Tag: Monona Terrace

Color photograph looking at a red and beige building in the fall with water in front of it. Photograph taken in October 2013 by Keiran Murphy

Last Design by Frank Lloyd Wright

Posted on | by keiran
Reading Time: 6 minutes

p.s.: I’m not saying this building is the last Wright. Because I’m scrappy I’m showing a photo I already had of a post-Wright building: the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center. 

The last design… The final house…. This is almost a marketing term, like the “(W)Right” choice, etc.1 as if this will somehow bring you closer to touching the master’s cloak.

            Speaking of….

Frank Lloyd Wright did not wear capes.

Read that again:

NO CAPES.

Along with “leaky roofs“, his “capes” are one of the things you frequently hear about the man.

But, as architectural historian Jack Quinan wrote, Wright instead wore a long coat “cape-like to encompass his upper body”.

SO: what people think as “capes” were always simply overcoats that he wore draped over his shoulders.

I didn’t know this until a former apprentice told me (unfortunately, I don’t remember who). But once they explained it, I could see in photos that Wright wore coats, not capes.

But here’s a great example of the cape/coat illusion posted a few years ago on the page at Facebook for the Unity Temple Restoration Foundation (they’ve since dissolved after they restored the building in Oak Park):

I love this photo but haven’t discovered the photographer. A reverse image search told me this is from St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Now that we’re done with capes, here’s what I want to talk about:

What can I say about “the last” Wright design?

Plus, I wonder: when we’re talking about a building, how close does it have to be to the architect’s “hand” to be their “true” work?

As if the “last” design was really what he jotted down on his drafting board before his wife took him to the hospital after Easter in 1959, where he later passed away. 

Moreover,

I think of how architecture is different in so many ways from other art.

For example, we say the Guggenheim is by Wright, even though it opened 6 months after he died (and Wright’s Beth Sholom Synagogue opened one month before the Gugg, in September). 

But, lots are considered Wright buildings which were finished later, like

But that’s not usually contemplated when talking about an artist. 

For contrast,

look at Picasso

(I compared Wright to Picasso once before when I wrote about the Taliesin Fellowship).

Practically until he died, Picasso could at least draw, if not paint. There’s one example he did of death apparently staring him in the face.

although I’m dating myself here… if you have an issue with Picasso’s eyes in the painting on the page I’ve linked to, you can listen to the NSFW song Pablo Picasso from Repo Man. Remember, “he was only 5-foot-3, girls could not resist his stare…”2

But the last thing Picasso made with his hands was the last piece of art that he made. 

Additionally,

people are okay with saying buildings are Wright’s, even those where the ground wasn’t broken until after he died:

But those were moving forward in ways before he died. 

But the Norman Lykes Residence, which people put on the standard lists of Wright buildings, wasn’t started until 1967. Sure, Wright designed it and John Rattenbury (of the Taliesin Fellowship and architect at Wright’s successor firm), oversaw construction. But it’s not like there was a foundation and roof sitting there in 1967.

Speaking of 1967:

What is now the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center did have a standing foundation, roof, and fenestration finished by Wright. That stood until Taliesin Associated Architects finished it as the Spring Green Restaurant.

disclosure: when I worked for Taliesin Preservation, architectural historian Anne Biebel used research she and I had done about the building to write and publish the booklet, Taliesin Swansong: Celebrating 50 Years of The Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center.

Yet,

people keep on building.

Look at the current list of Wright buildings in Wikipedia, under “Posthumously-built work” where they list all the buildings as “adapted”.

The Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison is one of them.

When I brought people by the Monona Terrace model while I gave tours, I usually didn’t tell people that I voted against it in a referendum in 1992.

            I was persuaded by the opposition’s motto: “IT AINT Wright“

I probably voted that way—not because I knew anything about Wright other than the fact that he was a draftsman for Louis Sullivan—

but because I debated the “hand” of the artist

(see Picasso, above).

The Seth Peterson Cottage is another

post-Wright building in Wisconsin.  

They started building it, then Wright died, then Peterson ran out of money and died himself.3

You can find its history by reading the Seth Peterson Cottage page at Wikipedia. It told me that there was a cottage there that the Wisconsin DNR acquired in 1966. Then nothing happened for decades. Finally, Audrey Laatsch headed the idea of restoring and completing the building and opening it for public rental. That was done in 1992 under architects John Eifler and Gary Kohn.

It was the only Wright building available for rent when I started at Taliesin. At that time, its waiting list was one- to two-years long.

My buddy, the late culture critic, Terry Teachout, stayed there during the trip he took when I met him.

Finally:

I can’t post this without talking about “RiverRock”, a new “Wright building” in Ohio.

RiverRock is the name of the house that Wright designed for client Louis Penfield, who had already commissioned a house in Ohio. Then Penfield approached Wright again for another house design, close to the first one.

Penfield received the drawings for his house on April 15, 1959 (six days after Wright’s death), but he didn’t build it.

Still, his son restored that first house to use for short-term rentals to the public, which I did over a dozen years ago.

I got there with a flight voucher, and money from a tax refund.

While there, I saw the chimney Penfield had built for the house he’d hoped to build.

Note I received this info from architect and Wright scholar, Patrick Mahoney, AIA:

“I read your post today and … the photo of the chimneys you showed is actually the remnants of a building Louis Penfield designed and built for himself as an art studio. I saw it in 1983 when it was it poor condition, but it was a fully realized and enclosed building.”

Here’s the photo I took:

I took this in May, 2013. I think it either gets really green really early in Ohio; or I’m a Wisconsinite in early February and cannot remember grass or leaves…. Yeah: the fact that this photo looks supernaturally green is because of the second reason. 

Regardless,

A mother and daughter (Debbie and Sarah Dykstra), purchased the Penfield House, which also gave them the drawings for RiverRock.

Therefore, Debbie and Sarah decided to build it, and managed to turn their work on rebuilding it into a 4-part television show.

Architectural Digest put photographs of the completed house on this page; and the preview of “The Last Wright” on YouTube is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMsHoavzs8Y.

They’ve either decided (or were advised) to be very clear that this is an interpretation of the plan. 

But, the advertisement for it works enough to say this is “The Last Wright”, and is a new building where you can stay.

In the end,

maybe a Wright building is like that decision from the Supreme Court: “I’ll know a Wright-space when I see it.” 

 

 

Published February 8, 2026 (edited Feb. 10 2026).
In October 2013 I took the photo at the top of this post of the Visitor Center across the Wisconsin River. 

1. Wright/right/write-rules: one of the reasons why, when I’m asked if something is “right” as in, “true”, I automatically answer “correct” because of the years in which I gave tours at a Wright building and at times had to point people to the “right”.

2. The singer of the band Burning Sensations says that “Pablo Picasso was never called an a**hole,” which might be true but only because Picasso lived in countries that didn’t predominantly speak English. Yet I think Francoise Gilot (mother of two of his children) would be justified referring to Picasso as a “connard”. After all, she was with him for 10 years and when she left, he locked her out of the house, destroyed works of art that she’d collected while with him, then apparently told dealers not to work with her, even thought she was an artist when she met him. eff-ing connard.

3. Part of the journey to the current cottage includes when former clients Don and Virginia Lovness thought to go to the architects at Taliesin to see if they could build a version of the cottage. So, a copy of the Seth Peterson Cottage in Wisconsin is also in Minnesota (read about it in “Getting It Wright“).

 

Frank and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright outside at Taliesin with Alexander Woollcott holding baby goat.

Guest Quarters

Posted on | by keiran
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Frank Lloyd Wright (left) with his wife, Olgivanna, and friend, writer Alexander Woollcott outside the architect’s home, Taliesin, 1935-43. Woollcott holds a baby goat. The west wall of a bedroom is in the background. This became Wright’s bedroom in 1936.

My years of working at Taliesin Preservation gave me time to uncover the history of Wright’s changes at the Taliesin estate. Although (no surprise, I admit), most of my interest centered on the Taliesin structure by Wright (his home, studio, and former farm).

In trying to figure out Taliesin’s history, I spent time looking at copies of his drawings. While I was/am always cautious toward them, I came to trust some that actually seemed to match what existed.

You’ll see them or a link to them in my post today.

For example

Wright drew elevations in the early 1920s of the portion of Taliesin on which he was adding a guest apartment. This work was done after he returned from working on the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

I noted this change when I wrote about Taliesin II (Taliesin’s forgotten middle child).

This drawing from the early 1920s is number 2501.025.

“2501” on the drawing usually indicates “Taliesin III” (meaning, post-1925). But details in the drawing mean it comes from the Taliesin II era (before the 1925 fire). I’ll show which portion is exclusively Taliesin II. The part where I’ve added the arrow is what became Olgivanna Lloyd Wright’s bedroom. In the Taliesin II era, that room had that small balcony that I’ve pointed the arrow at:

Elevation of Taliesin, 1920-25. 2501.025
Property: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York

I think Wright added this “Guest Apartment” to increase the attractiveness of coming to Taliesin. Even today, you’re about a 45-minute drive west of Madison, the Wisconsin state capital. Moreover, in the early 1920s the only place to stay was in the village of Spring Green (three miles away), which had one hotel. This was a three-story building with the Hotel Myers and a restaurant on its first floor named the Dutch Kitchen.2 And in the 1920s, you couldn’t have even gotten a Brandy Old Fashioned there.

Thus, the architect designed a guest apartment (without a kitchen) at Taliesin. The two bedrooms, living room and separate bathrooms were on the same floor as the architect, separated by his own rooms by a door.

Then, the second fire happened

The April 20, 1925 fire destroyed Wright’s living quarters and he began rebuilding that summer. The reconstruction included the guest apartment. A Taliesin III drawing shows part of this in the drawing linked to here. It’s an elevation and floor plan on one sheet, labelled as “guest living room”.

You’ve seen this “guest living room” before

A door separated the “guest living room” from everything else on the floor. This door was seen in the photograph in my post “About a Wall at Taliesin That No Longer Exists”. It’s the open door on the left-hand side of the photo.

While ups and downs in Wright’s life after 1925 kept him away from Taliesin, he and his family were there in 1928 and he wanted to invite someone to his “guest quarters” when everyone was living again at home. I know this because of a letter that I found on one of my trips down to Frank Lloyd Wright’s archives when they were still at Taliesin West in Arizona.3

As I’ve written, as Wright was the architect, he didn’t have to ask permission to change whatever he wanted. So, there are very few (or non-existant) letters or telegrams to pinpoint changes. As a result, I looked for details (and, goodness, still do) in any way that I could.

What did I find?

Since I read letters between Wright and people he knew, I looked into those between him and friends, employees, etc. I knew writer Alexander Woollcott visited, so I read those letters. And, in 1928, soon after Wright and his family had returned to Taliesin, Wright invited Woollcott to visit, even encouraged him to bring a friend. On page two of this letter he wrote:

. . . . You could have my little studio with a big stone fireplace to write in, and he or she could have a little studio nearby to draw in. We would look [hook?] you up together in the guest quarters back of the house,—two bedrooms and a sunny sitting room with a big fireplace in it. . . .

FICHEID: W045B08: 1/1/1928 (unknown month and day).
The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York

Those “two bedrooms” at the “guest quarters back of the house” are the ones I’ve been writing about.

I recognized this sunny room with the big fireplace in it. It’s in the photograph below. The photo was published in the March, 1929 issue of Liberty magazine:

Taken inside Taliesin, looking southwest in Loggia fireplace. 1926-29.
Copyright David Phillips| The Chicago Architectural Photographing Company.
Published in the Journal of the Organic Architecture + Design Archives, volume 6, number 1, 2018, 73.

This image is published in the Journal of the Organic Architecture + Design Archives, volume 6, number 1, 2018, 73. That’s available through here.

I’m not sure how often these two rooms were used for guests. Anyway, in 1936, Wright changed the two guest bedrooms into separate bedrooms for his wife and himself and then re-designated their former bedroom as the Guest Bedroom.

OH, and one last point:

Wright’s letter to Woollcott shows that the architect thought of those two rooms as guest rooms. But on a practical level, originally they might have been planned as bedrooms for the daughters Svetlana and Iovanna.

I thought about all of this last year, and these thoughts evolved into a presentation on Wright’s changes to Taliesin for Iovanna, which I did for the Monona Terrace “Virtual Wright Design Series” in October of 2020. That presentation, “Life Is Not Monotonous at Taliesin” is on Youtube, here.

Originally published on September 19, 2021.

The photograph at the top of this page was published in Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright Collected Writings, volume 4: 1939-49, edited by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, introduction by Kenneth Frampton (Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York City, 1994), 192.

 

Notes

1. This means that I will not trust anything that man put into a drawing unless I see a photograph of it. “Fool me once…” etc.
2. The Administrator in Historic Studies for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation clarified the name of the hotel (as previously I just had the name of the Dutch Kitchen).
3. I would have spent useless time during my first trip to the archives if the registrar hadn’t taken pity on me and got me a very nice listing of correspondence about the actual Taliesin structure, and not just everything latter that contained the word “Taliesin”. Taliesin was mentioned in letters from people wanting to join the “Taliesin Fellowship”, or everyone wanting to get the magazine they put out for a while entitled “Taliesin”. It was so great when the Director and Curator of Collections at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation gave me this modified list.