Where Frank Lloyd Wright was sitting when this photograph was taken
Every one (like in the caption of the photo above) is wrong when they tell you that Wright was in Chicago or on a set.
p.s.: it’s Taliesin.
I know because it’s me, remember?
The photo shows presenter Hugh Downs and Wright sitting during Downs’ interview with the architect in “Conversations with Elder Wise Men” broadcast in May 1953.
In the interview, Downs comes in while Wright is sitting in a chair he’d designed for the Lloyd Lewis House1 looking at a copy of one of his books.
I think it’s funny that they put Hugh Downs in the shorter seat, but maybe they wanted the subject of the interview to be prominent.
Or maybe Wright said, “No, I’ll stay here,” and no one was going to contradict him.
I first saw this in 2007 when the Taliesin giftshop got Frank Lloyd Wright in New York: The Plaza Years, 1954-59.2
While I worked at Taliesin, I habitually went downstairs to the store and leafed through new books to see if they had any photos taken anywhere on the estate.
Something in this photo on page 87 struck me. When I figured it out, I excitedly went up to the tour guides sitting at the reception counter.
Most at Taliesin got used to me being thrilled during my Frankophile musings. See an example under the first photo in my post “Hey Keiran Q and A“
Ok, fine. So, where the hell are they?
They’re in Wright’s bedroom. Taliesin’s hallway is to Wright’s right.
Oh, that reminds me—
The hallway’s right there because Wright didn’t have a door to his bedroom.
Members of the Taliesin Fellowship told us that he had a heavy drapery or tapestry there. We didn’t really believe it until we got a hold of this scan of Maynard Parker’s Taliesin photo for House Beautiful in 1955:
You’re looking at a crop of the photo they published in two issues of the magazine: November 1955 (p. 320) and October 1959 (p. 327).
You can see he had a door on the room when he first moved there in 1936 (see the drawing below):
But then he moved the entryway to the room and got rid of the door for some reason.
We don’t question the Genius about his choices.
Anyway,
back to the photo.
The day I found it, I knew that even if the guides couldn’t picture what I told them, I’d use locations they all knew from tours in my description to explain what they were seeing.
“When you’re at [XX-space] on [XX-tour], what I’m showing would be [behind you/to your left/where Buppo’s standing in that postcard by Pedro Guerrero, etc.]”
this is my copy of the postcard. Buppo was a standard-size poodle owned by Tom Casey and his wife, Effi.3
See where I pointed him out, below:
Edit: Oops – Buppo was actually Joe Fabris‘s dog! Joe’s in these two posts. Thanks, Jason!
In this case,
I probably said,
“Wright and Downs are sitting a few feet passed the doorway into Wright’s bedroom and before you get to the flagstone floor.“
Like this photo I took in 2005 (after we finished House Opening):
You can see the hallway beyond the post-1959 built-in next to the bed (later removed by the Preservation Crew). Wright and Downs sat close to the edge of that rug at the bottom of the photo.
After showing the staff, I marked the photo in my mind, then borrowed the book later so I could photocopy it. Once I did that, I could add it to the binders of old photos kept upstairs in the office.
What you see in the photo with Wright and Downs:
Behind Downs on the upper left is the 6-fold Japanese screen, “Street Scenes of Kyoto”.
(in my color image, it’s the photo-mural above the bed; it’ll stay there until they can bring the original back)
Next to “Street Scenes” is a cabinet that Wright designed.
The cabinet is in Ken Hedrich’s photo taken in 1937 for the issue of Architectural Forum magazine that came out the following January:
This is on page 16 of Architectural Forum. This link brings you to a .pdf of the online issue.
BTW:
the cabinet no longer exists; I’m sure it will be rebuilt and returned when the room is restored.
There are several other things to show you, so I put a crop of the photo of Wright during his interview:
On the far left, you can make out a barrel chair. That’s standing in the room at Taliesin known as the Loggia. In front of that you see vertical slats. Those were there through Wright’s lifetime, so they’ll return one day.
Then on the wall you see a mural behind Wright’s right shoulder. That’s a painting of the Taliesin estate that you can see today when you go to the Hillside Theater.
thanks to Kyle Dockery at the FLLW Foundation for helping me identify this.
Kyle told me that, today in Hillside, the painting you see behind Wright is UPSIDE DOWN.
Lastly,
the graphic you see on the right looks similar to designs Wright executed for his planned covers for Liberty magazine in the late 1920s.
Here’s
why I think people incorrectly identify this photo as Wright sitting with Downs in a Chicago studio or set.
If you look to the right of the Liberty magazine graphic, there’s the end of a movable screen that they put up on the east side of the room. Because of that, it takes away some identifying features in the photo and makes people think it’s a studio set.
Might explain why I was really confused when I first saw it.
Plus, I think they drove up from Chicago, filmed the interview and took lots of footage over the estate that you see during the interview. Then they put the film into the canister after this aired, using shorthand, and maybe mentioned the studio from where they broadcast it. The info on where it was filmed maybe got lost and everyone assumed it was filmed in the Chicago studio. Then those involved either forgot or weren’t asked later on. And it’s a good chance that those people are no longer here.
Last bit:
when you see this online, the announcer says that Wright’s in his “83rd year”. That means it was filmed in 1952,
because the guy lied about his age made everyone think he was born in 1869, instead of 1867.
But a few places online say this was broadcast in 1958, even when all you have to do is listen to the first few minutes.
Fortunately, lots of people know this was shown the following year. So at least more people are right about that!
First published January 9, 2026.
The photograph at the top of this post is courtesy of Photofest and is printed in Frank Lloyd Wright in New York: The Plaza Years, 1954-59, by Jane King Hession, Debra Pickrel, foreword by Mike Wallace (Gibbs Smith, Layton, Utah, 2007), 87.
Notes:
- I didn’t know where the chair came from. That info comes from super-Frankophile Douglas Steiner on this page at his Wright Library website.
- I bought the book seeing that I’m in the acknowledgements. I don’t remember answering any questions related to it, so later asked Ms. Hession why I was there. She didn’t remember, either.
- Effi conducted the performance of “O Fortuna” that I linked to in my last post, “Connections between Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hillside Theater and Unity Temple“.
