“Architecture is the truest record of life
as it was lived… yesterday, as it is being lived today or ever will be lived.” Hi everyone, ken here, welcome to "ThisHouse"!
These words were spoken by Frank Lloyd Wright, whose derived beauty from tragedy in the formation
of his personal house, Taliesin. Make sure to hit that subscribe button so
you never miss an exciting episode of "ThisHouse" The story of Taliesin begins in 1903. Frank Lloyd Wright was an established architect,
working from his home in Oak Park, Illinois. Edwin Cheney and his wife Mamah were avid
fans of his signature Prairie Style and commissioned Frank to design their dream home. Upon meeting, Frank and Mamah were immediately
taken with each other and began having an affair. By 1909, they had both separated from their
spouses, and in the following year, they travelled off to Europe together where they could be
with each other openly. As time went on, they dreamed of building
a house together, settling down, and starting a family, but two married people having an
affair could not expect so much without their reputations being destroyed. That’s when they began devising a plan to
evade scandal. Back in the United States, Frank’s mother,
Anna, was living on their family’s ancestral land near Spring Green, Wisconsin. The property was expansive and remote with
rolling hills and deep ravines far away from anyone who might pass judgement on Frank and
Mamah. In 1910, Frank met with his mother and convinced
her to allow them to move to the property. He took out a small loan to build his mother
a house, but in reality, the house would be built for his lover. He moved Mamah to the property to live with
his sister in a house known as Tan-y-Deri which he had designed several years earlier. Everything seemed to be going according to
plan, but later that year a reporter broke the news in the Chicago Examiner that Wright
had been living a double life. With the break of this scandal, Frank’s
career came crashing to a halt. Very few people clients, most of whom were
very reputable, wanted to associate with him. This gave him the chance to focus on his new
life with Mamah and thoroughly plan his dream home. He scouted for the perfect location to begin
construction, and chose to build on one of his favorite locations from childhood, near
the top of a hill. He designed a house that would become part
of the hill, blending nature and the built environment together, naming it Taliesin,
meaning “Shining Brow” a nod to his Welsch ancestry. Frank Lloyd Wright described the home as “…low,
wide, and snug…” as the single story residence protruded from the hill in three main sections:
A residential wing and an agricultural wing joined by an office wing, all seamlessly connecting
to a courtyard. He chose yellow limestone to imitate the natural
rock formations found in the landscape and mixed plaster with sienna for the walls to
resemble the sand found on nearby river banks. Every detail was planned thoroughly to blend
the house with its natural environment even planning for materials such as the roof’s
shingles to weather and age with grace so that they might become indistinguishable from
the grey branches which swayed overhead. Though not everything would remain natural. He brought in hundreds of fruiting trees and
vegetables to be planted around the house, creating a working farm to sustain the family
with food. Finally, with the contours of the house planned
in idealistic fashion, he designed the courtyard to imperfectly balance the organic aesthetic. Using the concept of Wabi-Sabi, a Japanese
practice in Landscape Architecture, he laid out the courtyard with a tea circle boasting
a natural pool in the center with oak trees planted to both disrupt the seating area and
accent it. While the architecture presented a strict
adherence to geometric principles, nature was allowed to flaunt its beauty through seemingly
random, imperfect means. But this isn’t the house we are looking
at, not quite. Because in 1914 tragedy struck. Frank and Mamah had settled into the home
with Mamah’s children from her previous marriage. As Frank was out of town working, a member
of his domestic staff, Julian Carlton, was given notice of his last day of work. Carlton, originally from Barbados, had been
continually harassed by one of Wright’s draftsmen, Emil Brodelle, who frequently insulted
Carlton with racial slurs. Upon receiving his notice of termination,
Carlton began plotting his revenge against Emil and the rest of the family for his poor
treatment. On August 12th, just as lunch was to be served,
he picked up a hatchet and approached Mamah and her son from behind, slaying them as they
sat. Her daughter jolted across the house and fled
into the courtyard where Carlton caught up with her and took her life. He poured gasoline over their bodies, as well
as the entrances and exits from the house and lit it all on fire. As people began exiting the house in terror,
he chopped them down one by one with his hatchet, killing 6 people. He then attempted to take his own life by
drinking a vile of hydrochloric acid, but it proved not to be a fatal amount. Though Carlton was captured by police and
charged with murder, he entered a plea of not guilty. Even though the acid did not kill him immediately,
it had greatly injured his esophagus and stomach lining to the point that he was not able to
consume food. After 47 days, he passed away in his jail
cell due to starvation. When Frank heard this news, he came rushing
home to find that his family and house were gone. After dealing with his grief, which included
insomnia and temporary blindness, he decided that the best path forward was to seek a new
chapter of renewal at Taliesin. With a few modifications, he reconstructed
the house naming it Taliesin the Second, though he would not spend much time here. One of his fans, a wealthy woman by the name
of Miriam Noel wrote him to express her condolences. The two began corresponding and eventually
met face to face and in less than a year they were dating. Around this time, Frank’s reputation began
to repair itself and he was offered a major commission over seas designing the Imperial
Hotel in Tokyo Japan. He left the states to oversee construction
in Japan and acquired a vast Japanese Art Collection which he sent back home to Wisconsin,
essentially using Taliesin not as a home, but as storage for his art. All the while, Frank’s first wife had never
granted him a divorce, which she finally did in 1922 allowing Frank and Noel to marry each
other. Not even two years later, Noel was diagnosed
with Schizophrenia and the couple separated. In the divorce proceedings she took a large
portion of his finances with her. The following year, as a lighting storm raged
over Taliesin, a fire started from the telephone next to Frank’s bed, destroying the living
quarters once again. The fire destroyed many of the sculptures
which he had collected in Japan, leaving them in charred fragments. But seeing the beauty in everything, he used
these fragments to rebuild Taliesin the Third, saying,
“…I put these fragments aside to weave them into the masonry – the fabric of Taliesin
III that now – already in mind – was to stand in place of Taliesin II. And I went to work.” Wrigt was already in debt following the divorce,
but went to work rebuilding his home yet again. Unfortunately, by 1927, his finances were
completely tapped out, leading the bank to foreclose on Taliesin the Third. But it was saved by his former client and
long-time fan, Darwin Martin who raised money to purchase the home from the bank and return
it to Frank. The interior was the culmination of 3 separate
architectural renditions, all building on each other with tragedy forcing their refinement
until the interior space measured approximately 37,000 square feet. The vaulted living room ceiling was lined
with geometric trim traversing the facets of its faces above furniture which Frank had
designed to be perfectly placed and arranged on the hard wood floors. Every window had been placed with care to
allow sunlight to penetrate the space at all hours of the day. Heavy stone walls were accented by linear
wood elements which pointed towards the outdoors, meandering and tangling with each other to
create more intimate spaces such as the dining area which was decorated with Japanese art
and pottery. Nestled in the folds of cold stone, warm light
radiated from the corner’s geometric lamps extending floor to ceiling. Everywhere you looked, each site line was
so masterfully controlled, manipulating natural light to contrast with shadows disappearing
out of sight. The hearth became monolithic, using larger
blocks than the straight and narrow ones which composed the walls, granting hierarchy of
scale, mirroring natural rock formations found around the property. Traveling throughout the house you would encounter
nooks, framing views of the rolling hills as the ceiling appeared to detach from the
walls to continue outside. To further blur the lines of indoor and outdoor
living, curtain walls could be found with retractable glass doors allowing the buffer
from indoor to outdoor to be removed completely. Intricate connections could be found throughout
with shelves following the windows’s alignments allowing items to become silhouetted as the
sun shown behind them. The library contained floor to ceiling book
shelves which transitioned to half height below windows as they wrapped around the room
with a skylight thoughtfully placed directly above a desk, offering several options for
seating, accommodating comfort with any creative or academic activity. The studio, painted in Frank’s signature
Cherokee Red, opened up with natural light reflecting from the ceiling’s carefully
planned wood beams. Linear elements extended, stretching from
end to end delineating spaces for separate activities, offering minimal form to conceal
their intended functions. Unembellished posts punctured the ceilings
to disrupt carefully planned windows to allow for perfect lighting while built in seating
created more intimate areas along the hearth. Along one wall, below windows, drawings could
be showcased in natural light. While along another wall, a desk stretched
from side to side with built in shelves extending from the windows. It was in this studio that Frank Lloyd Wright
designed some of his most iconic buildings, such as Falling Water which we featured recently
in a video. Frank was able to live out the rest of his
life in the house, traveling back and forth to Taliesin West in Arizona with his third
wife Olgivanna. When he passed away in 1959, Taliesin the
Third was willed to The Taliesin Fellowship, a non profit which Frank had established to
continue the legacy of his home later host The School of Architecture which was established
by the fellowship. By the 1990s, the house had fallen into disrepair
with significant wood rot and structural issues prompting a new non profit group to be formed,
the Taliesin Preservation, Inc, to address costly maintenance. By the late 90s, a lot of restoration work
had already been completed before a severe storm caused one of the Court Yard’s Oak
Trees to some crashing down through the house. The following year, one of the tunnels below
the house collapsed. Since 1998, the modern day equivalent of nearly
20 million dollars has been spent restoring the home and making repairs caused by natural
disasters. Thankfully, with the commitment of the homes
curators to keep the Taliesin the Third restored, the house has been opened to the public for
tours and continues to welcome 10s of thousands of visitors every year. If you have ever visited, I would love to
hear about your experience down below in the comments section. And while you’re there, make sure to hit
that subscribe button so you never miss an exciting episode of "ThisHouse" I would also
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