Tag: Mann Act

B&W photograph taken October 21 1926 showing Frank Lloyd Wright being arrested outside of cabin in MN. Public domain image from Hennepin County Library.

Craziness in Frank Lloyd Wright’s life 1925-28

Posted on | by keiran
Reading Time: 7 minutes

Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1926 arrest in Minnesota. Photograph from Hennepin County Library. 

Since I mentioned it in my last post, today I’m going to write about Wright’s life in the late 1920s, which included lots of lawyering, more $$ problems than usual for Wright, and a weekend in jail.

It’s funny because I can tell you so much about the history of Taliesin, like what all of the rooms looked like through time and where/if photos of them exist.

BUT

After all this time, I’m still fuzzy on what the hell was going on in Wright’s personal life from late 1925 until around the time he married the third Mrs. Wright in 1928.

Usually,

my thoughts are that this time included jail, a bank foreclosure, and he was in Taliesin/maybe NOT in Taliesin, and somewhere in there he started his autobiography…?

Not to mention Frank Lloyd Wright, Inc., but when was that founded? 1926? ’27?

Regardless

I’m going to write what I found in several places, and primarily in Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography by Meryle Secrest.

Because she was the first biographer able to use the 5-volume index to the Taliesin correspondence1 with information on where you can find any of the 200,000 pieces correspondence on microfiche in Wright’s archives. So this made her research much easier.

As a result, I’ll selectively add page numbers from Secrest’s bio with my info. 

Let’s start with

late 1925:

Wright spent most of the year rebuilding Taliesin’s living quarters after they burned in April.

  • December 3: Olgivanna, her daughter Svetlana, and Frank Lloyd Wright went to Chicago [hiding from Wright’s second wife, Miriam] so Olgivanna could give birth to her and Wright’s daughter, Iovanna, at a hospital in peace.

Several days later, the troop left for Hollis, New Jersey and the home of Olgivanna’s brother and sister-in-law (Vlademar and Sophia Hinzenberg) where they could spend Christmas. [Secrest, 320, 324]

1926:

  • After more time in New Jersey, the 4 went to Puerto Rico for about a month.

They went because Olgivanna needed rest and recovery. Puerto Rico (a U.S. Territory) has tropical weather and Wright had less fear about bringing her off the mainland and back through national checkpoints. [Secrest, 325]

  • They were back in Wisconsin by Feb. when Wright went to a hearing in Madison related to divorce proceedings with Miriam. [Secrest, 323]
  • For most of the summer, they were all back at Taliesin:

Olgivanna is holding Iovanna in the Garden Court at Taliesin in the summer of 1926. The photo was printed in Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright by Brendan Gill, 291. The photo was owned by Elizabeth Wright Ingraham (architect and Wright’s granddaughter through his second son, John). 

Legal, financial, and heated confrontations continued between Wright and Miriam Noel Wright and on

June 3

Miriam tried to get into Taliesin,

            After all, she was his wife and Taliesin was community property.

But she was barred from coming in through Taliesin’s gates.

You can see the gates on the right-hand side of the drawing below. One gate is by the “Lower Dam” and one is off of the straight “County Road” across from the “Horse Pasture”: 

Black and white map of the Taliesin estate drawn from memory by John H. Howe.

Jack Howe, head draftsman in the Taliesin Fellowship, drew it. You’ll also find it in my post recommending the book, At Taliesin. 

Miriam tried to get in for 2 more days, leading Spring Green’s newspaper (The Weekly Home News) to note this in its edition on

June 10, 1926:

….

            Mrs. Wright is evidently a sick woman and as such is deserving of more consideration than was shown her by a syndicate of scandalmongering newspapers in staging the spectacular attempt which she made, probably at their instigation.

….

The Home News also let Wright publish a 700-plus-word explanation and apology to his neighbors. I’ve got a post where this is printed, but

FIRST –

we’ve got to move along in the chronology.

In late August

Wright takes the group to Minnesota, right before the Bank of Wisconsin announces foreclosure on Taliesin. [Secrest, 328]

They stayed at a cabin on Lake Minnetonka where Wright started writing his autobiography. [Secrest, 329] But no one knew where they were; not just Miriam, but ALSO, Vlademar Hinzenberg, Svetlana’s father.

Until the police tracked them down there on October 21. The photo at the top of today’s post captures his arrest outside of the cabin. 

Initially all 4 (including the baby) went to jail for a night, but then Wright stayed for the weekend. [Secrest, 330]

I wrote about this in my post, “Frank Lloyd Wright Violated the Mann Act“. That post includes Wright’s June 10th explanation/apology to the folks of Spring Green I mentioned above.

In his letter to his neighbors, he said it would all hopefully be better in “a year or two”.

He also wrote in it that, “I want to mind my own business and not be subject to public question if I can manage it.”

Which I maintain sounds like what’s on a deranged motivational poster:

Photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright by Edward Steichen, Bequest of Edward Steichen. Located in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

After

he got out of jail, he had the idea of incorporating himself. [Secrest 333, 335]

Sure: people could buy stock in his future, then he could take the money, pay bills, and start to get back to work at Taliesin.

But remember what I’ve said: with Wright, there’s a difference between the ideal and the reality.

Onward!

1927:

January:

Before the corporation was set up, Wright put a bunch of his Japanese woodblock prints up for auction in NYC to make some bucks.

Unfortunately, while Wright hoped to make $100,000, the auction only netted $36,975. And that went back to the auction house, which had lent Wright money 2 years before.2 [You can read the whole print saga at Secrest, 334-36.]

February:

ANOTHER FIRE!

It wasn’t major, but it happened in Taliesin’s studio on February 22 (Wright wasn’t there). The Home News wrote in the February 24 edition that his workmen noticed “flames leaping from the roof of the studio” and fortunately the Spring Green fire department put the fire out. It was probably an electrical fire and caused around $3,500 in damage. 

May:

Wright retained lawyer Philip La Follette3 to negotiate a “year’s grace” on the foreclosure with the Bank of Wisconsin. [Secrest, 337]

By that time, things were going forward with Frank Lloyd Wright, Incorporated.

NOT the same thing as the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

He sold stock on his possible future earnings for $100 a share.

Who bought 74 shares?

FLLW’s bestie, Darwin D. Martin

thanks, DD!

Brendan Gill put an image of Martin’s share in Many Masks, 300:

Stock certificate for Frank Lloyd Wright Inc. Property: University Archives, SUNY-Buffalo.

The corporation made things with the Bank of Wisconsin better, allowing for the possibility of him getting back into his house.

BUT

the negotiations with Miriam precluded him living at Taliesin with Olgivanna.

Instead, the four lived at Tan-y-Deri, the house he designed for his sister visible from his home [Secrest, 338]. 

It’s in the photo below, under the arrow. The photo is taken from Taliesin’s Hill Crown. I posted it in my post, “Letters from Keith McCutcheon to Franklin Porter“:

Exterior photograph from Taliesin toward the Porter house, "Tanyderi". Photo by Keiran Murphy.

Interesting that I remembered the photo, looked for it and realized that I touched on gay liberation in the other post. Plus, it so happens that I’m writing this at the end of June near a day important for gay rights: the Stonewall Riots of 1969.4

On August 26

Wright and his second wife divorced.

At the end of 1927,

Wright left for Phoenix to act as a consultant on the Arizona Biltmore hotel.

1928:

After 3 months, he, Milanoff and the children moved to La Jolla, California.

Things with his finances weren’t copacetic, though, because

on July 30,

Taliesin was sold at auction to the Bank of Wisconsin for $25,000.

Meryle Secrest wrote that for the following 2 months,

[Philip La Follette] was negotiating to buy Taliesin back. The bank had added on all kinds of extra charges,… but LaFollette whittled that down to $40,000 and arranged for a new mortgage of $25,000…. The corporation was reorganized under the new name of Wright, Inc. [Secrest 342]

And, in good news, 

Wright and Olgivanna got married on August 25.

Wedding announcement for Frank and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright 1928 wedding. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (THe Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

Soon afterward, Wright got the news that the negotiations were letting them back into Taliesin. He wrote about it at the end of Book Two in his autobiography: 

Finally in September a compromise was effected. A telegram from Mr. and Mrs. Martin reached us at La Jolla—”Taliesin is open for your return.” After all the harrowing circumstances of nearly four years past, words that set us all madly rejoicing.

Frank Lloyd Wright. An Autobiography (Longmans, Green and Company, London, New York, Toronto, 1932), 293.

 

 

Originally published on June 23, 2026. 
The photo on the top of this post has no copyright and is from Hennepin County Library. It is published at this page:
https://digitalcollections.hclib.org/digital/collection/MplsPhotos/id/11707/

Notes:

  1. The force behind “The Index”, Anthony Alofsin, published his speech on his reasoning for it in the .pdf available here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58eac1d237c5819161af4699/t/5fbe82119b1ed03538b06a82/1606320658054/Frank+Lloyd+Wright+and+His+Taliesin+Correspondence-+A+History+11-22-20.pdf.
  2. While the print sale sucked for Wright, it was fantastic for the Chazen Museum of Art at UW-Madison. Professor Edward Burr Van Vleck purchased 5,000 prints during the auction, of which “several thousand” remain and were donated by his son. This info appears in Julia Meech’s book, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan: The Architect’s Other Passion, (Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York City, 2001), 16. I saw some of the prints when I was in grad school there.
  3. Son of Fighting Bob.
  4. If it sounds odd that I bring this up in a post about Wright, you might not realize I wrote my Thesis on a gay male artist named David Wojnarowicz.
Photo is sepia of cabin with hipped roof surrounded by trees in late fall. Property: https://digitalcollections.hclib.org/digital/collection/MplsPhotos/id/12037/

Frank Lloyd Wright Violated the Mann Act

Posted on | by keiran
Reading Time: 5 minutes

No, not the first time he violated it.

I wrote about that before when introducing you to the second Mrs. Wright.

In this post I’ll write about the second (and last) time.

As I wrote once before, information about the Mann Act is something you learn when working at Taliesin.

In particular, the Mann Act is related to what happened to Frank Lloyd Wright on October 21, 1926, at the cottage in the photo at the top of this post.

It started,

as things do with Wright,

in a story that got really complicated.

Let’s go back

to Wright’s second wife, Miriam Noel. She left him by early May 1924, then almost 6 months later, he met his future wife, Olgivanna. Their new relationship was practically tried by fire—Taliesin’s second fire 5 months after they met. Olgivanna had their daughter, Iovanna, in December while she was chased out of the hospital after giving birth. And, in the next year, Wright was having financial problems while struggling to find clients. What’s more, Miriam was still refusing to settle their divorce.

This was quite a problem for everyone.

Especially, where Wright lived.

Spring Green was dealing with the “Chicago boys”: those reporters from that city’s newspapers. They were around, writing about Wright’s problems with Miriam. She had shown up at Taliesin in early June 1926 trying to get in while the Chicago Boys took photos.

Taliesin was legally her home, after all.

So William Purdy, editor of Spring Green’s newspaper, The Weekly Home News, wrote about this sorry business in the June 10th edition.

Also, Purdy allowed Wright to publish an apology to the people of the village. Here it is in part:

Architect Makes Statement to Public

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT THANKS HOME PEOPLE.

To the Countryside:

Taliesin seems to be a storm center for conflicting human interests and emotions. Three times I have built it up from its ashes;1 each time stronger and more beautiful than before tragedy destroyed it. The cooperation of the countryside was mine in all this and I have appreciated it more than I can tell. But I have never thanked my neighbors and townspeople directly for their friendship and forbearance. I want to do so now, particularly in consideration of their “hands off” attitude in this last attack—this attempt, made in hatred and a spirit of revenge, to destroy any usefulness I have and make what I have struggled to establish here useless to me or anyone….

Then, the last paragraph includes my favorite part:

Enough of that. What I want to say to you was that I like you people…. You all seem home-like to me. I’ve been about all over the globe and come back here with that feeling of coming “home” we all seek somewhere, and too often seek in vain…. I want to stay here with you, working until I die. I want to mind my own business and not be subject to public question if I can manage it. At the present times it looks as though I yet had some distance to go—and I might die before I got there. I must be patient and I hope those of you who don’t believe in me very much, perhaps, will be patient too—along with those who are closer to me and know better what I have had to contend with and what I would do if I could. I think the countryside deserves the best of me and if you who make it what it is give me the benefit of the doubt in all this for a year or two, I believe I will come through right side up and you may yet take pride in Taliesin as I have always hoped and believed you would do.

With affection, such as I am

Your—FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT.

If you didn’t see it above, check out the photo I put together below:

Photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright by Edward Steichen, Bequest of Edward Steichen. Located in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright in the National Portrait Gallery. © Condé Nast. NPG.82.92

Honestly, I wanted to show this because it looks like a motivational poster that’s taken a bad turn.

Despite what he wrote to his neighbors in 1926, things for Wright would not get better in “a year or two.”

In fact,

they were going to get worse that fall.

At the end of August, one of Wright’s attorneys (Levi Bancroft) advised Wright to spend a while away from Taliesin. Bancroft and others were trying to settle things with Miriam and the Bank of Wisconsin.

So, Wright and his coterie —Olgivanna, her daughter, Svetlana, and Iovanna—eventually went to the cottage you see at the top of this post. It was on Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, where they all lived for about a month. 

But unfortunately,

as biographer Meryle Secrest wrote,

Wright could not have known that by driving Olgivanna across the Wisconsin-Minnesota state line, instead of having her get out and walk (presumably to demonstrate she was not a “victim”) he had given the bureau new evidence under the White Slave Traffic Act [a.k.a., the Mann Act].

Meryle Secrest. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography (Alfred A. Knopf, New York City, 1992), 327-328.

And, on October 21, 1926

there were at the cottage when they were apprehended and brought to the county jail for the night. They released everyone but Wright the next day. Then, he stayed for the weekend until they could all see the judge.

Although Svetlana’s father, Vladimir Hinzenberg, dropped the charges once he saw that she was no longer in trouble, the event caused a permanent rift between Hinzenberg and her. In fact, her son Brandoch Peters2 later told the LaCrosse Tribune that this was why she always signed her name, “Svetlana Wright Peters”.3

A good thing about this is that the tide began to turn against the second Mrs. Wright. Around that time her lawyer, Arthur Cloud, said, “I wanted to be a lawyer… and Mrs. Wright [i.e., Miriam] wanted me to be an avenging angel.”4

One last thing about the cottage in Minnesota:

Its photo shows it with a hipped roof and apparently windows all the way in the back. When I first saw that photo over a year ago, I instantly remembered Graycliff, a home in Derby, New York.  Wright designed it that year, 1926, for Isabelle Martin, wife of longtime client, Darwin Martin.

My photo of Graycliff is below:

Color photograph of the Isabelle Martin House by Frank Lloyd Wright in Derby, NY. Photo by Keiran Murphy

I don’t know if there’s any connection, but I was really struck by the resemblance to this home against a lake.

 

Posted October 17, 2024.
The photo at the top of this post is here from the Digital Collections of the Hennepin County Public Library.

Notes

  1. He says “three times I have built it from its ashes”, but Taliesin was only destroyed twice by fire: in 1925, but also 1914. I think Wright might have meant that the first construction was atop his former home/life in Oak Park.
  2. Brandoch is seen talking about his grandfather in this video, Brandoch Peters Remembers, Part 1. Part 2 is here.
  3. Susan Smith for Lee Newspapers. “Grandson of Wright offers his memories”, La Crosse Tribune, December 14, 2003.
  4. Meryle Secrest. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, 331.
The number "42" on a black background. By Mark Konig at https://unsplash.com/photos/fbKMKNVJjwo

Things I learned at Taliesin

Posted on | by keiran
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.

Photograph of American Robin taken on May 14, 2021 by KikoAKT01

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.

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:

Photograph taken in the Assembly Hall at Frank Lloyd Wright's Hillside Home School building. An arrow points at Wright's statue of Nakoma.

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:

Photograph looking east in Taliesin's living room. Taken in 1955 by Maynard L. Parker. Courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

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:

Photograph of four barn swallows in a mud nest at Taliesin. Taken by Kevin Dodds.

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:

Taliesin photograph looking northwest into Taliesin's living room from an alcove. Taken July 4, 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).

Partial floor plan of Taliesin II, 1924. Location of original drawing unknown.

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:

Black and white photograph looking at built-in bookcase at wall in Frank Lloyd Wright's bedroom. Includes an oar lock, a harmonium, and a special box for holding Wright's architecture medals.

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.