Architecture

Taliesin

We couldn’t do a series of posts relating to the midwest without one about Frank Lloyd Wright. I get overwhelmed looking at the scope of his work and decided to focus this post on Taliesin, the home he built for his family in 1911.

The story of Taliesin reads like a Hichcock movie (“Rebecca” comes to mind)… Wright fell in love with a client’s wife, Mamah Borthwick and built Taliesin for her. They left the US for a period and lived in Germany. From there, they moved to Spring Green, Wisconsin where Wright had grown up. Wright built Taliesin on a 600 acre sprawling estate. It was a masterpiece of architecture and design and became his headquarters for most of the rest of his life until his death at 91 in 1959.

Later in his life, he built a second Taliesin in Scottsdale, Arizona where he spent the colder months. Tragedy struck while Wright was in Chicago on business. A servant set fire to the house and killed his wife, two of her children and four others. More trouble followed when in 1925 fire roared through the home once again, burning it to the ground. Wright was home this time and fortunately no one was killed. Wright seized the opportunity to rebuild Taliesin and spent the next 30 years doing so, making changes based on how he used it and lived.

Today, Taliesin is a museum that is open to the public. You can learn more about it here. —angela