2014-09-27 Frank Lloyd Wright Home - Taliesin

Love him or hate him, Frank Lloyd Wright was quite possibly the most influential architect in America. His style is pleasing to the eye and functional in practice. His buildings blend with their natural surroundings and their interiors and exteriors use the same materials and blend with each other. (Steps off soapbox)

He designed and built a home in Spring Green, WI when he was 44 and he'd been designing house since he was a teenager. So this is one of the most icon examples of his style.

The property originally belonged to Wright's mother's family. He bought hundreds of acres and proceeded to build a beautiful estate that included the home and the Midway Gardens. Previously he had designed and had built the Hillside School for his aunts who ran it as a boarding school.

Our tour covered the same Hillside School that we had seen yesterday. Notice how the outside materials flow into the inside of the building.

We walked up the hill to the Romeo and Juliet Windmill designed by Wright in 1896. It provided water for the school. Naysayers said the design would blow over in the first windstorm.

It IS still standing today because the point of the thing points into the predominate wind direction.

There was a house on the backside of the property called Tan-y-deri that Wright built for his sister in 1907.

We continued walking until we came to the Midway Gardens which were actually working barns and shops for workers who ran the farm.

Further on, waiting for us on the terrace of Taliesin was Frank Lloyd Wright himself, with bottles of water and carrot cake. We sat and talked and took more pictures of the house from this side.

Our guide led us into the house and we proceeded to marvel at all of the nooks and crannies designed by Wright.

This is the backside of the house with the residence area to the right and the studio part on the left.

Tragically, 3 years after the house was built, a soon-to-be-fired chef on the property killed 7 people in the house including Wright's mistress and her son, and some other workers. He then set fire to the residence and the living quarters burned to the ground. Wright was in Chicago at the time.

Within months he was rebuilding Taliesin very similar to what it was and what we see today.

As automobiles became more popular he added a cantilevered parking area for them for his guest who came to party with him. This is a look at the front of the house.

And this is the entrance that most visitors would walk up to come inside.

Having designed a 1000 homes and built almost 600 of those designs you can find Wright's homes across the USA. There are three in Washington state.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Frank_Lloyd_Wright_works

2014-09-26 Let the Frank Lloyd Wright-athon Begin

Yesterday we had a day off. I had a great day. Did some laundry. While it was going I went and played 5 rounds of a 9-hole disc golf course that is setup in a field on the property of this RV park. Karen kicked back for a while and soaked up the sun. When I got back with the laundry she folded it all and ironed the wrinkled stuff.

I also did a quick modification to the spare tire on the back of 5th wheel. It wobbled back and forth enough to bend the mount earlier this year before we left home. In order to stop the wobble I consulted with my chief mod engineer, Erik, and he gave me some pieces to solve the problem. The gray conduit with the rubber tips push against the tire on each side and have stopped the wobble.

We hitched up and hit the road earlier than normal this morning in order to try and get in on an additional tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) property called Taliesin.

The drive was a little over an hour. We dropped the 5th wheel in the Avoca Lakeside Campground and then took off for the FLW Visitor's Center in Spring Green, WI.

The gentleman at the front desk looked at the tours we were going on in the next two days and suggested that the additional tour we were requesting would be a duplicated of what we had. We took his advice and didn't go on it.

Instead, we shopped in the gift shop for a while and then went to lunch in town.

Our 1:30 pm tour started on time, we loaded into our 20 passenger bus, and our guide started us off with some background on FLW and why he designed the school we were heading for.

On the 600 acres across the street from the Visitor's Center was Taliesin (his residence), the Midway Barns (actual barns for managing the land), and the Hillside School.

He designed and had built in 1902 this Hillside (boarding) School for his two aunts. This was the first of his open concept designs. It was also one of the earliest examples of outside building materials being used inside the structure.


In thinking about an open concept design remember that most buildings of the time had rooms separated by walls. You enter a house and there's a room on the left and a room on the right. A little further in the same thing. His design was similar to a Great Room where furniture would give the space the division between study area and conversation area. An open concept for living room, dining room, and kitchen in modern day homes are very popular these days.


Sometime during the 1930's the school was rebranded as the FLW School of Architecture, and it is still in operation today. There are 20 students each paying $40,000 per year being taught by 3 teachers. Oddly, the school shuts down in the winter (the building has never had a furnace nor an air conditioner) and the students all move to Taliesen West in Arizona.

There were students being taught as we moved through the building. Some were working on their own in the drafting room while others were in a classroom looking at building designs and sketching.

Of course, there were no pictures allowed inside but the outside of the school is indicative of his designs during this period including the frameless corner window.

After the tour we headed over to the cemetery where he was buried beside the church that his father had started in 1886.

Tomorrow we will tour the whole grounds and get to go inside Taliesin.