Tag: John Lloyd Wright

Color photograph--Frank Lloyd Wright at the Hillside Home School on a horse with his wife Olgivanna and apprentice, Joe Fabris. Photo by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer.

What Did Frank Lloyd Wright Do For Fun?

Posted on | by keiran
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Wright on a horse at the Hillside Home School, next to the Assembly Hall. Taliesin Fellowship member, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer took this photograph and dated it to September 1951. Fellowship apprentice, Joe Fabris, is wearing the t-shirt while Wright’s wife Olgivanna stands on the right.

I don’t mean “change Taliesin, draw pictures, and charge his clients too much money”.

a’course the part about money is a joke. At least in my opinion.

Remember I wrote the post, “Wright Was Not a Shyster“

Actually, Larry stated it best in his message to me:

I’ve never read anything about Wright’s interest in sports or games. Perhaps a future topic for your blog? Looking forward to “Yahtzee at Taliesin: FLW at Play.”

Love the title.

So, for this post I searched Wright’s interests to see if he liked sports or games.

But unfortunately, I haven’t found anything definitive.

As far as I know

the guy apparently didn’t follow baseball

Hard to believe since he lived at a time when baseball was king.

Plus, he designed a baseball diamond in his model for Broadacre City.

Read about “Broadacre” in the Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 4.

I put a scan below that shows the model. The baseball diamond is on the lower right, and the close-up of it is under the larger photo:

Color photograph of the Broadacre City model published in Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect, ed. Terence Riley, with Peter Reed (Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1994), p. 333.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect, ed. Terence Riley, with Peter Reed (Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1994), p. 333.1

 

Crop of color photograph of the Broadacre City model published in Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect, ed. Terence Riley, with Peter Reed (Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1994), p. 333.

But I think Wright included that because he understood people’s interest.

Also, he didn’t seem to like Football/soccer (a.k.a.—football everywhere-else-around-the-world) or golf.

Plus,

As far as I can tell, Wright didn’t play cards or go bowling.

No slight meant at all on either of those; Dad taught us all to play Poker for pennies and my parents both played Bridge.

And

I’ve bowled enough to know that I should just eat fried cheese curds and drink beer while I watch anyone else bowling.

Srsly: MY TOP BOWLING SCORE?

    1.  

A score that’s so bad it’s not even laughable.

So, let’s go back to Wright’s young years:

He did lots of boyhood things with his best friend, Robie Lamp, who he met when he was about 14. In the article “An Old Madison Boy” by historian Mary Jane Hamilton, she wrote that the two

Using their ingenuity, and salvaged materials, Wright’s scroll saw, and his father’s lathe, the boys built a pedal-powered boat…, a catamaran, fanciful colored kites with long tales, cross bows, bows and arrows, a double-runnered bobsled, and an iceboat. Much of their play focused on Lake Mendota and included rowing the family boat, swimming…, and ice skating.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Monona Terrace: The Enduring Power of a Civic Vision, by David V. Mollenhoff and Mary Jane Hamilton (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1999), 47.

Plus, we know

Wright’s amusements a year or two later probably involved musical evenings at their home in Madison (both before and after his parents divorced in 1885). Like a lot of young people at that time, both there and at the homes of friends, they’d play music on instruments they had and dance. After all, the phonograph wasn’t even invented until 1877. 

His youngest sister, Maginel, wrote about their sister Jane playing music in the house in chapter seven of Valley of the God-Almighty Joneses. She describes these events that took place after their parents had divorced. She writes about them taking all the rugs off the floor to open up space for dancing.

Also,

Wright tried boxing for a time.

Which I didn’t know was “a thing” before.

But this web page told me that boxing became popular in the U.S. with the Irish during the 1860s and ’70s, and that the Amateur Athletic Union established a set of boxing rules in 1889.

Therefore, Wright wrote in his autobiography that

I had been eager to learn to box while at the University and had practiced a little with Jimmie Kerr who had a similar ambition…. I used to put on the gloves with Harry Waterman.

Frank Lloyd Wright. An Autobiography, new and revised ed. (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1943), 75-76.

This ended after one time he had a bloody fight—no sporting venture—in the Adler and Sullivan drafting room.2

Wright continued

his love of music in his Oak Park home, where Maginel and her mother lived next door. 

Maginel writes in Chapter 13 about the music he brought in with the children playing instruments:

            Sometimes at night I used to lie awake, or wake suddenly, to the rolling cadences and thundering majestic chords of Bach or Beethoven issuing across the garden from Frank’s house.

Maginel Wright Barney, Valley of the God-Almighty Joneses: Reminiscences of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Sister (Appleton-Century, New York City, 1965), 133.

And that her brother also liked going to the theater:

[W]e’d take the train to Chicago to the little Studebaker Theatre where something by Gilbert and Sullivan was always playing. We would occupy one of the middle rows, and… it wouldn’t be long before the whole company was playing to us, Frank’s gay gargantuan laugh filling the whole theater. [A]nd late at night, spent with laughing and enjoyment, we took the train back to Oak Park.

“Valley”, 134.

Wright’s son John also talked about his father’s raucous enjoyment at the theater:

            His laugh was so contagious it sent the audience into spasms. One night the comedian, laughing all the while himself, looked directly at him and bowed in tribute.

John Lloyd Wright, My Father Frank Lloyd Wright (1946; Dover publication, 1992), p. 28.

More amusement:

He definitely liked riding horses, which we know from photographs taken throughout his life. In the photo at the top of this post, Wright (then in his 80s) has just gotten onto a horse.

But while there’s a film made by then-apprentice Alden B. Dow with a horse race—with Olgivanna and their daughter, Iovanna—watching horse racing wasn’t a regular thing. 

So, his amusements remained: music, theater, and movies.

All things that the Wrights brought into life at the Taliesin Fellowship, which usually included watching movies on Saturdays at the theaters he designed in Wisconsin and Arizona. Then, formal evenings with music usually happened every Sunday. One of these “Formals” took place on his birthday (June 8), which is when the photo below was taken:

Photograph taken in Taliesin's living room on Frank Lloyd Wright's birthday. Wright is with 5 others, including his wife, Olgivanna (standing), and daughter, Iovanna (seated closest to him).

This photo was also in my post, “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Birthday“.

 

 

First published November 29, 2025.
The photograph at the top of this post is in the Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer collection in the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York), #6203.108.

Notes:

  1. My post, “Preservation by Distribution“, is related to how Wright got the money to build the model.
  2. The other, more established draftsmen in the Adler and Sullivan studio picked on him before the brawl. But, more than those details, Wright relates things about many of them that I found kind of shocking. I’m not used to seeing people mark the cultures or ethnicity of others, in capital letters. Here’s biographer Peter Blake on that part:

These passages from Wright’s Autobiography sound as repellent as a Nazi tract; but the man who is speaking is a rather primitive countryman by instinct, and this includes the usual run-of-the-mill prejudices.

Peter Blake. Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture and Space (Baltimore; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), 20.

If you want to read Wright’s statements (and don’t mind a little blood), read p. 94-101 of the 1932 edition of his Autobiography, or p. 95-102 of the 1943 version. 

Taliesin August 1914 after first fire

The tendrils of Taliesin’s 1914 fire

Posted on | by keiran
Reading Time: 5 minutes

The photo above shows Taliesin after the murders and fire there on August 15, 1914.

August for me in my small town in Wisconsin often includes remembering Taliesin’s 1914 fire.

Therefore, on this blog, you’ve seen my posts explaining the fire, and Mamah (and one with some snark). Plus, last year I posted statements that survivors Herbert Fritz and William Weston and Carlton’s wife, Gertrude, made to reporters.

Then, this past April I thought about the emotional impact on those close to victims, or who went through it.

So, that’s what I’ll write in this post:

Emil Brodelle

The Weekly Home News in Spring Green said he was 30 years old.

On Aug. 18, 1914, the Escanaba Daily Press in Michigan noted that Clarence Bootscher prepared to take Brodelle’s body back to his parents’ home in Milwaukee. Bootscher’s sister (also of Milwaukee; they didn’t give her name) was set to marry Brodelle. Clarence Bootscher told the Escanaba Press that,

My sister is prostrated…. It was all we could do to prevent her from coming up here. Emil was the most promising draftsman in Mr. Wright’s employ.

John and Martha Cheney

Their father, Edwin, took their remains back to his family in Oak Park, IL. 

But, before he left, a reporter at the Milwaukee Leader asked Cheney if he was planning to go to Mamah Borthwick’s funeral.

Cheney said, “That’s Wright’s affair…. I have two children who were murdered here.“

In 2008, I saw Nancy Horan as she came out to Taliesin for a special tour[pdf] with us surrounding Loving Frank.

I created the tour and had a nice time with her. 

Around that time, she said that someone told her that Edwin Cheney, who later worked in St. Louis, MO, kept an urn on his desk. Nancy thought the urn contained John and Martha’s ashes.

Nancy also said Edwin and his second wife Elsie Millor (they married in 1912) adopted two children after 1914. 

[The Wikipedia page on Edwin says they adopted three children; perhaps Mamah’s niece, Jessie (who lived with them almost from birth), was one of the three].

Brunker and Lindblom:

I couldn’t find a lot of info on Thomas Brunker or David Lindblom.

Although the Weekly Home News of Spring Green wrote about the murders in their August 20 edition and I trust them the most because they were (are) the local paper. Brunker was the hostler (he dealt with the horses); and Lindblom was Taliesin’s gardener.

In addition, I learned in the Aug. 19 issue of the Evening Times-Republican (of Marshalltown, IA) that Lindblom was 55 and Brunker was 60. The Evening Times-Republican also informed me that Brunker (from Ridgeway) had 10 children who had lost their mother 4 years before.

Thomas Brunker was buried near the Catholic church in his town.

The “Home News” added in their August 20 edition that:

The funeral of David Lindblom was held Tuesday afternoon (the 18th) and internment was made in the cemetery at Unity Chapel…. Lindblom was born in Sweden and had no relatives in the United States except one sister, residing in Chicago, who could not be located.

I haven’t found Lindblom’s grave at Unity Chapel’s cemetery.

Ernest Weston:

The family buried Ernest in the Spring Green cemetery. His father, William, didn’t go to the funeral because he stayed at home convalescing from his injuries. 

William Weston:

He may have been suffering psychologically, because the Home News reported almost a year later that he unexpectedly left Spring Green, and turned up in Minnesota. He returned to his family, but the newspaper reported 5 months after that (Nov. 11, 1915), that he had just come home from the Dakotas where he had been working. Perhaps these moves from Spring Green were related to William Weston needing to forget the violence he witnessed and the loss of his son.

However, if Weston left for that reason, it seemed to have worked because the Home News didn’t report any other disappearances by him. 

Herbert Fritz:

While writing her biography on Wright, Meryle Secrest talked to Herb Fritz, Jr. about Wright, Taliesin, and the 1914 fire. Fritz said,

My father never talked about what he saw happening. I think he had emotional problems, but he would just stand and stare off into space.1

Gertrude Carlton:

She escaped Taliesin at the beginning of her husband’s rampage and the police picked her up as she walked to Spring Green. 

The Iowa county police in Dodgeville held her to determine what connection she had to the murders. They concluded she had nothing to do with them and let her go. So, on August 29, she left Dodgeville on the train.2 From there, she disappeared.

Wright:

He responded in a few ways. First, he refused to see his family:

A horrible loneliness began to clutch me, but I longed for no one I ever loved or that I had ever known…. My children—I had welcomed them always—but I did not want them now. They had been so faithfully kind in my extremity. I shall never forget.

 But strange faces were best and I walked among them.3

Then, he writes further about his life with her: “I could see forward but I could not see backward.“3

Additionally, he wrote that he did not “turn back” or stop “to mourn”, but tucked memories with Mamah away for “years to come”. And that it was as if Mamah hadn’t “really lived at all.”

Therefore,

Wright appears to have suffered from “Complicated grieving”, which can occur following violent death.4

For this reason, complicated grieving can also explain his decision to embark on a romantic relationship with Miriam Noel soon after meeting her in late 1914.

Moreover, when he worked on the Imperial Hotel, Wright, 

… wanted to get away from the United States. I still imagined one might “get away” from himself. In spite of all my reasoning power and returning balance I was continually expecting some terrible blow to strike. 5

Wright’s son, John:

was with his father when he found about the fire and rode the train with him to Spring Green.

One chapter in his book, My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright,6 is “REFLECTION”. There he wrote his thoughts on his father and Mamah’s relationship, and how he changed after her murder:

Something in him died with her, a something lovable and gentle that I knew and loved in my father. As I reflect now I am convinced that the love that united them was deep, sincere and holy in spite of its illegality—I am convinced that the woman for whom he left home was of noble character.

John’s observations go deeper and I think they need to be included here:

Through the years they lived their life together Dad was free to express his love and attention to his children. After the tragedy it was not so. Up to that time he lived life fully. After that time he seemed to have no protection domestically whatsoever, reveling in an intoxication of freedom he could never know. He was wide open for anything that might come his way, restless, frustrated. He seemed to be making an effort to live in the varying and shifting scenes of his domestic life, but a self-forcing, so to speak—trying always to make it what he would like to have it through showmanship and penmanship. Only architecturally was he able to hold his own.7

 

 

Published August 4, 2025.

A.S. Rockwell took the photograph at the top of this post on the day of, or the day after, the fire. The photograph is on Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain.  See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Taliesin_After_Fire.jpg for information about the origin of the photograph.

Notes:

1. Meryl Secrest. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1992), 400.

2. Ron McCrea, Building Taliesin: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home of Love and Loss (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 2012), 196.

3. Frank Lloyd Wright. An Autobiography (Longmans, Green and Company, London, New York, Toronto, 1932), 191.

4. The violence can be actual, criminal violence, or through accident or suicide. Complicated grief in those bereaved by violent death: the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on complicated grief, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3384450/ The information about complicated grief is part of the research I undertook while exploring the nightmare for loved ones that must have occurred after the murders. 

5. An Autobiography, 194.

6. John Lloyd Wright. My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright (originally published as My Father Who is on Earth, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946; Dover Publications, Inc., New York; 1992). I’ve quoted from John’s book in my post about Taliesin’s first fire, and in “How Did Frank Lloyd Wright Feel About Christmas?“

7. My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright, 85.

Also, you can read my essay, “We lived–Richly” (about Mamah’s grave), from the April 2025 issue of Madison magazine.

And if you live near Prairie du Sac, I’m giving my “Myths of the 1914 Fire” lecture on August 21 at the Ruth Culver Community Library.

Black and white photograph looking at Taliesin tower with agricultural wing of Taliesin. Taken 1930. At the Chicago History Museum, ISHi-89172, Raymond W. Trowbridge, photographer.

Darkroom at Taliesin

Posted on | by keiran
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Raymond Trowbridge took this photograph while looking at the Agricultural Wing at Taliesin. Taken before September 20, 1930.
p.s.: the darkroom isn’t in the part of the building you see in this photo.

My post this week grew out of a question related to Raymond Trowbridge – the photographer who took photos at Taliesin in 1930.

(I wrote about him here)

And my continual quest to understand Taliesin’s history.

Which led me to ask if Taliesin ever had a darkroom –

for developing photographs

and my discovery of where it was.

My question started after

I followed my curiosity while writing about Wright at Taliesin in the 1930s.

Anyone who knows Wright knows Taliesin saw the ups and downs of his career.

Even though

he had triumphs —

like the world-famous Imperial Hotel in Japan that survived an earthquake

demolished in the late ’60s

and Midway Gardens in Chicago

            demolished in 1929 because, while a great idea, was a failure due to World War I and prohibition

— his career in the mid-to-late 1920s was a bit of a mess.

But despite this,

in 1930, Wright had Trowbridge come out and take beautiful photos of his home, like the one at the top of this page.

Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how Wright found him.

But still, I theorized that Wright asked Trowbridge to photograph Taliesin in order to create the image of himself as an important architect, despite people starting to think of him as old fashioned

even before the Great Depression had really begun.

After puzzling for days, I asked someone who knows a lot about Wright’s work: scholar, Kathryn Smith. So I asked: “Did Wright ask Trowbridge for the photos to market himself as more relevant?”

She wrote back

an email chock-full of info about Wright in the 1920s, encouraging me to look at her book, Wright on Exhibit,

            which—cool—I had recently purchased

and agreed that, yes, Wright probably had the photographs taken to influence people’s perception of him.

So, that’s out of the way.

But she also asked the question that inspired today’s post:

Because my email reminded her that, while she wrote Wright on Exhibit, she read letters he’d written to friends in 1930-31 where he told them he was making “new photo prints”.

Taliesin really is out in the boonies, and Wright might have done things just at Taliesin.

SO she got curious: if he was making new “photo prints”,

did he have darkroom?

That means a place with running water and light control.

I knew there had been a darkroom at the Hillside school that Wright’s aunts ran.

I had found it years before in a drawing

But Hillside was a mess in 1930.

So, with Kathryn’s question in mind, I scanned my brain for what Taliesin’s interior looked like in 1930-31 to figure out if Wright had a darkroom at Taliesin.

I immediately thought it was possible, because

we know

Wright was interested in photography for a long time.

For example, the website Wright in Japan 1905 shows you all of these photos Wright took on his first trip to Japan.

And John Lloyd Wright put a photo that his dad took of him into his book, My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright:

Photograph of John as a child on one of his father's chairs. Printed on page 23 of "My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright," by John Lloyd Wright.

I took this photo on page 23 of John’s book. Wright was using his son in an advertisement for an exhibition.

Even though I felt he might have had one, I confessed to Kathryn that I didn’t know where Taliesin’s darkroom could be. No one had written about or mentioned it.

I did think a darkroom and developing area could be in/near the bedroom under Wright’s Taliesin Drafting Studio eventually kept for years by Gene Masselink, but that never came up anywhere in people’s memories.

Fortunately, I thought to ask Indira Berndtson, the (now-retired) Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Administrator of Historic Studies. She has done hundreds (over a thousand) of interviews with Wright associates, including friends, family, clients and Taliesin Fellowship apprentices.

And she told me that in 1996 she talked to former apprentice Lawrence Cuneo (Fellowship 1938-40). Because Cuneo was in the Fellowship to do photography,1 she asked him if Taliesin had a darkroom.

He said it did, and it was one floor below Wright’s office.2

See, in Wright’s private office off of the Taliesin studio,

there’s a door into Taliesin’s vault.

Next to that there’s another door, which opens to steps downstairs. Apparently, the darkroom was down there.

the steps leading downstairs can be seen next to the vault in Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation drawing #2501.035 at the Avery.

But while Cuneo was supposed to do photography during his apprenticeship, he found the darkroom at Taliesin practically useless.

For example

the inside was painted completely black.

That doesn’t help when you’re trying to develop film in a space where you can’t have any light at all. A place where, ideally, you paint things in a lighter color so at least you know where the table stands that holds your light-sensitive photo paper.

But not only was that darkroom completely black, it was too humid.

which, last I heard, it still is

So Cuneo moved out and built another darkroom off of the Hillside Drafting Studio.

Eventually Taliesin’s unused darkroom was made into Gene Masselink’s living space.

I like it when I’m right on things

Speaking of that,

I gave you a photo so you have an idea of where the hell Gene’s apartment was. You would get to his apartment door by following the arrow in the photo below:

Exterior photograph of Taliesin by Maynard Parker. Taken in 1955. Courtesy of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

This is the Lower Parking Court at Taliesin. I showed another version of this photograph in my post, “Tour Guides and Trust“.

If you follow the arrow,

not in reality, silly

you get to the door for Gene’s apartment. Once inside, there’s a wall around which there’s a small room with electricity, a toilet and a sink. It’s totally closed off from light, so that’s where the darkroom was until Cuneo dismantled it.

So,

Cuneo’s answer helped me find this almost-useless space and answer Smith’s question.

 

 

Originally posted May 22, 2025.
This photo at the top of this post is available at the Chicago History Museum, here.

1. Cuneo was one of several photographers Wright had in the Fellowship, included a young Edmund Teske (I posted a photo by him here) and (most famously) an even younger Pedro Guerrero (I posted a photo he took of the Living Room fireplace, here).

2. Indira Berndtson’s 1996 interview with Cuneo is credited to The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

 

Taliesin August 1914 after first fire

The First Fire

Posted on | by keiran
Reading Time: 6 minutes

The photographer was on the Taliesin Hill Crown looking toward the structure after the first fire. The person seen standing on the left in the white shirt may be Frank Lloyd Wright.

I’ve mentioned the 1914 fire a few times (and wrote about it snarkily), but I thought it’s time to address Taliesin’s first fire.

On August 15, 1914 as Frank Lloyd Wright was in Chicago putting the final touches on his Midway Gardens project (1913-1929), he received a phone call that Taliesin was on fire. His son John (who later became an architect) was working with his father and described that day later in his book, My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright:1

Suddenly all was quiet in the room, a strange unnatural silence, his breathing alone was audible, then a groan. I turned to him, startled, he clung to the table for support, his face ashen.
My Father Frank Lloyd Wright (1946; Dover publications, 1992), by John Lloyd Wright, 80.

Wright asked his son to get a taxi and then the two grabbed the first train back to Spring Green.

Details on that first fire:

For unknown reasons Wright’s servant, Julian Carlton, set fire to the living quarters of Taliesin after serving lunch, and murdered seven people. He killed most of them with a hatchet (one died from his burns).

The names of those who died were: Wright’s partner, Mamah Borthwick; her two children, John and Martha Cheney (ages 11 and eight, respectively); Emil Brodelle (draftsman); Thomas Brunker (foreman); David Lindblom (gardener); and Ernest Weston, the 13-year-old son of carpenter William “Billy” Weston.

The fire mostly burned down Taliesin’s living quarters within an hour. One-third of the building was destroyed.

It’s impossible to know what happened that afternoon

The murderer died on October 7, before a trial could be held. Additionally, the two survivors (Billy Weston and draftsman Herbert Fritz) never talked about the murders. Who’d want to? Carlton not only attacked Weston (who he left for dead), but he murdered Weston’s son, Ernest. Fritz survived by jumping out of a window on the south side of the house, breaking his arm. 

You would think that my history of working at Taliesin—in a place where the woman’s head was “cleft in two”—would leave a creepy feeling. But it doesn’t didn’t, not for me. First of all, the Taliesin that stands doesn’t have the floorboards, walls and doors where it all happened in 1914. Those were all destroyed in that fire, after which he rebuilt. Then, that same part of the building was once more almost destroyed in the fire of 1925.

Although, ultimately, I’m left in awe by the beauty of the standing structure, built by one of the greatest architects who has ever lived.2

What some say about the murders:

Some have unsubstantiated theories about the murders. These include: Carlton disapproved of Wright’s lifestyle; Carlton’s paranoia took a bad turn for fear of deportation in order to fight in the first World War; that this was a Chicago mob hit (Wright spoke in his autobiography of disagreements with the “union boys” over Wright’s Midway Gardens); and Wright put out a contract to murder Mamah.

I even had a former guide from another Wright house—after taking a four-hour Taliesin “Estate” tour with me—come up to say that he had been hoping to get the “real story” behind the murders from a Taliesin tour guide.

By the way, just so it’s all said: I have posted the basics of what we know about the first fire, above. There is no secret stash of information given to those at Taliesin about what “really happened” during the 1914 fire. 

The theories that Wright had something to do with the murders make me wonder:

What kind of person do you think Wright was? Sure, he left his first wife, sometimes (maybe a lot of times) had problems with money, and could sometimes say outrageous things about buildings and cities (noted in this article on negative things he said about Pittsburgh).

But any of those things are far away from being a murderer.

Finally, as for Wright ordering a hit on Mamah: putting aside the fact that Wright was not a murderer, (a) what self-respecting mobster would have expected Wright to come through with the money on a hit; and (b) if all else, I don’t think Wright would have destroyed his own home.

As for the other theories:

If Carlton hated Wright so much, why didn’t he just kill him in his sleep? And concerning Chicago mobsters: if they were trying to scare Wright, something else would have happened to him, or somebody would have eventually said something.

Regarding World War I, everyone in Europe that August was saying that it would be over by fall (by the time “the leaves turned”), so probably no one in the world was worried about multiple countries outside of Europe going to battle.

In addition,

Author Paul Hendrickson brought forth evidence that Carlton was born in Alabama (not Barbados) in his book, Plagued by Fire.

Wright’s reaction:

But to get back to the 1914 fire: Wright was devastated. Who wouldn’t be? He left for work in Chicago on a summer’s day in the middle of the week and came back that Saturday to a complete, unreal nightmare. And probably nothing could touch the guilt the man must have felt for hiring Carlton. Finally, the emotional weight of such a horrific and terrifying end to his life with Mamah must have been overwhelming. In fact, as far as I know, his painful and poignant writing about the fire was only done once: in his autobiography. I encourage you to seek out his autobiography to read his words (in three editions: published in 1932 and updated in 1943, which was republished in 1977), but here’s his writing about burying Mamah:

The August sun was setting on the familiar range of hills. I felt, dimly, the far-off shadows of the ages, struggling to escape from subconsciousness and utter themselves… then—darkness…. I filled the grave—in darkness—in the dark.

No monument marks the spot where “Mamah” was buried.

All I had to show for the struggle for freedom of the past five years that had swept most of my former life away, had now been swept away.

Why mark the spot where desolation ended and began?3
Frank Lloyd Wright. An Autobiography, in Frank Lloyd Wright Collected Writings: 1930-32, volume 2. Edited by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, introduction by Kenneth Frampton (Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York City, 1992), 240.

Wright wrote how the aftermath of the fire caused him to leave Taliesin for a bit and try to work out his grief in Chicago. And, then he writes,

So the rage that grew when I felt the inimical weight of human censure on my soul began to fade away and finally took refuge in the idea that Taliesin should live to show something more for its mortal sacrifice than a charred and terrible ruin on a lonely hillside in the beloved Valley.
An Autobiography, Collected Writings, volume 2, 241.

Some final thoughts about the 1914 fire

I noted at the start of this that the fire doesn’t make me feel weird while being at Taliesin. But I do feel deep, quiet sadness if I go to Mamah’s grave in the family cemetery, particularly standing near her grave and looking toward his house. Some years I’ve made a point of going there on August 15 when the sun is setting, the mist is rising, and the frogs are singing. The physicality of it goes deep in the bones.

But in addition, there’s the knowledge that above it all, he stayed! He rebuilt his living room in the same spot and the same size and rebuilt their bedroom in the same spot and the same size (and kept using it until 19364). What a weird reaction. Well, I used to think it was a weird reaction, anyway. Then September 11 happened.

In the wake of 9-11-01, I came probably as close as I can to fully understanding Wright in the aftermath of the 1914 fire. That desire to rebuild as a fight against obliteration was all around us in talks of rebuilding the World Trade Center. And, that connects very simply to Wright’s closing words about the fire in his autobiography:

There is release from anguish in action. Anguish would not leave Taliesin until action for renewal began. Again, and at once, all that had been in motion before at the will of the architect was set in motion. Steadily, again, stone by stone, board by board, Taliesin the II began to rise from Taliesin the first.
Ibid.

This was first published March 10, 2021.

The photograph above was taken by A.S. Rockwell on the day of, or the day after, the fire. The photograph was placed on Wikimedia Commons as an image in the public domain. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Taliesin_After_Fire.jpg for information about the origin of the photograph.

 Notes:

1 If you get the chance, you should read John’s book. It’s fun, funny, and insightful. I got a real sense of what Wright was like as a father. You can check out my post, “How did Frank Lloyd Wright feel about Christmas?” to read the scene John about seeing his father on Christmas Eve.

2 I haven’t said so before, I’ll say it here: I don’t think he was the absolute, above all others, greatest architect. The world’s a big place and built human history goes back to, what, 4,000 BCE? That’s a lot of building. So I think it is impossible to pick one person as the greatest architect (or artist). However, if someone made a list of the top 25 greatest architects in history throughout the entire globe, I believe his name would be there.

3 If you go to the cemetery at Unity Chapel, you’ll see a grave marker for Mamah. It was placed there in 2022 after members of the Borthwick family contacted those from the Lloyd Jones family. The new marker is near the base of the tree under with Borthwick is buried. Borthwick family members commissioned a new marker for Mamah to replace one put there under the direction of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright (Frank Lloyd Wright’s widow). The earlier marker in limestone was removed by employees of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, who put it into storage.

4 He and Olgivanna moved to separate bedrooms in that year. Those rooms remained their bedrooms in Wisconsin for the rest of their lives. 

 

A link to my writing on Taliesin’s second fire.

Photograph by Kevin Dodda of Taliesin in snow.

How did Frank Lloyd Wright feel about Christmas?

Posted on | by keiran
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Someone asked me that question in early December. Yet, I’ve tried to answer it, with no clear success, for years. After all, Wisconsin can be charmingly Christmas-Themed, with a dusting of snow and a chill in the air.* In addition, in his autobiography, Wright described Taliesin in winter as being a “frosted palace roofed and walled with snow”. But, he didn’t seem especially fond of Christmas, particularly in the first years after he built his Wisconsin home in 1911.

Wright talking about Christmas

In 1924, when Wright had a new love in his life, his future wife, Olgivanna, he wrote her a letter saying that Christmas reminded him of his children he had left in Oak Park, IL in 1909. His letter to her is in The Life of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, 234.

However, less than a decade after they met, the Wrights began the Taliesin Fellowship, and eventually Wright would leave Wisconsin in the winter, spending that time with his family and apprentices at Taliesin West in Arizona. Thus, Christmas became an activity enjoyed by the group in the desert. To read about their Christmases, read The Life of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright.

Wright’s Christmas-card moments

He did have plenty of these in the 1890s/early 1900s with the family in Oak Park. They were described aplenty in the book written by Wright’s second son, John. In John’s book, My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright (first published in 1946 under the amusing title, My Father, Who is on Earth), he wrote about growing up in Oak Park, and later working with his father. These memories also include how he felt about his dad as a father; the day of Taliesin’s 1914 fire; and the day his dad fired him! It’s unique and you should pick it up.

John wrote memories involving Christmas while growing up. One of these is of a Christmas Eve night when he was perhaps 5 or 6.

I’ll leave you with John’s description of watching his father put the presents out, then his father “caught” him and carried him back to bed:

…. He unboxed toys on a big white sheet under the tree, sat on the floor and played with each one before placing it. When he played with the mechanical donkey that jumped up and down I almost dashed in. When he pulled out a monkey that climbed a string, I giggled so loud the jig was up! Out rushed Papa, swooped me up in his arms, whisked me backed to bed, told me I had been dreaming. I still like to think it was a dream—and good old St. Nick, a reality. And not too long ago, Dad said, “I still believe in Santa Claus.”
John Lloyd Wright, My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright (Dover Publications, Inc., New York; 1992), 40.

First published, 12/23/2020
The winter photograph taken at Taliesin at the top of this post is by Kevin Dodds and was reproduced with permission.

* overlooking the fact that, one time after 1992 (the year I came to live in this state), it reached -25F (-32C) degrees on Christmas day.