Taliesin

On Sunday, following a night that involved a ridiculous amount of alcohol courtesy of Kris's friends Jane and Mark who came to visit, I woke up at 630am in a stupor somewhere between drunk and sober to drive my roommate to work, in her car. In exchange, I was allowed to take her car out to visit Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's personal residence for the majority of his 70+ year career. In the first decade of the 1900's he had already achieved the architectural status of rockstar, however given the moral sentiment of the time, when he left his wife and six children and ran off to Italy with the wife of one of his clients, his social status was reduced to about as low as possible for a wealthy white man at the time. The school that he built for his two aunt teachers went out of business since no one wanted their children associated, let alone educated by such a family, and he bought the property from them for one dollar. Everyone assumed his career was over but in fact he had another ~80 years of work ahead. Across the way from the school, he built Taliesin for his mistress and their two young children. Three years later, during a house party, a servant locked all the doors, killed the mistress and their children with an axe, poured gasoline throughout the house and set it on fire trapping the guests inside. This was the first of many fire tragedies in FLW's life. He poured his entire life into restoring the place, got married again, let the magnificent school building fall apart (because the Depression had started and his money was disappearing quickly)
. His third wife (known as Mrs. Wright, as opposed to Mrs. Wrong) suggested that he turn the school into an institute of architecture since no one had money to hire architects those days. He did not waste time restoring the school, rather as part of their education, his students had to do the manual labor in rebuilding. This included mining and cutting rocks, cutting trees etc...as well as doing all the cooking and cleaning for themselves, and FLW. The result is an amazing building that I will have a very difficult time explaining. And because no one is allowed to take interior photos, I can't really show you either. The grand hall is a hexagonal shaped room if I remember correctly, restored from the original structure, with a second story balcony that housed the library. Below is a giant hearth. Around the perimeter of the room are large picture windows with dark wood beams but no support system which was very unusual for the time. The structural support comes from 4 giant stone/brick pillars that change the shape of the room into a square around the hearth. It kind of resembles a tree house in the way that you are surrounded by dark wooden beams, floors, balcony, and benches that line the walls, the windows look out to large leafy trees, and the pillars are made from roughly cut rocks that came out of the river near by. His father's favorite bible verse is inscribed along the bottom edge of the balcony, and his mother's favorite poem is engraved on the stone above the hearth.

Across the hallway from this room is another balcony that looks down over the dining room. Lots of cool details about this room that don't translate into words very well. The hardwood floors were not laid in your standard horizontal or vertical stripe pattern but at a 90 degree angle. The windows appear to be hanging from a horizontal stripe of the same dark wood from the previous room. But this time there are walls of plaster instead the window and pillar support system as before. At the back of the room is a platform displaying a large gold plated wooden Buddha figure he collected on one of his many trips to Japan. Asian artifacts are scattered through out the school and his house. At the back of the platform are wooden shutters with an interesting signature FLW geometric pattern. It just looked like neat cut out shapes to me, but then our guide explained how all of his designs we inspired by the natural environment of the structures location. Wisconsin has more corn than anyone knows what to do with, so she explains the shutter design is of corn stocks. I wish I had a picture for you. Anyway this room was built some 30 years later than the Grand hall because the previous dining hall had been destroyed in a fire. Behind the screens was the back of a curtain to the theater in the next room. I will explain the amazing theater in a minute.

Our next stop was the Studio. One really neat thing about this studio is that he doesnt like sky lights because of the glaring light they let into a room, but on the other hand he really likes natural light so his roof has really interesting slats that let light in in all directions but straight down.
Its unfortunate because the inside of his studio is way more exciting than the outside. but I dont really remember enough to explain it.

So onto the theater. This space had originally been the gym in his aunts school, but he decided that with all the manual labor he put his students through, that was the last thing they needed, so he built a theater instead. The first interesting thing about the theater is the way the seats are situated. Everyone in the house gets the same perfect view, and everyone can see everyone else when they walk in so you can gossip about who goes with who and find your party easier. The room, like all his living rooms, has perfect pitch, I think that is a really neat detail. But the most amazing part is his hand sewn stage curtain. It is an abstract piece of art that is designed after the natural landscape looking up at his house from the bank of the river. To me again, at first it just looks like origamy shapes and lines in your basic spectrum of colors, a lot of green, some red, brown, very little blue, yellow, black on a white background, there is also a little gold. But our guide points out all the details and makes it really cool. That is the end of our tour to the Hillside school.

The main room of Taliesin is the best part, as he intends it to be. Again it has perfect pitch. The interior is golden so that after dark everyone looks gorgeous in the light. The seating around the perimeter of the room puts everyone at eye level so the space, though large becomes very intimate.

The other rooms don't really need to be explained with the exception of one. This was the room that the idea for the Guggenheim was pitched. FLW remodeled his house for Guggenheim's visit. The idea was based off a seashell, so in addition to displaying his seashell collection in prominent view in this room, the windows were designed like walls of an aquarium. a small fountain pool was built outside. Talk about subliminal messaging.


And that is about it. I took almost 150 pictures there. Then on the way home I stopped by a farmers market because it had a large phallic corn structure on the side of the road along with a giant pumpkin and a giant slice of watermelon. It turned out to be a really bizarre animal petting farm/zoo, thing. So I took another hundred pictures of bizarre animals.