Building Taliesin

by Ron McCrea

  Fig. 60. Two carpenters work in the space that will be Wright’s drafting studio. The man in the apron holds a board while another stands behind him. The view looks west from the front office. A table loaded with lath or trim is in the foreground. Drafting tables will eventually occupy this space. A plaster model of Wright’s Larkin building (Buffalo, New York, 1902) sits on the crossbeam above. The partial wall separates the drafting area from the sitting room of the workmen’s suite, which also includes a bunkroom and bath.

  Fig. 61. The living room as seen from the terrace. The flagstone has now been laid. The large plate glass windows take in uninterrupted views of the surrounding landscape.

  Fig. 62. The terrace, with its prominent cantilevered roof, shares the upper floor with the living room at right in this westward-looking photograph. A workman looks out an open window at left, while another man stands at ground level, left, with a dog, on what appears to be a woodpile.

  Fig. 63. Taliesin presents a monumental, fortress-like appearance from the approach up the hill. To achieve this, Wright included little in the way of windows on the first floor and had only two terraces on this portion of the structure.

  Fig. 64. Looking north/northeast toward the Wisconsin River, this view is taken from the loggia, or breezeway, which separates the studio and residential wings of Taliesin. A corner of the living room and a portion of the chimney are seen at right. The parapet wall may still have been under construction when this photograph was taken, since building materials can be seen.

  Figs. 65 and 66. Taliesin’s garden muse, “Flower in the Crannied Wall,” occupies a place of honor in the forecourt. The sculpture, designed by Wright in collaboration with sculptor Richard Bock, was first done in terra cotta for the Susan Dana House in Springfield, Illinois, in 1902 and was copied in plaster for Taliesin. It depicts a female figure rising from an obelisk of stone, adding a cube to a crystalline structure. The name derives from a Tennyson poem, inscribed on the back, along with a treble clef and staff with two measures of music. The poem goes: “Flower in the crannied wall, / I pluck you out of the crannies. / I hold you here, root and all, in my hand. / Little Flower—but if I could understand / What you are, root and all, / I should know what God and man is.”

  Fig. 67. The signature muse of Taliesin is in place in the spring of 1912. Looking west down the carriage path from beneath the roof of the porte cochere, one sees that Wright has laid out all of the stone paths and curbs, including the garden (with an abstracted “S” shape in flagstones), but has not yet created the stone steps or bench at the Tea Circle (in the mid-ground, left.) A dirt path leads up the hill. Water in the pool, left, shows that the hydraulic ram is working at Taliesin’s dam. It was completed in late fall/winter 1911.

  Fig. 68. Three separate images of the living room taken by Taylor Woolley are trimmed and arranged in an album as a triptych. Light has intruded on the third negative. Woolley continues his view of the living room in two more photographs.

  Fig. 69. This view of the living room takes in even more area, looking northwest. The edge of the inglenook is on the left (with two books), followed on the right by the fireplace and built-in bookshelves. There is a Japanese print stand of Wright’s design on the north wall, with what appears to be a woodblock print. One of his drafting stools is in front of it. The edge of a draped grand piano is on the extreme right.

  Fig. 70. The left photo of the living room triptych, looking southwest, shows a variety of Wright’s decorative objects. A Japanese screen is folded on the far left side. A vase of Wright’s design is on the end of the inglenook, while other pots appear to be Asian or European in origin. A sewn fabric is draped over the back of the inglenook. The front door to Taliesin is immediately behind the inglenook, on the right.

  Fig. 71. In the center photograph of the living room triptych, windows looking in from the entry of Taliesin can be seen above the inglenook.

  Fig. 72. In the right section of the triptych, Wright’s “pop-out” technique of masonry can be seen. This masonry style, created for Taliesin, is meant to evoke the limestone outcroppings of the valley. Wright later used this style in Fallingwater, the Unitarian Meeting House in Madison, and many of his 1950s home designs.

  Fig. 73. Taylor Woolley’s continued view of the living room shows the edge of the bookcase at the end of the inglenook, left, followed by the fireplace, two birch logs, and built-in bookshelves on the west wall.

  Fig. 74. The dining area occupies an end of the living room, with part of the door to the terrace seen on the left. The pussywillows in the vase indicate this was taken in the spring of 1912. The Japanese woodblock print in the long format stand, to the left of the bench, is the same print seen at an exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute in 1914. Of the furniture seen in this photograph, only one of the benches is known to have survived the 1914 fire.

  Fig. 75. This photograph looks east into Wright’s drafting studio, with five drafting tables, and two draftsmen on the left. This would appear to have been taken in the spring or summer of 1912 because the door on the east wall is open in the background. The landscape painting is of the type done by George Mann Niedecken. The door to the breezeway is to the left of the painting. By the time this photograph was taken, Wright had already made a change to the ceiling, by removing some of the trim at the ridge of the roof (seen by the lighter color on the ceiling).

  Fig. 76. The edge of the drafting room’s fireplace is on the right, with a built-in decorative wooden detail holding two plaster figures. The bottom of a radiator can be seen at extreme left.

  Fig. 77. A third shot of the drafting room shows a plaster model of Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois (1905), sitting on a crossbeam. The room’s inglenook is in front of the viewer, supporting a gas lamp. Beyond this is a plaster half-wall.

  Fig. 78. Off the drafting room is a bunkroom for the draftsmen, part of a suite that includes a sitting room and kitchen. The wood is tidewater red cypress. The room is decorated with a landscape painting, stems in a vase, a T-square, and books. Illumination is by gas globes. The position of the objects on the built-in cabinet shows that the three photographs in this series were taken at the same time. However, Woolley moved the desk and stools between the photographs, perhaps for composition.

  Fig. 79. A view from the right side of the bunkroom shows off the stools and table. Drawers with pulls in the built-in cabinet can be seen through the table at left.

  Fig. 80. This living and dining area, included in Tayor Woolley’s “Taliesin” album, may be in a guest cottage where Woolley and Clifford Evans stayed during their time at Taliesin. The photographer left no details. A man’s cardigan sweater is draped over a chair. The fireplace and its framing are Wrightian, as are the Japanese lanterns, fresh boughs and dried flowers used for decoration. The landscape painting at the very top, depicting a grove of Wisconsin birch trees, appears to be a section of a mural made by George Mann Niedecken for the Adam Mayer House in Milwaukee (1907).

  Fig. 81. “Evenings, the men grouped around the open fireplaces, throwing cordwood on them to keep themselves warm as the wind came up through the floorboards,” Wright recalled of the first winter at Taliesin. Ten workmen gather in front of the fireplace in the drafting room. Two are smoking pipes while another holds a wooden flute. Clifford Evans sits front and center in a sport coat. The deck above the fireplace still exists in the studio, and the stone mantel is the same today.

  Fig. 82. The Belvedere tower, left, and roofline of the Taliesin living quarters, right, are seen in this view looking north. This photograph shows the Belvedere close to its completion in the fall of 1911, with a ladder in front of a roof that Wright called the garage.

  Fig. 83. This is the first in a series of Woolley photographs looking at Taliesin’s living quarters from below in late fall 1911. The Belvedere tower in the background appears to have been completed. There is a man seen in this photograph in a trench on the hill, possibly digging in this area, and there are two horses: one on the left,
and one in front of the first floor of the building, seen just behind some trees.

  Fig. 84. This is the second view looking west/northwest at Taliesin.

  Fig. 85. A third view shows the terrace and living room of the living quarters on the left, followed by the mid-portion of the building hidden behind trees, and ending on the far right at the edge of the hayloft.

  Fig. 86. Taylor Woolley photograph of Hillside Home School. It was designed by Wright in 1901 for his aunts, Jane and Ellen Lloyd Jones.

  Fig. 87. A view up the hill from the south shows Taliesin in its first winter.

  Fig. 88. A vista from Taliesin shows two farmhouses in the valley and the line of hills.

  Fig. 89. The bend of the snow-covered Wisconsin River, with an island formed in the middle, is visible from Taliesin’s hill. The Spring Green river wagon bridge can be seen between the bare trees. The view of the river from Taliesin has since become largely overgrown.

  Fig. 90. The Wisconsin River has an open patch at the shore in this winter view.

  Fig. 91. Signs of construction can be seen, foreground, of the dam at the western edge of a creek that runs through the property, in order to create a waterfall. The winter view looks south, with Taliesin’s living room on the left.

  Fig. 92. The dammed stream ends in a pond below Taliesin, which is up the hill to the right.

  Fig. 93. Water flowing from the dam is rammed up the hill hydraulically to create a water garden and supply the house.

  Fig. 94. Water flows over the dam in the foreground, in the winter of 1911-1912. The fence seen in the background marks the northern edge of Wright’s property.

  Fig. 95. Gardeners lay down chalk lines for an Italian-style grid to prepare for vegetable gardens on the slope. This view looks northwest at the Taliesin living quarters, during the creation of planting grids on the hill. The foliage, state of the building, and men’s clothing suggest that this was taken in the summer of 1912. It is the last photograph Woolley took of this view, which is from the same perspective as Fig. 54.

  Fig. 96. Three stonemasons pose proudly after cementing in place the plaque that announces “Frank Lloyd Wright/Architect” at the gateway to Taliesin, next to the waterfall. Wright said, “Country masons laid all the stone with the quarry for a pattern and the architect for a teacher. They were soon as interested as sculptors fashioning a sculpture…. They were artistic for the first time, many of them, and liked it.” The man at right with the pipe is Alfred Larson, a Norwegian immigrant whose daughter Mary married draftsman Herbert Fritz Sr.

  Fig. 97. The limestone plaque, still in place today, was brought from Wright’s drafting studio in Oak Park, Illinois, when he left for Taliesin in 1911. A replica was placed at the Oak Park studio by preservationists during its reconstruction. Photograph by Pedro E. Guerrero.

  A PUPPET THEATER FOR LLEWELLYN

  Fig. 98. Llewellyn at age six in 1909

  Robert Llewellyn Wright was the last child of Frank and Catherine Wright, the youngest of six, born five years after his sister Frances and 13 years after his oldest brother, Lloyd.

  In the fall of 1911, when his father was gone to build Taliesin, Llewellyn was approaching his eighth birthday, which fell on November 15. This may have been the occasion that prompted his father to build a full-size puppet theater in the unfinished living room of Taliesin.

  The richly grained wood, tidewater red cypress, is the same wood used decoratively throughout Taliesin, notably in the dining area. The new theater was crafted from the fabric of Taliesin.

  When Wright put the object on display at the Art Institute of Chicago in the spring of 1914, he titled it “Marionette Theatre, Made for Llewellyn Wright.” But Llewellyn probably did not play with it at Taliesin. It was apparently shipped to his home in Oak Park, Illinois—in the photos it sits on slats, ready for transfer—and installed there. It is doubtful that the father ever saw it in use. It has since been lost.1

  In the 1914 photo, curtains hang from either side of the top crossbeam. The photo also shows an ingenious hinged rail at the front of the stage that could be flipped up to reveal footlights. Slots on the floor of the stage, behind the theater curtain, allow scenery to be moved back and forth and changed. The curtain operates on pulleys.

  In style the theater has a Prairie feel, a complex of planes and geometric volumes. The carved mottoes on the cabinet, as well as the ornamentation, are also characteristic. But the object also looks Japanese, as though it could be a Shinto shrine. The mottoes are from Richard Hovey’s 1896 Camelot play, Taliesin: A Masque. Over the stage the motto reads, “To fashion worlds in little, making form as God does with spirit / so God makes use of poets.” At either side of the stage, the second motto says, “To fare on, fusing the self that wakes and the self that dreams, we find for choosing the deeds to dare and the laws to keep.”2

  Fig. 99. “Marionette Theatre, Made for Llewellyn Wright” was displayed at the Frank Lloyd Wright show of the Chicago Architectural Club at the Chicago Art Institute from April 9 to May 3, 1914. The stage shows some wear from being used. Other recent Wright designs on view are Japanese print holders, seen at Taliesin, and, in the next room, a “Kindersymphony” window from the Avery Coonley Playhouse.

  Fig. 100. For the theater backdrop (detail from rendering) Wright chose an Italian hill scene much like the ones he witnessed the previous year in Tuscany. In the balcony is the figure of a woman and a man stands below, suggesting the famous scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

  In both Wright’s rendering and in close-up photos, the scenery is unmistakably Italian. There is a terrace with a low wall and urns, with cypress trees and hills beyond. It is a memory from Tuscany, where Wright had lived with Mamah Borthwick, Lloyd Wright and Taylor Woolley the previous year. On the left is an Italianate tower with a balcony. In the rendering, there is a woman in the balcony and a man below, suggesting the balcony scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

  Frank and Mamah may have seen open-air puppet theater shows in the streets of Florence and Fiesole. He may also have seen puppet theater in Japan in his trip there in 1905. In any event, the idea of designing a toy like this must have delighted him. Wright put stages for children’s theatrical performances in many of his designs, including the playroom of the Oak Park home; the 1902 Susan Dana House in Springfield, Illinois; and the Avery Coonley Playhouse, which was commissioned in 1911, the same year Taliesin was built. The Coonley building was actually a private, progressive school but took the playhouse name because of the stage. (Wright called it “Kindergarten. Little Play House” in the 1914 program.)

  The fact that George Mann Niedecken had worked with Wright on both the Coonley residence and school suggests him as a possible builder of the puppet theater. The Milwaukee craftsman had both the painting and cabinetmaking skills. His painting, Spring Green, 1912, places him at Taliesin in its early years.

  Fig. 101. Catherine Wright and Children, painted by Frank Lloyd Wright’s sister Maginel Wright Barney in 1905, shows Catherine holding a tyke who may be Llewellyn (who was two) and tending her own and neighbor children.

  Fig. 102. Frank Lloyd Wright’s rendering of the puppet theater for his youngest son is among the papers of Taylor Woolley. An earlier sketch shows a simpler legend over the stage: “To whomsoever this may come designed / for all small boys or girls to mind.”

  Whether Llewellyn wanted or even liked the lavish puppet theater is an open question. His daughter says he was a quiet boy, not theatrical. When he grew up he called himself Bob and became a government lawyer. Elizabeth Catherine Wright, now an emeritus professor of French living in France, writes:

  “I don’t recall my father or anyone else ever mentioning such a puppet theater, though of course the large playroom he built for his children is well known … I also don’t remember my father having any particular interest in theater, though his father did, of course, and one of my cousins did become a famous actress, Anne Baxter.”3

  Elizabeth’s brother, Tim Wright,
a documentary filmmaker, says that Llewellyn did enjoy theater as an adult and “his relations with his father were certainly the most consistently harmonious of all the children throughout his father’s life. But as he wistfully concluded his memoir, ‘We never had any real rows or any especially tender moments. He was always kind and affectionate with me … [but] the sad truth is that we were friendly strangers … .’”4

  On November 15, 1911, Llewellyn wrote to his father at Taliesin: “Dear Father: This is my birthday. I miss you very much. Will you please eat Thanksgiving dinner with us. We are lonesome with out you. We are afraid you are sick … I am eight years old. Good bye from your loving son.” On the last page he added, “birthday kisses OOOOOOOO,” one for each year.5

  There is no mention of a marionette theater. The gift may have been for a later occasion. But it may also be that when he wrote that letter Llewellyn was too busy playing the puppet for his mother in the Wright family drama to think of toys or thank his father.

  Fig. 103. Taylor Woolley photographed the theater close-up, from a different angle.

  Fig. 104. Frank Lloyd Wright’s puppet theater for Llewellyn sits on slats in front of the fireplace at Taliesin. Folded Japanese screens are stacked against the windows and the floors are bare.

  Fig. 105. Clifford Evans, left, and Taylor Woolley, architectural partners, in their Salt Lake City office. The photograh is in the Taylor M. Woolley Collection at the Utah State Historical Society. This photograph has been cropped.