Taliesen West: The Final Act
Originally posted March 26, 2022
Frank Lloyd Wright, America's most well known architect, was born in 1867, two years after the end of the civil war. He had several distinct careers, beginning in the nineteenth century and ending in 1959, the year of his death at age ninety-one. In that time he designed some 800 buildings, of which 380 were actually built.
His personal life was equally callisthenic. His first marriage ended after fleeing to Europe with a client's wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Upon returning, and now ostracized from the Chicago community, he retreated to Spring Hill, Wisconsin where he built the first Taliesen compound. There, on August 15, 1914, while Wright was working in Chicago, a servant set fire to the living quarters, opened the lower half of a dutch door and murdered Mamah, her two children and four others with an axe as they tried to escape the flames.
Wright's second wife, Maude "Miriam" Noel, became addicted to morphine soon after their marriage, resulting in an early separation, and shortly afterward he met Olgivanna Lazovich Hinzenburg. In 1925 he and Olgivanna moved together to Taliesen, where a fire yet again destroyed a significant portion of the compound. Ten years later, after spurned spouses had granted divorces, Taliesen East had been rebuilt, and Wright and Olgivanna had married, they moved to Arizona to start Taliesen West. He was seventy years old.
Wright had few resources at the time, however he had a considerable reputation. So in his final incarnation, he devised a school where apprentices would pay to come to Taliesen West, and would learn the arts of farming, building, cooking, and entertaining. They would also be expected to act as draftsmen for his remaining architectural projects. The winters were spent at Taliesen West, and the summers at Taliesen East with the apprentices handling the entire move between. It was a brilliant plan, providing Wright and Olga an extensive staff, a winter residence, and a steady income. Such an enterprise requires a certain suspension of disbelief and Taliesen West was informed by a certain theatricality in which the ritual of each of the activities was given an honorific significance. Over the years Taliesen developed a devotional following and a number of apprentices went on to brilliant, if idiosyncratic careers; Bruce Goff and John Lautner being noteworthy.
In all of the sycophancy, it's nevertheless hard to overlook the virtuosity of the design. Wright was a brilliant draftsman, and everywhere can be seen and felt the isometric effects of his draftsman board. The decorative filigrees, the stained glass windows, the dentils at the soffits, the patterns in the rug all submit to the furious pace of his T Square and triangles. The plan is set at forty-five degree angles throughout, the roofs and soffits at thirty degree angles, and where structural enclosures fail to sufficiently express the geometry, chevrons, spears, and cant strips are added.
In many ways, Taliesen West is a kind of geometric interpretation of nature, an expression of what Wright meant by an "organic” architecture. It is a dance between Wright and the landscape that sometimes seems like symmetry, other times sometimes a submission. It is relentless, unending, and comprehensive. No detail is left undesigned. No tree, rock or plant is not asked to pose for the audience.
It was the final act of the master.
