Building Taliesin

by Ron McCrea

  Fig. 106. Woolley’s firm used Wrightian lettering on its letterhead when it was organized in 1917. Miles Miller, the third partner, left in 1921.

  WOOLLEY’S TALIESIN PHOTOS: SOURCES

  Taylor Woolley’s photographs of Taliesin in 1911–1912 are spread among three collections. The main collection is at the Utah State Historical Society in Salt Lake City. It consists of original negatives. A second group of photos is divided between the Taylor Woolley Collection and the Clifford Evans Collection at the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. Evans, who appears in several photos at Taliesin, was Woolley’s lifelong friend and architectural partner. The third group is in an unidentified album titled “Taliesin” (in quotation marks) at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison.

  There are overlaps among the collections, but each contains unique images. Keiran Murphy, historian at Taliesin Preservation Inc., Wisconsin, has indicated in the following thumbnail galleries which image is to be found where.

  The abbreviations are:

  USHS: Utah State Historical Society

  UUL: University of Utah Library

  WHS: Wisconsin Historical Society

  Fig. 107. This Prairie Style bungalow in Salt Lake City was designed by Taylor Woolley just before he left for Taliesin. The building permit listing him as architect was filed on August 18, 1911. Wright cabled him on August 31. A newspaper ad by the developer Kimball & Richards says, “The architectural lines follow what is known as the Frank Lloyd Wright or New American architecture. The chief characteristic is the absence of useless ornamentation and ‘ginger-bread’ trimmings. Beauty is secured by harmonious arrangement, artistic proportions, and simplicity.” The home is being restored by its owner, Butch Kmet.

  IN WRIGHT’S WORDS

  “I wanted a natural house to live in myself”

  The following is Frank Lloyd Wright’s own account of how he conceived and built Taliesin I. Written beginning in 1926 and published in 1932, this section of An Autobiography is remarkable for its depth of detail on construction techniques and materials. It is also notable for the Whitman-like gusto with which Wright describes the food that Taliesin would produce. Composed in very lean times, it reads like the dream of a hungry man.

  Taliesin was the name of a Welsh Poet. A druid bard or singer of songs who sang to Wales the glories of Fine Art. Literally the Welsh word means “shining brow.” Many legends cling to the name in Wales.

  And Richard Hovey’s charming masque “Taliesin” had made me acquainted with his image of the historic bard. Since all my relatives had Welsh names for their places, why not mine?

  The hill on which Taliesin now stands as a “brow” was one of my favorite places when I was a boy, for pasque flowers grew there in March sun while snow still streaked the hillsides.

  “And so I began a ‘shining brow’ for the hill, the hill rising unbroken above to crown the exuberance of life in all these rural riches.”

  When you are on its crown you are out in mid-air as though swinging in a plane, as the valley and two others drop away leaving the tree-tops all about you. “Romeo and Juliet” stands in plain view to the southeast, the Hillside Home School just over the ridge.

  As “the boy” I had learned the round-plan of the region in every line and feature.

  In “elevation” for me now is the modeling of the hills, the weaving and the fabric that clings to them, the look of it all in tender green or covered with snow or in full glow of summer that bursts into the glorious blaze of autumn.

  I still feel myself as much a part of it as the trees and birds and bees and red barns, or as the animals are, for that matter.

  Fig. 108. Frank Lloyd Wright sits at his writing desk in front of a Japanese screen at Taliesin II in 1924. He began to dictate his autobiography in 1926.

  So, when family-life in Oak Park in that spring of 1909 conspired against the freedom to which I had come to feel every soul entitled and I had no choice would I keep my self-respect, but go out, a voluntary exile, into the uncharted and unknown deprived of legal protection to get my back against the wall and live, if I could, an unconventional life—then I turned to the hill in the Valley as my Grandfather before me had turned to America—as hope and haven—forgetful for the time being of grandfather’s “Isaiah.” Smiting and punishment.

  Architecture, by now, was mine. It had come by actual experience to mean to me something out of the ground of what we call “America,” something in league with the stones of the field, in sympathy with “the flower that fadeth, the grass that withereth,” something of the prayerful consideration for the lilies of the field that was my grandmother’s. Something natural to the change that was “America” herself.

  I knew well by now that no house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it, so hill and home could live together each the happier for the other. That was the way everything found round about it was naturally managed, except when man did something. When he added his mite he became imitative and ugly. Why? Was there no natural house? I had proved, I felt, that there was, and now I, too, wanted a natural house to live in myself. I scanned the hills of the region where the rock came cropping out in strata to suggest buildings. How quiet and strong the rock-ledge masses looked with the dark red cedars and white birches, there, above the green slopes. They were all part of the countenance of southern Wisconsin.

  I wished to be part of my beloved southern Wisconsin and not put my small part of it out of countenance. Architecture, after all, I have learned, or before all, I should say, is no less a weaving and a fabric than the trees. And as anyone might see, a beech tree is a beech tree. It isn’t trying to be an oak. Nor is a pine trying to be a birch although each makes the other more beautiful when seen together.

  The world has had appropriate buildings before—why not more appropriate buildings now than ever before? There must be some kind of house that would belong to that hill, as trees and the ledges of rock did; as Grandfather and Mother had belonged to it, in their sense of it all.

  Yes, there must be a natural house, not natural as caves and log-cabins were natural but native in spirit and making, with all that architecture had meant whenever it was alive in times past. Nothing at all that I had ever seen would do. This country had changed all that into something else. Grandfather and Grandmother were something splendid in themselves that I couldn’t imagine in any period. Houses I had ever seen. But there was a house that hill might marry and live happily with ever after. I fully intended to find it. I even saw, for myself, what it might be like and began to build it as the “brow” of the hill.

  It was still a very young faith that undertook to build it. But it was the same faith that plants twigs for orchards, vinesips for vineyards. And small whips that become beneficent shade trees. And it did plant them too, all about!

  I saw the hill crown back of the house, itself a mass of apple trees in blossom, the perfume drifting down the valley, later the boughs bending to the ground with the red and white and yellow spheres that make the apple tree no less beautiful than the orange tree. I saw the plum trees, fragrant drifts of snow-white in the spring, and in August loaded with blue and red and yellow plums, scattering over the ground at the shake of a hand. I saw the rows on rows of berry bushes, necklaces of pink and green gooseberries hanging to the underside of green branches. Saw thickly pendant clusters of rubies like tassels in the dark leaves of the currant bushes. The rich odor of black currant I remembered and looked forward to in quantity.

  “There was a stone quarry on another hill a mile away, where the yellow sand-limestone when uncovered lay in strata like the outcropping ledges in the facades of the hills… . The teams of neighboring farmers soon began hauling it over to the hill, doubling the teams to get it to the top. Long cords of this native stone, five hundred or more from first to last, got up there … .”

  Black cherries. White cherries.

  The strawberry beds white, scarlet, and gre
en over the covering of clean wheat-straw.

  I saw abundant asparagus in rows with a stretch of sumptuous rhubarb that would always be enough. I saw the vineyard on the south slope of the hill, opulent vines loaded with purple, green and yellow grapes, boys and girls coming in with baskets filled to overflowing to set about the room, like flowers. Melons lying thick in the trailing green, on the hill slope. Bees humming over all, storing up honey in the white rows of hives beside the chicken yard.

  And the herd that I would have! The gentle Holsteins and a monarch of a bull—a glittering decoration of the fields and meadows as they moved. The sheep grazing the meadows and hills, the bleat of the little white lambs in the spring.

  The gleaming sows to turn the waste to solid gold.

  I saw the spirited, well-schooled horses, black horses and white mares with glossy coats and splendid strides, being saddled and led to the mounting-block for rides about the place and along the country lanes that I loved—the best of companionship alongside. The sturdy teams ploughing in the fields. The changing colors of the slopes, from seeding time to harvest. I saw the scarlet comb of the rooster and his hundreds of hens—their white eggs. The ducks upon the pond. The geese—and swans floating in the shadow of the trees upon the water.

  “Taliesin was to be a combination of stone and wood as they met in the aspect of the hills around about. The lines of the hills were the lines of the roofs, the slopes of the hills their slopes. The plastered surfaces of light-wood walls, set back into shade behind broad eaves, were like the flat stretches of sand in the river below and the same in color, for that is where the material that covered them came from.”

  I saw the peacocks Javanese and white on the walls of the courts. And from the vegetable gardens I walked into a deep cavern in the hill—the root-cellar of my grandfather—and saw its wide sand planted with celery, piled with squash and turnips, potatoes, carrots, onions, parsnips, cabbages wrapped and hanging from the roof. Apples, pears, and grapes stored in wooden crates walled the cellar from roof to roof. And cream! All the cream the boy had been denied. Thick—so lifting it in a spoon it would float like an egg on the morning cup of coffee or ride on the scarlet strawberries.

  Yes, Taliesin should be a garden and a farm behind a workshop and a home.

  I saw it all, and planted it all, and laid the foundation of the herds, flocks, stable, and fowls as I laid the foundation of the house.

  All these items of livelihood came back—unproved—from boyhood.

  And so I began a “shining brow” for the hill, the hill rising unbroken above to crown the exuberance of life in all these rural riches.

  There was a stone quarry on another hill a mile away, where the yellow sand-limestone when uncovered lay in strata like the outcropping ledges in the facades of the hills.

  The look of it was what I wanted for such masses as would rise from the slopes. The teams of neighboring farmers soon began hauling it over to the hill, doubling the teams to get it to the top. Long cords of this native stone, five hundred or more from first to last, got up there, ready to hand, as Father Larson, the old Norse stonemason working in the quarry beyond blasted and quarried it out in great flakes. The stone went down for pavements of terraces and courts. Stone was sent along the slopes into great walls. Stone stepped up like ledges on to the hill, and flung long arms in any direction that brought the house to the ground. The ground! My Grandfather’s ground: It was lovingly felt as part of all this.

  Finally it was not so easy to tell where pavements and walls left off and ground began. Especially on the hill-crown, which became a low-walled garden above the surrounding courts, reached by stone steps walled into the slopes. A clump of fine oaks that grew on the hillside stood untouched on one side above the court. A great curved stone-walled seat enclosed the space just beneath them and stone pavement stepped down to a spring or fountain that welled up into a pool at the center of the circle. Each court had its fountain and the winding stream below had a great dam. A thick stone wall thrown across it to make a pond at the very foot of the hill, and raise the water in the Valley to within sight from Taliesin. The water below the falls, thus made, was sent by hydraulic ram up to a big stone reservoir built into the higher hill. Just behind and above the hilltop garden, to come down again into the fountains and go down to the vegetable gardens on the slopes below the house.

  Taliesin, of course, was to be an architect’s workshop, a dwelling as well for young workers who came to assist. And it was a farm cottage for the farm help. Around a court were to be farm buildings, for Taliesin was to be a complete living unit, genuine in point of comfort and beauty, from pig to proprietor.

  The place was to be self-sustaining if not self-sufficient, and within its domain of 200 acres, shelter, food, clothes and even entertainment, within itself. It had to be its own light-plant, fuel yard, transportation and water system.

  Taliesin was to be recreation ground for my children and their children, perhaps for many generations more. This modest human program in terms of rural Wisconsin arranged itself around the hilltop in a series of four varied courts leading one into the other, courts together forming a sort of drive along the hillside flanked by low buildings on one side and by flower gardens against the stone walls that retained the hill-crown on the other.

  The strata of fundamental stonework reached around and on into the four courts, and made them. Then stone, stratified, went into the lower house walls and on up into the chimneys from the ground itself. This native stone prepared the way for the lighter plastered construction of the upper-wood-walls. Taliesin was to be a combination of stone and wood as they met in the aspect of the hills around about. The lines of the hills were the lines of the roofs, the slopes of the hills their slopes. The plastered surfaces of light-wood walls, set back into shade behind broad eaves, were like the flat stretches of sand in the river below and the same in color, for that is where the material that covered them came from.

  The finished wood outside was the color of gray tree trunks, in violet light.

  The shingles of the roof surfaces were left to weather, silver-gray like the tree branches spreading below them.

  The chimneys of the great stone fireplaces rose heavily through all, wherever there was a gathering place within, and there were many such places. They showed great rock-faces over deep openings inside. Outside they were strong, quiet, rectangular rock-masses bespeaking strength and comfort within.

  Country masons laid all the stone with the quarry for a pattern and the architect for a teacher. They learned to lay the walls in the long, thin, flat ledges natural to it, natural edges out. As often as they laid a stone they would stand back to judge the effect. They were soon as interested as sculptors fashioning a sculpture. One might imagine they were, as they stepped back, head cocked to one side, to get the effect. Having arrived at some conclusion, they would step forward and shove the stone more to their liking, seeming never to tire of this discrimination. They were artistic for the first time, many of them, and liked it. There were many masons from first to last, all good, perhaps Dad Signola, in his youth a Czech, the best of them, until Philip Volk came. He worked away five years at the place as it grew from year to year (for it will never be finished). And with no inharmonious discrepancy, one may see each mason’s individuality in his work at Taliesin to this day. I frequently recall the man as I see his work.

  “The furnishings inside were simple and temperate. Thin tan-colored flax rugs covered the floors, later abandoned for the severer simplicity of the stone pavements and wide boards. Doors and windows were hung with modest, brown checkered fabrics. The furniture was ‘home-made’ of the same good wood as the trim and mostly fitted into the trim.”

  At that time, to get this mass of material to the hilltop meant organizing men and horsepower. Trucks came along years later. Main strength and awkwardness directed by commanding intelligence got the better of the law of gravitation by the ton as sand, stone, gravel, and timber went up into appointed places
. Ben Davies was commander of these forces at this time. Ben was a creative cusser. He had to be. To listen to Ben back all of this movement was to take off your hat to a virtuoso. Men have cussed between every word, but Ben split the words, [and] artistically worked an oath in between every syllable. One day Ben with five of his men was moving a big rock that suddenly got away from its edge and fell flat, catching Ben’s big toe. I shuddered for that rock, as, hobbling slowly back and forth, Ben hissed and glared at it, threatening, eyeing, and cussing it. He rose to such heights, plunged to such depths of vengeance, as I had never suspected, even in Ben. No “Marseillaise” or any damnation in the mouth of Mosaic prophet ever exceeded Ben at this high spot in his career. William Blake says exuberance is beauty. It would be profane, perhaps, to say that Ben at this moment was sublime. But he was.

  “Inside floors, like the outside floors, were stonepaved or if not were laid with wide, dark-streaked cypress boards. The plaster in the walls was mixed with raw sienna in the box. Went onto the walls ‘natural,’ drying out tawny gold. Outside, the plastered walls were the same but grayer with cement. But in the constitution of the whole, in the way the walls rose from the plan and the spaces were roofed over, was the chief interest of the whole house. The whole was all supremely natural.”

  And in Spring Green—the names in the region are mostly simple like Black Earth, Blue Mounds, Lone Rock, Silver Creek, etc.,—I found a carpenter.

  William Weston was a natural carpenter. He was a carpenter such as architects like to stand and watch work. I never saw him make a false or unnecessary movement. His hammer, extra-light, with handle fashioned by himself, flashed to the right spot every time, like the rapier of an expert swordsman. He, with his nimble intelligence and swift sure hand, was a gift to any architect.