago. It took up one square city block and was constructed next to the Midway Plaisance park in Chicago’s South Side. Waller wanted it opened as long as possible in the Midwest, so it had a summer garden (outside), and a winter garden (inside).

Waller intended it to be a venue where people could spend an entire evening. They could eat dinner and drink, as well as dance. That’s why it had a band-shell for live music.

How it got started:

Midway Gardens came about because Edward Waller, Jr. (whose father commissioned Wright) approached Wright with an idea to create an entertainment establishment similar to the beer gardens he had seen in Germany. My research for this post told me that beer gardens emerged in Germany in the 18^th Century. The website TripSavvy says that:

Maximilian I, Bavaria’s first king, … signed a royal decree that allowed brewers to sell beer, but not food. People compromised, enjoying the best beers direct from the brewer and bringing a picnic. Thus, the tradition of the biergarten was born.
https://www.tripsavvy.com/what-to-expect-at-german-biergarten-1519627

Beer gardens were sites where the whole family could gather for hours and see friends. Waller approached Wright on this at an interesting point: Wright had been in Europe with Mamah Borthwick in 1909-1910, absorbing a lot of ideas. So, this commission came in 1913 and gave him the chance to weave these ideas into a project.

With this commission,

Wright took all he had seen and learned in Europe. He designs something massive

Drawing from The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York), drawing 1401.087.

The drawing above is most of the winter garden.

and all-encompassing

Drawing from The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York), drawing 1401.156.

I mean: the drawing above shows both a ticket counter and cigar booth. Totally out of control, man!

Midway also had:

Light fixtures, stained glass designs, and a mural called “City by the Sea”.

He also designed these geometric concrete blocks suggesting movement that were veneered on the building’s exterior:

Additionally, he designed concrete figures embodying the spirit of architecture, and platonic shapes (which, if you didn’t know, were also just fine to look at). Two of these statues are in the three photos at the top of this post.

And then there were the vertical concrete figures known as “Sprites”, which people still really like.

One appears in the photo below, taken at Taliesin West. When I went to study there, I often took tours after working all week. I took the photo below while on one of them. It shows one of the sprites outside of the Garden Room at Taliesin West:

The sprites at Taliesin West are painted, like you see above. Several guides on my Taliesin West tours told the story that Wright had the sprites there, and that his daughter, Iovanna, went to him and said, “Daddy, I want to paint the statues,” and the paint on the Taliesin West spites is the result.

This story, in my opinion, might fall under what I call “the telephone game of tour guiding.”

I don’t know when the sprites came to Taliesin West, but I was told Wright bought the land in Feb. 1938. That would mean that Iovanna was 12 years old. “Daddy, I want to paint the statues” makes her sound like she was 5. So, I believe the story might be conflated a little bit. On the other hand, there were plenty of children growing up at T-West so maybe that’s what happened.
/Frankophile out

Wright also designed the restaurant’s plates, beer steins, and cigarette holders. This artifact page in at Steinerag.com/flw/index.htm has a great selection of them.⁵

Midway, in short, was awesome

A whole lotta gesamtkunstwerk goin on.

I mean:

it was a total work of art.

I don’t speak or read German; but, like some German words, it crams a lot of meaning into one word.

This is a video of a pretty cool model of Midway Gardens in the program known as SketchUp. It’s a 3-D modeling program and takes you all around the building so you can see the size of it and how it all relates together.

And Douglas Steiner (of Steinerag) wrote on the Midway Gardens design, below:

There are many classic Wright details. The basic material[s] are brick and patterned concrete blocks. There are cantilevered and trellised roof overhangs and cantilevered balconies, decoratively designed metal fascia cornices. Horizontal lines, columns, hidden entries, horizontal rows of leaded glass windows and rows of leaded glass doors that open outward, vases, light trees, pedestal bases and sculptures, many, many sculptures.

Steiner copyright from 2008.

Unfortunately, fate killed it.

First of all:

Its grand opening was June 27, 1914.

That was the day before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Which led to World War I.

Those of you who have read me for awhile know I have an interest in World War I. In part because I believe it’s “the Worst Mistake We’ve Ever Made as a Species“.

Additionally, Wright and his son, John, were finishing up one of the building’s murals when they found out about the fire (and murders) at Taliesin. This did not seem to effect business at Midway Gardens, but was/is a really sad note/coincidence.

Then, there were money problems.

Even I know that restaurants can bleed money.

But, while the first two summer seasons went well, there were still bills from before the establishment opened. In 1916, Edelweiss Brewery bought Midway Gardens, and it became the “Edelweiss Gardens.”

The Gardens limped through World War I, but finally,

there was Prohibition.

While overall I think it was a good thing that we in the United States kicked our habit of drinking,

you know, like drinking a liter of hard liquor a day,

it sentenced Midway Gardens to history.

Here’s Wright in his autobiography regarding the Gardens’ downfall:

…. And then the “affliction” fell. The Nation went dry.

That was the final blow….

[T]he Midway Gardens sunk to the level of the “beer-garden” without the beer….

“They” painted the chaste white concrete sculpture in more irrelevant gaudy colors, stenciled more cheap ornament on top of the integral ornament, wrecked the line and mass of the whole—until all semblance of the original harmony utterly vanished. Yes, a distinguished woman dragged down to the level of the prostitute is now its true parallel.
Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (Longmans, Green and Company, London, New York, Toronto, 1932), 187.

However:

even though fate doomed Midway Gardens from the start, what Wright designed is still glorious. Even if only in our minds.

Here are some resources:

And a great page on Midway Gardens from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

And the link to Frank Lloyd Wright and Midway Gardens, the book by Paul Kruty.

First published on March 5, 2023.
I took this photo from The Life-Work of the American Architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1965; Santpoort, Holland: C. A. Mees, 1925), by Frank Lloyd Wright, H. Th. Wijdeveld, ed.
The “Life-Work” is the book publication of seven issues of Wendingen magazine that were published in 1924-25. Wendingen magazine was published in the Netherlands from 1918-32. Because of the link to the magazine, people refer to it as “the Wendingen”.

Notes:

1 Frank Lloyd Wright: The Lost Years, 1910-1922: A Study of Influence, by Anthony Alofsin (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992), 143.

2 The Building Conservancy determined that number in the late 1980s. Since then, with a few exceptions, they’ve successfully splashed daylight on endangered Wright buildings.

3 Nooo – after all, I can sleep without my blanket.

4 Not that there aren’t Taliesin details I’d like to see, along with those things I really wish he had not changed (as I wrote about here).

5 Douglas Steiner writes these pages. Sometimes I’ll check on items because he explains things really well.

Color photograph of Taliesin structure during the summer. By Keiran Murphy.

Wright called it the Water Garden

Posted on 02/21/2023 | by admin

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Looking west at the Taliesin residence in September 2005. I took this because I figured I should have at least one nice photo of Taliesin and the pond.

The pond at Taliesin that is.¹

Wright created this pond by building a dam on the north side of the Lowery Creek in 1911-1912.

Here is a photo when the dam was being built. I showed it before in my post, “Did Taliesin have outhouses?“

Wright spoke about the dam after that disastrous “press conference” he gave on Christmas 1911 (that’s in “What’s the oldest part of Taliesin, Part I“). Here’s the part where the dam and pond are mentioned in the press:

There is to be a fountain in the courtyard, and flowers. To the south, on a sun bathed slope, there is to be a vineyard. At the foot of the steep slope in front there is a dam in process of construction that will back up several acres of water as a pond for wild fowl.

Chicago Daily Tribune, December 26, 1911, “Spend Christmas Making ‘Defense’ of ‘Spiritual Hegira.’”

The inlet for the pond, Lowery Creek, starts several miles south. Then it flows over the waterfall and into the Wisconsin River.

Find out more about the creek, and what’s done to protect this waterway at the Lowery Creek Watershed Initiative.

Except, at the moment, there is no waterfall, because there’s a creek but no pond.

In fact, the pond hasn’t been there since late 2019.

It will be back! But it had to be drawn down due to an inspection and repair work required by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Check out the Facebook Live presentation

from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation on the work from the summer of 2020.

It’s 26 minutes long. Staff from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation talk about the project, why it was being done, and the particulars on what they’re doing. I think the original hope was to inspect the dam and do repairs for a completion by the end of 2021.

It’s 2023 and while things are looking up, the fact that the pond isn’t back reinforces the fact that

PRESERVATION IS HARD.

Unfortunately, we’re only reminded of that when things get, well… hard. I mean, you try to get things done carefully and in a timely matter, but there are times when things interrupt the best-laid plans.

However, in this case there’s also the fact that work at the pond bumped up against a worldwide pandemic,

Followed by disruption of supply chains

which you can see in a “This Old House” segment.

In case, you know, you’ve gratefully thrown experience about supply chain problems into the memory hole.

No, not THAT memory hole. I’m talking about the place where my memories of cold Wisconsin winters go every year.

Now, if you’ve been on a tour as of 2020, your guide maybe mentioned the pond, or the waterfall at the Taliesin dam.

But I don’t know. After all, one of the rules of tour guiding is

Don’t talk about what you cannot see

Therefore, I really should show photos then of what I’m talking about. That’s part of why you’re here, after all.

So, I need to bring back The Man when talking about the pond.

You know what man I mean.

While building Taliesin in 1911-1912 Wright decided to build the dam on the north end of the creek. He envisioned the pond as part of his long-range landscaping.

Here’s part of his writing:

A great curved stone-walled seat enclosed the space just beneath them and stone pavement stepped down to a spring or fountain that welled up into a pool at the center of the circle. Each court had its fountain and the winding stream below had a great dam. A thick stone wall was thrown across it, to make a pond at the very foot of the hill, and raise the water in the Valley to within sight from Taliesin. The water below the falls thus made, was sent, by hydraulic ram, up to a big stone reservoir built into the higher hill, just behind and above the hilltop garden, to come down again into the fountains and go on down to the vegetable gardens on the slopes below the house.

Frank Lloyd Wright. An Autobiography (Longmans, Green and Company, London, New York, Toronto, 1932), 173.

Wright’s writing conjures the image of a Japanese Woodblock print:

Ono Waterfall on the Kisokaidō (Kisokaidō Ono no bakufu), from the series “A Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces (Shokoku taki meguri)”
Artist: Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, Tokyo (Edo) 1760–1849 Tokyo (Edo)). Date: ca. 1833
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City: Henry L. Phillips Collection, Bequest of Henry L. Phillips, 1939. Accession Number: JP2925. Public domain

Now, as for the pond, there’s my photo at the top of this post, and here’s a link to one taken in 1955 by photographer, Maynard Parker. The photo below is one I took from Wright’s bedroom terrace:

I took this in early May 2008.

And, since I’ve already written about the dam that’s there now, I should give you info on the dam that used to be there.

What?! There’s Another Damn Dam that we’ve got to know about?!

Well, don’t get mad at me.

And, YES!

For several decades, the Taliesin estate had two dams. There was the lower dam, which still exists. But, in the late 1940s, he added an upper dam, south of the current one. This dam was smaller. I don’t know why Wright decided to add it. It was a pretty cool looking.

Here are two photos showing the upper dam. In the black and white one, you see it to the right of the entrance road:

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York), 2501.1246.

This photo was taken by Douglas Lockwood when he was an apprentice in the Taliesin Fellowship. You can see the road that I pointed out. This was also taken from Wright’s bedroom terrace.

You’d be standing near the spot of the photographer in my post, “History of Native Americans in the Valley“.

I put a closeup photo of the upper dam below.

Apprentice Mark Heyman took this in the 1950s. The flags you can see in the photo’s background make me think he took the photo while a summer party was taking place at Taliesin:

While the little dam was neat, it caused flooding upstream.

Understandably, that annoyed the neighbors.

In fact, neighbor Thomas King wrote in late October, 1945 letting those at Taliesin know that the dam wasn’t appreciated. He asked “if it was your intention” to live with neighbors that had over two feet of water in their cellar because of that dam.²

The upper dam was removed late 1960-early 1970s. Luckily for the neighbors, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation cannot rebuild it.

As for the pond, it looks like it may come back in the year 2023. Because, while the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation repaired everything around the dam, you can’t tell what will happen. It’s looking good, but you don’t know.

Originally posted February 21, 2023.
I took the photograph at the top of this page in 2005.

Notes

1 I was told that Wright called it the Watergarden, but I couldn’t find the evidence to that while writing this post. He didn’t write “watergarden” in any document by him I transcribed. So, I didn’t find the term by searching for the word.

2 The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). FICHEID: K066D06. Letter from Thomas King to William Wesley Peters, 10/25/1945.

Black and white photograph of John and Marybud Lautner outside at Taliesin, 1933-34. By Hank Schubart.

Taliesin Kitties

Posted on 02/08/2023 | by admin

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Photograph of future architect (then apprentice) John Lautner (1911-1994) and wife Mary Faustina Roberts Lautner (“Marybud”, 1913-1995) standing at the southwest corner of Taliesin’s hill crown. Behind them is the chimney that served the dining rooms of the Taliesin Fellowship and the Wrights. I wrote about this space, here. The photo was taken by apprentice and later architect, Hank Schubart (1916-1998).

This is going to be a cat-themed post. But it does have a connection to Frank Lloyd Wright, I swear!

Let me explain….

Here are my cats, Wes and Gene:

This is a photo of them lying on the kitchen floor. My husband says they’re competing in the synchronized cat napping nationals.

Now, the names “Wes” and “Gene” are related to Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin. But I was not completely in charge of them being named Wes and Gene.

— well, ok, yes, actually, I was, since I was the one who first decided to name them that.

However —

I was not the person who focused my attention on names related to Taliesin.

You see,

in 2015, 5 kittens showed up on the Taliesin estate. Cats aren’t there all the time, but they do (and can) show up. Sometimes they are owned by residents at Taliesin. Or, sometimes they take up residence. At least one of these cats became internationally famous.

In fact,

anyone who took a tour at Taliesin starting in the late 1990s up to the twenty-teens met this cat. She was a long-haired calico named Sherpa.

Sherpa laying on a stone wall outside of the old Taliesin Fellowship dining room (it functions currently as an office and sometimes a guest room).

Sherpa appeared in the Taliesin tour program in the late 1990s. She lived at the Hillside structure and had one litter of kittens that delighted visitors.

the summer at Hillside with Sherpa and her kittens meant lots of real-time lessons on working with animals. There was no way you could talk about Wright’s history or ideas when there were 3 or 4 adorable kittens playing and jumping over each other on the deck at the edge of Hillside’s dining room (a photo of the deck is in a photo at Flickr, here).

After the season’s end, Sherpa was caught and spayed. By this time, she already walked in front of several tours at Taliesin, so she was given the name Sherpa. Since the Taliesin estate was basically her home, she settled in closer to the Taliesin building and began to “lead tours” there.¹

That was because she knew where the guides went on tours, so she would walk ahead of the guides and group.

She appeared on a magazine cover

after a group of Japanese architects took a tour. They were as delighted by Sherpa as by the architecture. So one photo they took of her ended up on the cover of a magazine, below:

Back to Wes and Gene:

I hadn’t known about the kittens until I mentioned the desire for cats to a coworker at Taliesin Preservation. I was searching for a home, and having cats was on the agenda. Then she asked, “did you hear about the Taliesin kittens?”

The kindle of five domestic shorthaired kittens had arrived in late spring. They were big enough to make themselves known to the students at the School of Architecture, who were then in session and living at Wright’s Hillside building.

Since they appeared on the Taliesin estate, my coworker, the students, and staff at the local vet clinic knew them as the “Taliesin kittens”. As I had already decided I wanted two male kittens, it took me less than 10 minutes to come up with the names Wes and Gene.

PLEASE NOTE: I decided immediately that I was NOT going to name them Frank and Lloyd, or Lloyd and Wright.

No, I’m not a cat lady! I’m just a Frankophile!

While I have not written on my blog about Wright’s son-in-law and engineer, Wes Peters, I did write about Gene Masselink last year.

Are they worthy of their names?

Wes is a little like Wes Peters, because he’s really big. But, while I love the guy, Gene is not worthy of the memory of Eugene Masselink.

And how did Wright feel about cats?

I don’t know.

In fact, I don’t know how Wright felt about domesticated animals overall. Except for horses. He long admired them and rode them as long as he was able. The photograph below is Wright on a horse outside of the Hillside school building.² The photo was taken in the 1950s.

Photograph of Wright on a horse to the east of the Assembly Hall at the Hillside Home School. Olgivanna Lloyd Wright stands on the right and apprentice, Joe Fabris, is wearing the t-shirt.

However, there is the doghouse:

That’s right: in 1956, 12-year-old Jim Berger wrote Frank Lloyd Wright. He was the son of clients Robert and Gloria Berger, who built their Wright house in San Anselmo, California. Jim asked Wright to design a home for their dog, Eddie. Jim would pay for the plans and materials through money he earned on his paper route. This link from the Smithsonian Magazine shows you the whole story, and Jim’s initial letter to Wright.

In addition,

Olgivanna Lloyd Wright liked dogs and you can find photos online of the Wrights sitting together outside at Taliesin West with her dog, Casanova. Casanova appears with Frank Lloyd Wright in the Garden Room (the living room) at Taliesin West. They’re on the webpage, “Five stylish men with dogs“.

First published February 8, 2023.
The photograph at the top of this post was taken by Hank Schubart and is in The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). Hank Schubert collection, 6501.0140.

Notes:

1 We used to do a 1 mile, all exterior Walking Tour. Sherpa would show up when we were with our groups on the road below Taliesin, and walk in front of us to Hillside. She would hang out at Hillside until the Walking tour came by in the afternoon. Then she would lead the later tour back to Taliesin, where the tours began.

2 This link shows you 94-year-old Joe Fabris at Wright’s Price Tower in Bartlesville, OK. It gives you a nice overview of that space. Joe is seen speaking to the Price Tower curator of Collections and Exhibitions (Hi, Scott!).

The number "42" on a black background. By Mark Konig at https://unsplash.com/photos/fbKMKNVJjwo

Things I learned at Taliesin

Posted on 01/20/2023 | by admin

Reading Time: 6 minutes

To know why the top of the post says the number “42”, read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.

I know these things –

through my work at as the Taliesin historian, when I worked in the Taliesin tour program, and/or I answered weekly questions in the “Hey Keiran” feature. You’ll see a variety of things here. Remember –

Frank Lloyd Wright wrote:

“I like the company of a number of clever and plausible eclectics”¹

and this is an eclectic list:

The Wisconsin state bird

is the American Robin.

Wisconsin’s state flower

is the Wood Violet

Nakoma and Nakomis are the parents of the fictional character, Hiawatha² (from Longfellow‘s “The Song of Hiawatha“)

Frank Lloyd Wright designed statues of them for an unbuilt project in Madison. Then he reproduced the statues in small sizes.

He put statues of Nakoma and Nakomis both inside his Hillside structure, and in Taliesin.

Even though Wright was wrong on the gender. In Longfellow’s poem, Hiwawatha’s mother being is NOKOMIS. Wright made his father Nakomis.

Some photos of the statues are below:

In the Assembly Hall at Hillside

There is a smaller version of Nakoma, as seen in a video tour on-line:

I took this screen grab from a video tour I did in 2009. Taliesin Preservation put online thanks to producer/editor, Claudia Looze.

And a smaller pair of them are at Taliesin:

You can see the small versions in Taliesin’s living room on the light deck. The photo below shows them in 1955:

This is an unpublished photograph of the set that photographer Maynard Parker took in 1955 for the November issue of the magazine, House Beautiful.

More things I’ve learned:

Bats are considered good luck in China

Bats—literally, living, sleeping bats—used to hang on wooden carvings inside Taliesin

They snoozed all day, so these bats didn’t start my screamy-phobia of them, like I posted about.

Yes, bats eat mosquitoes.

I learned that barn swallows eat mosquitoes, too

Mosquitoes can get very bad at Taliesin, and barn swallows fly around Taliesin all summer. Preservation Crew member, Kevin Dodds, took a photo of baby barn swallows in their nest. He gave me permission to post it below:

The swallows are in a little mud nest at Taliesin. You might see swallows early in the summer on a 2-hour House Tour or the 4-hour Estate tour.
This photograph shows the nest under the roof near Taliesin’s ice house. Permission for photo from Dodds.

More information I learned:

Frank Lloyd Wright’s life taught me the definition of the “Mann Act“⁴

The Mann Act “criminalizes the transportation of any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” [here’s a link on it from Cornell Law school] It was designed to stop human trafficking, but was also used by women whose husband’s abandoned them for other women. So, Wright’s second wife, Miriam, tried to use it on Wright in 1926 after he fled Wisconsin for Minnesota with his future wife, Olgivanna.

Plus, he was almost arrested for it in the 1910s.

I know the date of Japan’s Great Kanto earthquake.

I’m sure plenty of other people know about it.
It mostly destroyed Tokyo on September 1, 1923.
But I know it because of Frank Lloyd Wright. His Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was supposed to see its grand opening that very day. The fact that the building survived made Wright world-famous.

I know what a “Quit Claim deed” is

Chief architect of Taliesin Associated Architects and Wright’s son-in-law, Wes Peters, bought up the Taliesin estate one or two times, then sold it back to Wright for $1 in a Quit Claim deed.

I probably first read this in the biography on Wright by Meryle Secrest.

The definition of the word “jocund”

That’s in a poem stanza in the fireplace at the Hillside Assembly Hall. This is footage of me speaking in front of that fireplace. I don’t know if I talk about the poem that’s carved into its mantle. The stanza of the poem is from “Elegy Written in a County Churchyard” by poet Thomas Gray.

Here that stanza:

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Oh, and 1 more thing about this poem:

It taught me that “glebe” means “ground“.

I know what a hydraulic ram is

I think I covered this in my post, “My Dam History“. My photo from that post is below:

Dam, waterfall, and hydro-house at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin — Photograph taken 1926-27 of the hydro-house on the Taliesin estate. Photographer unknown. Taken from a postcard owned by Keiran Murphy

John Michel Montgolfier invented the hydraulic ram.

and he and his brother invented the hot air balloon.

My knowledge on the second fact didn’t come from Taliesin. I know it because another Taliesin guide told me (hi, Nath!).

I know the name of the last king of Iraq:

King Faisal II.

He commissioned Wright to design an opera house in the capital city of Baghdad. The reason the commission never went further is because he was overthrown in 1958.

A Balalaika is a Russian, stringed instrument.

I know that because it sits in Taliesin’s living room at its “music corner”

Speaking of Russia,

They created the samovar: a tall, decorative metal container that holds water for boiling. One sits just outside of Taliesin’s living room. Here’s a photo showing it at Taliesin, taken in 2018:

The samovar is on the table in the foreground.

Ideally, chicken coops face south.

I know that because there were chicken coops at Taliesin that were later turned into dorm rooms. A couple of people on tour told me about chicken coops, and once you hear this, it makes sense. That way the chickens get the most light. So, yes: the chicken coops at Taliesin face south.

You can see the drawing showing the chicken coops below. It’s also in my post “Unfinished wing” (read that post and you’ll know why “Hog Pens” is highlighted in the drawing below).

Wendingen Magazine published the drawing in its issues devoted to Wright in 1924 and 1925.
Then the magazine issues were published as a book, The Life-Work of the American Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, by Frank Lloyd Wright, H. Th. Wijdeveld, ed. (Santpoort, Holland: C. A. Mees, 1925).

An oar lock on a Venetian gondola is officially called a Forcole.

I know that because there’s an oar lock in Wright’s bedroom that was a gift from students in Venice. Here’s another photo by Maynard Parker that shows it by the east wall. It’s the wooden piece that looks like sculpture:

Photograph of Wright’s bedroom in 1955 by Maynard Parker. Published in House Beautiful magazine, November 1955, 308.³

Ok, that’s it for now.

Published January 20, 2023.
The photograph at the top of this post is by Mark Konig from https://unsplash.com/photos/fbKMKNVJjwo

Edit: June 4, 2023:

Ice houses are quite ancient.

The construction of one was detailed in a Cuneiform tablet in c. 1780 BCE. Read Wikipedia’s post about ice houses to find out about this.

I read this because I was researching the ice house at Taliesin.

Notes:

1 An Autobiography, by Frank Lloyd Wright (Longmans, Green and Company, London, New York, Toronto, 1932), 343.

2 There was a man named Hiawatha in the history of the Iroquois Nation, but he’s completely different than Longfellow’s Hiawatha.

3 House Beautiful magazine published this photo again in its October, 1959 issue, 232.

4 Even before Eliot Spitzer’s prostitute scandal in 2008.

Self-portrait of Terry Teachout in black with window in background.

Terry Teachout and 2005

Posted on 01/10/2023 | by admin

Reading Time: 5 minutes

This is my old friend, Terry. He passed away in January of last year.

Terry Teachout (February 6, 1956 – January 13, 2022)

I’m in a mood.

That’s because, for the last day I’ve been thinking about Terry, and missing him. Knowing the date of the one-year anniversary of his death was coming up, I started watching a lecture by him on YouTube last night. He gave the one-hour-long-lecture, “Confessions of a Critic“, at the Institute for Advanced Study. I clicked on the link because I wanted to see him and hear his voice.¹

Like I said:

I’m in a mood.

Not that I get in moods that often. And I have to say that I like the way he died: he died in his sleep, apparently.

So, there was no long pain, no feelings of regret, and the tears for us around that know this person’s going through sh*t.

You know: pain, fear, and the body breaking down. The things that John Milton knew when writing about hell in Paradise Lost.

My great aunt died that way – fast; no pain.

She and Gramma Anne came out every year when we were little. They’d play Bridge with our parents. Aunt Winnie would drink Grasshoppers and Pink Ladies (maybe both did; I can’t remember), and would take, “just a little bit more” of a piece of pie or cake after holiday meals. And she would line us all up for interminable amounts of time while she tried to get the photos with her Brownie Camera.

Well,

one night she and Gramma Anne were coming back from dinner when 90-year-old Winnie opened the door to their rent-controlled apartment in Chicago and died before crossing the threshold.

Dad said he went to her funeral in Chicago (we were in Pennsylvania) and those at the wake were really glad with the way she died. Dad told me they were like, “Way to go, Winnie!” I was maybe 17 or 18 years old.

Ok: nice story. Get to the point, Keiran:

Why am I writing about Terry now?

Because I’ve not been able to write about his death or process it before. In fact, I don’t know if I am processing it right now. Yet, the arrival of the one-year anniversary lets me write about meeting him.

I met Terry in 2005 when he came to take a tour at Taliesin. I did sometimes give “special tours” for those in media. The tours I gave were off of the schedule, and did not rely on strict timing. You could go over with a person (or persons) in your own vehicle, and shoot around the other tours. Still, I started the tour as a normal, “give-information” tour. I might as well have been doing just a public tour. But, while I drove Terry in my car on the inner roads of the Taliesin estate, something flipped in my mind.

I don’t remember the moment, but I went from “professional guide mode”, to suddenly having a deep conversation with someone.

Here’s what I wrote a day or two after that tour:

In Hillside, he grooved on the theater and dining room. I talked about the concerts given there, and how you’re so close to the musicians when they play. He thought that was cool. I told him how once I watched a bat circle over the head of a violinist while the audience tried not to gasp, and he laughed. [Here’s a hyperlink to musicians playing, but I don’t think you’ll see a bat in that footage.]

We talked about Fallingwater at one point, and I told him my idea that Fallingwater is like “the platonic idea of Organic Architecture” (just go with me on this one). “Yes!” he replied. I took him to a great view across the valley, for which he was grateful. We walked about Taliesin’s waterfall. Then we had lunch, where he told me about his New York City apartment, and the art work he owns.

Then we went, after lunch, to the House….

… He was amazed at the compositions (and, really, the pictures don’t do it justice). I’m amazed at the composition. I have never been able to articulate why it works, although the combination of lines and materials work together in perfect tension….

We stood and looked. He got teary-eyed (I love it when that happens). Here’s his blog post [at www.aboutlastnight.com]…:

At the end of the day, Keiran and I stood together on a hill overlooking Taliesin, gazing at the house and the vast, all-encompassing view beyond it…. For a moment I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“I guess you get used to everything,” I finally said, “but I don’t see how anyone could get used to seeing this every day.”

“Oh, you do,” Keiran replied. “Most of the time, anyway. Except when the wind and sun and humidity are just right. When everything is right.” She paused. “Then it’s so beautiful, it hurts.”

…

Great guy. Great day. Like the best I can come up with sometimes on tours, all rolled into one.

He and I remained friends after that.

Our meetings almost completely took place in Wisconsin. As the drama critic for The Wall Street Journal, he came out every (or almost every) year to review plays at the local repertory theater I posted on, the American Players Theater. Due to that, I got the extra-special privilege of getting my pick of plays every time he came out, once he told me what he was going to review.

I never asked him his thoughts on the plays (I didn’t want to distract him while he did his job). But I got to see him afterward while his thoughts on the plays percolated in his mind. Plus, I got to hear him tell me that, APT’s rendition of “A Streetcar Named Desire” was the best he’d ever seen. And I learned how he loved farces, like he said when we sat down before “A Flea In Her Ear“. And my husband and I went with Terry to “A View From the Bridge“, and got to say hi to one of its lead actors.¹

And then there was the post I wrote here, on bats at Taliesin. In the post I mentioned how Terry got to stay a night in Taliesin’s Guest Bedroom because of an invitation from Taliesin resident, Minerva Montooth. He also wrote a post on his website, About Last Night. But he sent it me so that I could provide feedback before it went live.

I wrote in my “bat” post that –

He described how, at one point,

“A black bird came in, flew around the ceiling, then fluttered out. I never saw it again.”

I loved telling people on my tours that I replied, “Terry… that was a bat.”

fine, fine, fine. But –

what does this have to do with 2005?

Years ago, I realized that I met some really great people in that one year:

Terry,
An Architectural Historian who is the principal of Cornerstone Preservation who I really respect,
The principal of Poindexters,

which “provides design, engineering, and custom installation services for audio, video, and lighting systems.” I thought that Bill looked at sound systems as a different material in art making.
https://poindexters.com/services/

and

the man who later became my husband.

All things considered…

While I originally wrote more, on the last time I saw Terry with his wife, Hilary; and spoke on her degenerative illness (that was responsible for ending her life) –

I decided that’s not fair to him, or to her, or to the woman Terry was in love with before he died, or others who knew him.

All I know is that, damn: I miss that man.³

https://www.wsj.com/articles/terry-teachout-wall-street-journal-drama-critic-dies-at-age-65-11642115600

https://www.commentary.org/john-podhoretz/terry-teachout/

Posted January 10, 2023.
The photograph at the top of this post was taken by Terry Teachout and is licensed under Creative Commons. The image is cropped. Here’s a link to the image on-line.

Notes:

1 And I wish I could tell him that I do not think he was right about poet Alexander Pope, but that’s just because Pope was a Catholic in England at a time that this.was.not.done; but really because I love the poem “The Rape of the Lock“.

2 Actually, saying “hi” to a lead actor at APT is not hugely unusual. Members of the core cast live in town and we all run across each other, just like normal humans. But before that night, I’d never talked to actor Brian Mani.

3 and not because I got free theater tickets.

More winter activities

Posted on 12/29/2022 | by admin

Reading Time: 5 minutes

I took this photograph looking out of a window of my office at the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center. You can see my lone car in the parking lot. Sometimes when I came into work, the ice was a little “sketchy” to the employee-parking-lot up one level. In that case, I just stayed below rather than try to get up there.

I live in a small town.

It has one stoplight and a population of around 1,600 to its outer edges.¹ Sometimes the winter has the same grind, when you don’t see much of anything or anyone.

But this meant a great commute when I worked at Taliesin

I could drive to work in 5 minutes. And, when temperatures are 10-20F (-12 to -6 C), curious visitors with questions didn’t come to the door. This quiet time meant that I could investigate things without interruption.

For example, during this quiet time, I acquired copies of the 13 images that Raymond Trowbridge took at Taliesin in 1930.

And at that time, I had the chance to take photographs of the ongoing work by the Preservation Crew in Taliesin’s Guest Wing.

Taliesin’s Guest Wing looking pretty rough at this time:

The stone on the left-hand side of the photo was a stone wall that’s been there since 1911. It originally stood outside. The wall hasn’t moved: the building just got longer.
You can see that stone wall in my first post, “What was on the menu the day they were murdered?”

This photo shows the Blue Room. I identified the Blue Room in that photo I investigated that one time before Christmas.² Here’s the post-restoration photo of the same room:

During the quiet time, I also

wrote a chronology of Taliesin’s exterior courtyards and terraces. One part of that study was an examination of Taliesin’s Tea Circle. So my work gave the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation its basic history while restoring the area.

I wrote a lot about the Tea Circle in “What’s the oldest part of Taliesin? Part I“.

Coincidentally,

One quiet time inspired staff to recreate the radio tradition of

CHAPTER A DAY.

In other words, one person read a chapter from a book each day at lunch time.

btw: Chapter A Day started on Wisconsin Public Radio.³

Anyway, we did Chapter A Day in 2009

and the chosen book was TC Boyle‘s The Women.

I mentioned Boyle’s book when I wrote about Taliesin II and Wright’s relationship with his second wife, Miriam Noel. The book even has its own Youtube video. It’s surprisingly entertaining.

Now, to clarify:

we didn’t take turns reading chapters. Only one person on staff read: Bob (who is a Jeopardy champion!⁴) read it to us while we sat around a table in the Hexagonal (“Hex”) Room.

See, we weren’t wasting time.

It was important we read this book because of the excitement in 2007 after the release of the book, Loving Frank.

Plus,

the staff’s sojourns up to the Hex room gave them the chance to get warm after being downstairs in the basement. Srsly: the only time the walkout basement isn’t cold is the months of July-August. I’d come downstairs to the office there sometimes in the winter and see the staff typing with fingerless gloves. Sometimes when I came off tours in summer months, I’d walk down the stairs and lie down on the floor to cool down.

Speaking of tours:

Bob worked on the register for tickets during the tour season. In addition, he scheduled tours. He had an amazing ability to schedule the staff and add tours. On the busiest days, up to 11 tours went into the House: 1 Estate Tour, 3 Highlights Tours, and 7 2-Hour House Tours.⁵

He also had the ability to tell which visitors approached the tickets area thinking they were actually at the House on the Rock.

So, during that winter,

Bob would read a chapter every day. Afterward—in addition to voicing our annoyance with Miriam Noel—folks around the table would ask me what was truth and what was fiction in the novel.

I even wrote a “Hey Keiran” about the novel for guides and staff the next season.

Easy answers on “What’s true or not” in The Women:

- - Boyle wrote things that are in the public records:
    - Miriam (Wright’s unstable second wife) gave those press conferences.
    - Reporters in Oak Park did bug Wright’s first wife and the children from his first marriage.
    - Wright and Mamah Borthwick did speak in Taliesin’s Living Room.
      - I wrote about Wright and Mamah in the living room in “The Oldest Part of Taliesin, Part I“
    - Wright and Olgivanna (his future wife) did have all of those problems early in their relationship.
  - However, the narrator, Tadashi Sato, is fictional, and so are some other apprentices.
  - And, while things aren’t correct about Taliesin’s structural history, that’s not important.

Following Bob’s completion of the novel,

I did what I often did that winter: looked for images of Taliesin and the Taliesin estate, continued studying Taliesin’s history, and checked out the work the Preservation Crew was doing.

Originally posted December 31, 2022.
I took the photograph at the top of this post in December, 2007.

Notes:

1 Here’s how small the town is, and it has to do with local culture. I have a memory of watching the television show, Entertainment Tonight, over 5 months after the release of the 1997 movie, Titanic. The ET hosts start that night’s show talking incredulously about a small town in upstate New York that had only, just then, gotten the movie at the town’s theater. I remember thinking that the Gard Theater in Spring Green had also not gotten that blockbuster.

And I remember one time in which I was at a break at a summer music show with an old boyfriend. Someone else walked outside with us and he asked them how they liked our little town.

“It’s nice,” she said, looking at the sky. “But there’s that cloud that won’t go away.”

He and I both looked up and he answered, “That’s the Milky Way.”

Definitely makes up for having no food service except for Culver’s, Subway, or the convenience store after 8 or 9 p.m.

2 Since my work identified what the room looked like without the load-bearing closet, the Preservation Crew removed it. They switched the support of the load to the micro-laminated beams you see in the ceiling.

3 Chapter a Day links to the Wisconsin Idea. See, when Marconi (et al.) invented radio, the Wisconsin University System saw it as a way to expand “the boundaries of the university” to the “boundaries of the state” (the Wisconsin Idea motto). I introduced the Wisconsin Idea in “How I became the historian for Taliesin“.

4 A computer programming student put Bob’s stats from Jeopardy, here.

5 Bob’s ability to schedule all those tours meant that, when we were super busy and he’d schedule up to 7 that day, he would add a 2-hour tour of the House at 1:30. However, the reality of the timing (with Shuttle buses, etc.) meant that the guides had to gather folks on the 1:30 House tours at 1:20. And folks on the 1:30 House tour would walk out of the building at 1:25. This resulted in a real-life example of my joke book title I wrote in this post: “What time does the 1:30 tour leave?”

Photograph taken by Edmund Teske. Taliesin in winter with snow and ice.

Snow at Taliesin

Posted on 12/20/2022 | by admin

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Edmund Teske took this photograph in the winter of 1936-37. He was in the Breezeway at Taliesin, looking northeast towards the Living Room.

This week, a winter storm is crossing the United States. This storm reminded me of one of the “At Taliesin” newspaper articles written by apprentices in the Taliesin Fellowship.

This article is in At Taliesin: Newspaper Columns by Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship, 1934-1937, ed. by Randolph C. Henning. It’s on p. 241-42 of the “At Taliesin” book:

AT TALIESIN, February 20, 1937¹

In winter the sharp lines of the horizon along the ridges of our surrounding hills disappear and in the soft light of evening the valleys merge into the hills and the hills vanish into the sky. Trees upon the hills are patterned tracery. Pods of weeds, close by, are sharp edged black spots upon the white: staccato notes in the prevailing rhythm of quiet.

Snow: sharp, keen, icy, in billowing drifts or in long horizontal ledges, brings harmony to the landscape of our Wisconsin farmland: farmland that in summer is fenced in and fenced up and out by farm after farm of farmers who have worked out countless ingenious ways to characterize their acres of land. The boxed-in boxes of farmhouses, styes, coops, pens scattered about, hit and miss, over the countryside mar the land’s native beauty.

We view – in winter – Wisconsin’s hills as we saw the Arizona desert stretching off toward distant mountains: untouched, whole, clean.

What man could not do to the Arizona desert because of nature’s protection, the winter snow has buried in Wisconsin.

As the hot desert sun decorates simplicity by sending color into the myriad lichens upon the patterned rock faces of the desert floor, so our winter sun flashes light and fire into the ice-jeweled thistles showing above the frosted earth in our own valleys.

And as the saguaro-cactus stands in heroic silhouette against the sunny southern sky, the ice clad Wisconsin trees crackle and shimmer: miraculous against the cobalt above.

What we went in search for to Arizona we have here around us: this harmonious union of natural things. A union here made supreme and impervious to harm by ice and snow: white and blue – silver and black. Again contrast and accentuation – in the distance a red spot – the Wisconsin barn.

EUGENE MASSELINK

First published December 20, 2022
The photograph at the top of this post was published in Architectural Forum magazine, January 1938, volume 68, number 1, p. 3.

Notes:

1 You read Masselink talking about Arizona, but everyone is in Wisconsin. That’s because the land where Wright will build Taliesin West has not been found yet. That will happen in November of 1937. He bought it the following February.

Photograph of Keiran Murphy talking to someone in front of her sales items while at the holiday art fair in 1997.

Selling my wares to the public

Posted on 12/08/2022 | by admin

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Taken in 1997. Me talking to someone at the art fair that was held in the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center. I’m standing to the left of all of the stained-glass pieces that I had made.

No: “selling my wares” in this post does not mean I’ll write about giving Taliesin tours.

I’m talking about my time making (and selling) stained-glass items. My work was not completely

although, yes it sort of was,

related to Taliesin and Frank Lloyd Wright. So, first I’ll show you a pretty, geometrical, piece that I made (unrelated to either Frank Lloyd Wright or Taliesin):

Looking at a blue and yellow rectangular stained glass piece. — Photograph, and stained-glass piece, by Keiran Murphy

And why I’m writing this today:

For years, December was the month in which I sold my stained-glass items at an arts and crafts event in the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center.

As I wrote above, my stained glass has a little (ok, maybe a bit) to do with Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin.

But, primarily,

I started making stained glass the first full year I worked in the Taliesin tour program,

my first summer of tours was 1994, then I went back to school the fall semester to finish my degree.

and geometric designs were among the first things I made.

Although, I also made objects such as ornaments and candle holders, like you see at the top of this page (they were easier to make). As you also see in the photo up there, I designed, and sold, pieces with a Wright connection. That photo above shows my rendition of the Guggenheim Museum and Fallingwater.

This is in my kitchen. I sold another one of these after I corrected a mistake in this version.

Additionally, I created designs from compositions that I saw at Taliesin and Hillside.

How much I charged for these:

I was told to charge $3 for every piece of glass I used in a piece that I made. That accounts for materials and time. So, an ornament with 4 pieces would be $12. But that Fallingwater piece in the photo? Over $300. It’s cool, but would someone spend that much money on something that small?

I put a list of designs I put on paper for later stained-glass windows that are related just to Taliesin and the Taliesin estate. I sold most of them, and traded one:

Taliesin’s Entry Steps

The “Hill Tower” in the Middle Court

You can see in the numbers I wrote on the paper before cutting it (and, then, the glass). This is part of the procedure with the copper-foil method of making stained-glass designs.

The Garden Court fountain, as taken from a photograph by Pedro Guerrero, seen in the Taliesin portfolio at his website Guerrerophoto.com
Taliesin’s waterfall

Photograph looking at Taliesin waterfall. Taken October 29, 2004 by Keiran Murphy. — Photo by Keiran Murphy

Obviously, that’s a picture of the real waterfall at Taliesin. I executed a stained-glass piece of the waterfall, but I can’t find a photo of it or its drawing. I took this photo in 2004.

And the Hillside Theater Foyer roof.

Get back to the arts show—how did it start?

One afternoon in October, 1995 after all the tours had gone out, several staff members started talking.

While talking, they had an idea.

They all knew that, once December came along, nothing would be going on in the building except for the gift shop staff getting items out to customers. The gift store was still open on the weekends, however, for people buying gifts.

The folks that day in the visitor center thought: why not take the café area,

which was not in use because the restaurant was closed

re-arrange the tables there, and set up some homemade items to sell?

After all, by December, while the tour season was completely done, the gift store was still open on the weekends. Therefore the main floor would be heated to catch anyone interested in holiday shopping.¹

The thought was: do this the first two weekends of that month.

After all, we had homegrown talent:

I had recently started making stained glass; a shuttle bus driver made her own paper and paper boxes;² a guide/gift store attendant crocheted scarves; and her husband made decorative wooden carvings. Feeling optimistic, we asked a supervisor if we could try selling on the main floor in December. This wouldn’t cost them any money and we’d clean up after ourselves.

They allowed the idea.

So, we tried it that first December.

Ah, yes! This was like the pluckiness of the Taliesin Fellowship itself. Once more, it was like Andy Hardy saying,

Come on let’s put on a show!

We did this with no expectations. We moved the tables and chairs into place that Saturday morning in December, set up our stuff and hung out with our items. People who came in to buy things at the Taliesin gift shop took a look at our displays and bought some things. Overall, it was a success, even though we didn’t publicize it.

That started a tradition

at the Visitor Center of an arts and crafts weekend (although now just one weekend in December). I think we did it on 10 Decembers.

I found a write-up about one of them on the Taliesin Preservation website at the Wayback Machine.³ That write-up (for the “Annual Holiday Art Festival”) has a lot of detail. A lot. Which makes me wonder if I wrote the piece (even though someone else oversaw the website at that time).

This Holiday Show

fit in very well with Spring Green‘s newly-created “Country Christmas” celebrations in the village across the Wisconsin River.

Spring Green’s “Country Christmas”

The first full weekend of December has a light parade, followed the next night by fireworks.⁴

Consequently,

the small success in the Visitor Center caught the attention of others in the organization. So a few notes were put out, and the next year a few more people came and sold items. In a few years, there was a fabulous mixture of sales items, locally-made sausage, cheese, and wine, as well as entertainment.⁵

The last event

was year 10.

I think perhaps that the no-frills, “let’s just move some tables around”, was overwhelmed by its modest success. Eventually, there had to be organizers, and advertising, and a lot more work than it was worth to many people.

And, personally,

by that year, I lived in a house where I could only make stained-glass pieces in the garage. But it wasn’t climate controlled. Now, I didn’t need comfy temperatures, but

by December,

sometimes it got so cold that I warmed up my hands by resting them on the electric, metal, radiator that I’d turned on.

While in the summer,

I had to take a break when I cut glass on the days when the heat made me sweat too much. I didn’t want to lacerate my fingers (or cut a vein).⁶

Is there a lesson in this?

I think so.

But that lesson goes back to

what I started with:

making stained glass.

After all, a classmate in Grad School once observed that:

“Those who can’t do art, teach Art History”

Despite at least two classmates who were artists; one of whom teaches and continues making art.

And due to my experience crafting stained-glass designs, I think people who learn art history should take an art class. You know, actually make something. I remember when I was in grad school for AH at the University, I met some students getting their BFAs who had to take AH, but not the other way around.

Yet

when I had to work with materials,

and find out what does and doesn’t work in a composition, and USE some of that geometry I learned as a high school sophomore,

I realized it takes quite a bit of work and knowledge to make even a halfway-decent piece of art.

First published December 9, 2022
I was given the photograph at the top of this page, but cannot remember who took it.

Notes

1 Later on, they kept the visitor center open only when tours were going on. So: nothing past November. But in the early years, they were still trying to “feel out” the ends of the tour seasons.

2 One of her boxes sits, right now, to my lower right.

3 Remember I wrote about the Wayback Machine in September of last year.

4 If you want to be enveloped in “smalltowniness”, take a look at the video for the song, “My Hometown“, by Camela Widad. She wrote the song about Spring Green, and filmed it in, and around, here. It’s a great little song. It’s got a summer vibe, so you might want to wait until you’re sick of winter.

Part of the video for “My Hometown” was shot at the Post House Garden, which is where the Post House (once the oldest restaurant in Wisconsin) used to stand.

The Post House burned down in a fire in 2004. The owners decided not to rebuild.

5 And, it is the reason why I know, and love, Merry Christmas from the Family, by Robert Earl Keen. That’s thanks to the photographer-writer-musician who used to play it at the Visitor Center on Saturdays at the event.

6 “Don’t get mad at the glass” was what I learned, early and painfully, to tell myself. That was after I, yes: got mad at the glass and cut my finger while aggressively moving around. It was one of my first “learning by doing” lessons in the glass craft. Fortunately, there was no scar, but I did bleed.

Postcard of crowd at Taliesin. Caption on card: "WEST WING. WRIGHT'S BUNGALOW". Property: Patrick Mahoney

What is the oldest part of Taliesin? Part II

Posted on 11/26/2022 | by admin

Reading Time: 6 minutes

A postcard looking (plan) northeast at the western façade of Taliesin’s hayloft, summer (the hayloft is under the roof). Because the collection of people are unexpected at a farmhouse, Randolph C. Henning (who collected this postcard), thinks this was taken the day after Taliesin’s 1914 fire and murders.

I wrote The Oldest Thing at Taliesin (stuff that goes back to 1911-12), and was going to leave it at that. But before I posted, I realized there were too many things to point out. I needed to divide it into two posts. So, that was part I.

Here’s part II.

Like last time, I’m going back to stone because it’s the easiest material to trace at Taliesin. That’s because Taliesin’s shingles, wood, and plaster has to be replaced. And I’m not sure how much of the window glass at Taliesin goes back to 1911-12.¹

Therefore, in 2010,

Taliesin Preservation‘s Executive Director taped a printout of the picture at the top of this post onto my computer monitor.

In 2005, she (Carol) also told me about “The Album” on auction at the online site, Ebay.

Architect and writer, Randolph C. Henning, had sent her the scan of the image. Although he knew what you see in this image (the courtyard on the other side of Taliesin’s Hayloft), he wrote asking for help on any research on the rest of the images in his upcoming book, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin: Illustrated by Vintage Postcards (this image is on p. 39).

I’d never seen anything like that image because

you can’t really see this view today.

Why?

Because that nutter changed his house all the time, of course.

A similar angle of view is in the photo below:

I took this photograph from the roof of Taliesin’s former icehouse. The photograph is looking northeast according to Taliesin’s plan direction. Taliesin’s “Work Court” is one floor below.
I was up on this part of the roof with a member of the Preservation Crew. He was showing me details on the re-roofing. And, NO, you cannot stand on this roof while you’re on a tour.²

Almost nothing in this photograph matches what you see in the c. 1914 postcard at the top of this post.

But,

even though everything’s different here’s what got my attention: the stone pier under the hayloft.

THAT is still there! Here’s a comparison of the 1914 photo and the photo from 2004:

In the Work Court, looking southeast according to Taliesin’s plan direction. This photograph has the stone pier that I saw in the 1914 postcard. The image below has both the old and new photos, with the stones in the pier compared.

Here’s the stone pier in a close-up of the two photographs:

TA-DA!

More Taliesin 1911-12:

The next photo appeared in 1911. I first saw it two years ago when the Chicago Tribune treated us all to was in a published article:

Looking east at Taliesin's agricultural wing. — In view behind trees: hayloft of Taliesin. Car [?] garage on the right. First published 12/29/11. Unknown photographer. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

This photograph was taken December 25, 1911. The photographer was looking east/southeast (according to Taliesin’s plan direction) at Taliesin’s agricultural wing in 1911. The photo was taken on that day when Wright gave the disastrous press conference at Taliesin.

This, and the article that included it,

made me so happy that I wrote a post about it: “This is FUN for me…“.

Props go to Stan Ecklund on Facebook who, in 2020, first alerted me (and other Frankophiles) to this article. Stan created and curates two Wright-based groups on Facebook, The Wright Attitude, and Wright Nation. The “WA” is a private group, but Wright Nation on Facebook is public, here. If you are in the WA group, Stan posted the link to the article in the Tribune on Dec. 4, 2020.

Again, you can’t see the same view today because of Wright’s changes at Taliesin.

But I found a photo on Wikimedia Commons that’s shot from a similar angle. That’s below:

Photograph of Taliesin roofs taken on July 4, 2018. — By Stilfehler. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Looking (plan) southeast to the chimney that’s in the photograph from 1911 in the Tribune.
Taken by Stilhefler while on a tour. Click the photo to see it on-line.

I am not publishing the second photo from the Chicago Tribune. Most of what you see in the second photo cannot be seen on a tour and if you read “This is FUN for me…”, I explain it some more.

Then there’s the Hill Crown:

And its retaining wall:

I took this photograph in April, 2005.

Most likely, there are other parts of the retaining wall that go back to 1911. However, I do not think you’ll be able to look at those places for any length while on a tour at Taliesin.

Lastly, I’ll show something else you can see on tours:

This was also published in Architectural Record magazine in 1913. Here’s where I wrote about it.

Look at the pier on the right, with the pool. The open windows on the right are at the kitchen (today it’s called the Little Kitchen). Every tour you take at Taliesin walks near that pool.

I put a present-day photo of it, below. The person who took this photo in 2018 also took the one above.

Photograph of pool next to the "Little Kitchen" at Taliesin. Taken on July 4, 2018. — By Stilfehler. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Taken in the Breezeway at Taliesin. Looking (plan) southeast at the stone veneer on the west wall of the Little Kitchen.
Photo from July 4, 1918, by Stilhelfer. Click the photo above to see it on-line. You’ll see that this photo has been cropped.

I love this area.

Wright changed things so much at Taliesin that I’m intrigued when he didn’t.

That’s all I’ve got the time to show you right now. Oh, and last thing: remember that these parts of the building I talked about were just what you can see.

So, thanks again for coming along!

Published November 26, 2022
Randolph C. Henning acquired this and sent this to the Executive Director of Taliesin Preservation while he was working on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin: Illustrated By Vintage Postcards. You can see the photo on page 39. Henning sold his collection to Patrick Mahoney, AIA.

Here’s “What is the oldest part of Taliesin? Part I“

Notes

1 I could go and point out windows that seem like they were at Taliesin in 1911-12, but I dunno.

2 “WHAT – do you think we’d just walk onto the roof?”
No, I do not think you would.
However: one time a person arrived at the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center in January or February and wanted to know if they could go into the buildings on the Taliesin estate. I asked, “Did you see the notice on our website that there are no tours at Taliesin until May 1?” The person replied nicely that, “Yes, we saw that. But you didn’t say the estate was closed.” So I’m double checking.

Thanksgiving at Taliesin

Posted on 11/23/2022 | by admin

Reading Time: 2 minutes

My next post, Oldest Part of Taliesin, II , is on the way (part I is here). First though, I’m going to add a portion of an “At Taliesin” article posted in 1936 that was about Thanksgiving. In 1936, the Taliesin Fellowship, with the Wrights, celebrated Thanksgiving in Wisconsin.

Here’s writer, Marya Lilien, on the Thanksgiving that had just passed. They published this “At Taliesin” article on December 4, 1936:

Thanksgiving dinner

Visitors who have seen Taliesin probably noticed that there is something uncompromising about Taliesin people’s clothes. We are seen either in overalls and working gloves or in evening dresses, respectfully dark suits: never the in-between morning clothes, afternoon clothes, etc. So it is also with our activities. Either at work, even in the studio – always prepared to jump in for some “dirty” job – or having beautiful parties and feasts.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was a real feast. Mrs. Wright directing everything in the preparation, yet never tired to add some new surprising touches of her refined taste both to the menu and decoration, making the party true to Taliesin tradition and yet have some unusual atmosphere.

And in this beautiful atmosphere among pine branches and chrysanthemums as if growing out of the interior architecture – there came to us the romance of Japanese prints – told by our Master. Mr. Wright has this wonderful manner of giving his most profound thoughts in a conversational tone. They seem so natural – in fact, I think every great thought is natural only it takes a great mind and creative imagination to formulate it and show it to people.

….

And in the low beautiful Fellowship dining room with pine branches overhead and yellow chrysanthemums dramatic and picturesque scenes, past and present, passed before our eyes: each of them seeming to have itself the colors and design of a Japanese print, as Mr. Wright was telling how the hoarded cases and boxes in Japanese court circles finally got open after centuries to show their contents and to tell him and the world their illuminating story. And find a final resting place in the great museums of the new world.

By MARYA LILIEN

Thanksgiving took place

that year on the last Thursday in November.

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday in November.

Architect, writer, and Wright expert, Randolph C. Henning, transcribed most of the “At Taliesin” newspaper articles published in 1934-1937. He edit and put 112 of them in a book: At Taliesin: Newspaper Columns by Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship, 1934-1937 –

I mentioned this and other books in my post, “Books by apprentices“.

He gave me an electronic version of the articles. That’s how I acquired the article that Lilien wrote.

First published November 23, 2022.

The post, “What’s the Oldest Part of Taliesin, Part II” is here.

Missing Wright

in other words:

Which destroyed Wright building would you like to see?

On that question

But, I am not one of them.

Midway Gardens

What was Midway Gardens?

How it got started:

With this commission,

Midway also had:

Midway, in short, was awesome

I mean:

Unfortunately, fate killed it.

First of all:

Then, there were money problems.

there was Prohibition.

Here’s Wright in his autobiography regarding the Gardens’ downfall:

However:

Here are some resources:

Notes:

In fact, the pond hasn’t been there since late 2019.

Check out the Facebook Live presentation

PRESERVATION IS HARD.

Don’t talk about what you cannot see

So, I need to bring back The Man when talking about the pond.

Here’s part of his writing:

And, YES!

Understandably, that annoyed the neighbors.

Notes

Let me explain….

Here are my cats, Wes and Gene:

However —

You see,

In fact,

She appeared on a magazine cover

Back to Wes and Gene:

Are they worthy of their names?

And how did Wright feel about cats?

However, there is the doghouse:

In addition,

Notes:

I know these things –

Frank Lloyd Wright wrote:

The Wisconsin state bird

Wisconsin’s state flower

Nakoma and Nakomis are the parents of the fictional character, Hiawatha2 (from Longfellow‘s “The Song of Hiawatha“)

He put statues of Nakoma and Nakomis both inside his Hillside structure, and in Taliesin.

Some photos of the statues are below:

In the Assembly Hall at Hillside

And a smaller pair of them are at Taliesin:

More things I’ve learned:

Bats are considered good luck in China

I learned that barn swallows eat mosquitoes, too

More information I learned:

Frank Lloyd Wright’s life taught me the definition of the “Mann Act“4

I know the date of Japan’s Great Kanto earthquake.

I know what a “Quit Claim deed” is

The definition of the word “jocund”

Here that stanza:

Oh, and 1 more thing about this poem:

I know what a hydraulic ram is

I know the name of the last king of Iraq:

A Balalaika is a Russian, stringed instrument.

Speaking of Russia,

Ideally, chicken coops face south.

An oar lock on a Venetian gondola is officially called a Forcole.

Edit: June 4, 2023:

Ice houses are quite ancient.

Notes:

Like I said:

Well,

Why am I writing about Terry now?

Here’s what I wrote a day or two after that tour:

He and I remained friends after that.

I wrote in my “bat” post that –

what does this have to do with 2005?

All things considered…

Notes:

I live in a small town.

But this meant a great commute when I worked at Taliesin

Nakoma and Nakomis are the parents of the fictional character, Hiawatha² (from Longfellow‘s “The Song of Hiawatha“)

Frank Lloyd Wright’s life taught me the definition of the “Mann Act“⁴