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>> One would think, given the
popularity of the self-declared
greatest architect
of the 20th century, the study
of Frank Lloyd Wright,
the man and his prolific output,
would be on the decline.
And yet, what I call Wright
studies is a flourishing field.
A recent conference I attended
in Mason City, Iowa, attracted
several hundred homeowners,
Wright enthusiasts, and scholars
of Wright's architecture to
visit several Wright buildings
and numerous others by his
followers in this quite rural
part of north central Iowa.
Today's panel shows the
continued vitality of Wright's
studies and offers us new
avenues of investigation into
the master's life and output.
Ron McCrea's new book,
"Building Taliesin:
Frank Lloyd Wright's Home
of Love and Loss," contains
previously unpublished photos of
Taliesin's construction and new
information about Wright's
creative partnership with his
lover Mamah Borthwick.
Sarah Leavitt's book, "Taliesin
Diary: A Year With Frank Lloyd
Wright," meanwhile, brings us
the diary of Priscilla Henken,
member of Frank Lloyd Wright's
architectural colony known as
the Fellowship and provides
invaluable insights into
architectural practice in the
20th century and the cultural
history of the period in
general.
We're also very pleased for
today's panel to have three
members of the Henken family
here to comment on Leavitt's
work and experiences with Wright
and the Fellowship.
Through this panel, then, we'll
have new insights into Wright
and his work, reminding us that
there's ever more to know about
out architectural native son.
For the introductions today,
I will ask a distinguished guest
to kick us off by introducing
Ron McCrea, and then I will
introduce the other panelists
in this session.
So, if I may ask Tony Earl to
please join us at the podium
to introduce Ron McCrea.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Thank you very much.
First of all, I want to say
to Ron what an honor and a
privilege it is to be asked to
participate in this event.
I've known Ron for a number of
years, and I've known him to be
committed almost to the point
of being obsessive
about Frank Lloyd Wright.
And, for my own part, like
anybody's who's lived in
Wisconsin for more than
10-15 years, I have
a Frank Lloyd Wright story,
and it fits, I hope.
My late friend, and it involves
two other Wisconsin icons,
Marshall Erdman
and Gaylord Nelson.
And Gaylord used to love to tell
a story that when he was a
struggling young lawyer and
Marshall was a struggling young
builder, they were best of pals.
Marshall called him one day and
said, Gaylord, I got the break
of my life.
What is that, Marshall?
He said, I'm going to build a
Unitarian church for Frank Lloyd
Wright; it will make my name.
Of course, he was going to get
commission because nobody else
would work for Mr. Wright at
that time.
[LAUGHTER]
And he said, I want you to come
out to Taliesin with me and
help me draw the contract.
Gaylord said, boy, I'd be
delighted; I'd love to meet the
man.
So, on a given day, Marshall and
Gaylord drove out to Taliesin,
marched up to the door, knocked
on the door, Mr. Wright appeared
imperiously in his cape, and he
said who's this with you,
Erdman?
And Marshall said, well, this is
my friend, a lawyer, Gaylord
Nelson; he's going to help us
write the contract, Mr. Wright.
And Frank Lloyd Wright said,
dismiss the scrivener.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, if Mr. Wright had had
a chance to read Ron McCrea's
book, he would never say dismiss
the scrivener about this book.
It's a lovely book.
It is a terrific book.
I am a Luddite.
I don't like electronic books.
This book wouldn't work
electronically.
It's got to be on your lap.
Beautiful photos,
beautiful dedication to Elaine.
It is a book that is clearly
lovingly written,
beautifully written, and
although I fancy myself to know
a bit about Frank Lloyd Wright,
I learned a hell of a lot more.
And this book is a delight
for anyone who loves books.
The tactile sensation.
The visual sensation.
The intellectual stimulation.
This is a book for book lovers,
and the guy who is responsible
for it is my good friend
Ron McCrea.
[APPLAUSE]
>> It's nice to have you
having my back for a change.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm so pleased to be here
and privileged to be introduced
by one of my great Wisconsin
heroes as well as friends,
Tony Earl.
And I want to say for a moment
here that it was 30 years ago
this Election Day that Wisconsin
elected Anthony Scully Earl
our governor.
[APPLAUSE]
He was faced with a situation,
there was a fiscal cliff in
front of him, too, at the time,
but he took quite a different
approach from our current
governor.
He did very much what the
president is proposing to do now
nationally, and it really worked
for Wisconsin.
Four years after he took office,
Wisconsin was in the black
and out of deficit.
He did it by raising,
temporarily putting a surcharge
on the income tax
based on the ability to pay.
He increased the sales tax by a
penny for tax and consumption.
He also froze state employee pay
for one year, including,
notably, the faculty and staff
of the University System which
was highly unpleased with this,
but it was fair, it was shared
pain, and it did not destroy the
traditions or institutions of
Wisconsin, and it left it
stronger at the end.
He also did some very creative
appointments.
He appointed a lot of women
to the bench,
and he appointed minorities.
He appointed a very diverse
number of people.
And I think that one of the most
interesting appointments,
other than my own...
[LAUGHTER]
That he made was the hire
of a young intern in constituent
relations.
And her name was Tammy Baldwin.
[APPLAUSE]
And so, this man gave that woman
her start in public service
30 years ago.
And we honor him for that.
We honor her, and I want to say
as we go back to Taliesin I
a hundred years ago, that there
was another election in
Wisconsin a hundred years ago
when the presidential ballot
included Woodrow Wilson,
William Howard Taft,
Theodore Roosevelt,
and Eugene V. Debs.
Quite a ticket.
[LAUGHTER]
But only men could vote, and
there was a statewide referendum
on the ballot of 1912 asking
the voters of Wisconsin whether
women should have the vote.
And it was defeated 2-1.
And so I think it's very
symmetrical that a hundred years
after Wisconsin defeated women's
right to vote we have elected
our first woman to the Senate
of the United States.
[APPLAUSE]
We are a two-book session today,
and I'm going to try to keep
mine much more brief than
I would like because there's
a lot to talk about.
We are kind of looking at a tale
of two Taliesins here,
and they're very different.
Mine is sort of the creation
story.
I'm calling my book,
I refer to it as Taliesin's
Book of Genesis, because it is
the creation story,
and to some degree it's a book
of Revelation as well.
[LAUGHTER]
And I often like to say,
luckily for Taliesin,
there was no book of Leviticus.
[LAUGHTER]
In any event,
this is the Book of Genesis.
It's a creation story.
And Taliesin I, which was
conceived in Italy in 1910 and
destroyed in the summer of 1914,
a very small window of time, it
lived for a very short career,
but it was a very brilliant
career and there's very little
that's been known about it until
recent times when new
photographs have surface and new
letters have surfaced that
allowed me to mine the letters
for references and learn a great
deal more about the daily life
of Taliesin I for the first
time.
And the Taliesin we're looking
at, let me just see if I can
start this.
Oh, that's me in 1987 when I was
starting my Taliesin studies.
That's the bird walk off of
Taliesin.
That was just after Tony and I
both left office and left it to
Tommy Thompson and let us have
just a moment of schadenfreude.
[LAUGHTER]
All right, and this is
a wonderful photo of Taliesin
as it is today.
This is Taliesin III.
One of the things I like to
point out about this photograph
is that there's no development
around it.
And if you could imagine
Taliesin with development of
strip malls and big mansions on
those hills, it would lose a
great deal of its, what Wright
would call, spell power.
But you can also see that
Taliesin is not just buildings.
It is a full composition.
It's a composition that includes
land and buildings, and, in
fact, nature may be even more
important than the buildings.
And here's another one taken
from the rear, over the rear
looking toward the Wisconsin
River that shows Taliesin.
Unfortunately, the crown of the
hill now is bare of those
wonderful oak trees that meant
so much.
The Taliesin, I'll try not to do
this, the Taliesin that we're
discussing today is one
that was about half the size
of Taliesin III, the Taliesin
that the Henkens experienced.
It was smaller.
It was more intimate.
The hillside, which in
Taliesin III was the School of
Architecture, it had a movie
theater, it had dormitories,
and this time it was still a
hillside home school and it was
a boarding school run by
Wright's aunts.
And this is the time of horses
and buggies and hand tools, and
Taliesin was built very rapidly
between the spring of 1911 and
the spring of 1912.
But, basically, the basic
construction work was all done
in the spring and summer using
teams of horses and quarrying
rock and using natural
materials, and it must have been
quite something to see.
And it took its inspiration from
a villa in Italy.
This is our, let me introduce
our couple.
This is Frank Lloyd Wright, age
about 38-39.
That's the other thing, Wright
is a much younger man in my
book.
He's a much more sensitive and
gentle man, I think, in this
time.
This is the woman
for whom Taliesin was built.
And this is the first time
this photograph has been seen.
I was able to find it recently
in Sweden at the home
of Ellen Key.
It turned out that Wright
mentions sending a photograph, a
portrait of Mamah, to Ellen Key
in December of 1914 that was
taken as a birthday present to
him in that summer of 1914.
And there were mentions of this
photograph in letters, but it
was not in the archive.
So I simply asked the people,
do you have any pictures
of Mamah Borthwick?
Are there any in photo albums?
And they said, oh, yeah, here
they are.
[LAUGHTER]
It's like, who knew?
And that's one of the important
things about Wright studies that
I've found in the modern age
with the Internet is asking
the right questions,
and asking questions
makes all the difference.
This is their view in Italy in
the summer of 1910.
This is my photograph of it.
But they were in Europe from the
fall of 1909 until the fall of
1910.
And Wright wrote to a friend of
his, Charles Ashbee, in England,
"I have been very busy here in
this little eyrie on the brow of
the mountain above Fiesole,
overlooking the pink and white
Florence, spreading in the
valley of the Arno below, the
whole fertile bosom of the Earth
seemingly lying in the drifting
mists or shining clear and
marvelous is this Italian
sunshine, opalescent,
iridescent."
This is the place that they
stayed called the Villino
Belvedere, and it has a walled
garden here.
And the house actually goes down
two stories.
So, then on the right you can
see this is the view overlooking
Florence.
This is another Italian seat
near there.
There was a Roman-Etruscan
architectural park up on this
hillside.
This is Taylor Woolley, who was
a young architectural draftsman
from Salt Lake City who joined
the Oak Park studio in 1908 and
Wright trusted enough to bring
him to Europe with him in 1909
and '10 to work on the plates
for what was called a Wasmuth
portfolio, which was a hundred
plates of his best work that was
going to be published and sold
in Europe and then the United
States.
And so he's wearing this smock
to protect his clothing from the
India ink that they were using
to do the drawings on probably
velum or linen paper.
This is his picture of the
studio.
I personally think that in these
you can see on the wall some of
the floor plans of Wright
houses.
I've actually been able to
identify them in the book, which
ones they're working on.
And I think, personally, that
Taylor moved that plant into the
middle just for aesthetic
purposes.
This is a picture of a place
that Wright writes about in
Italy.
This is the little table set for
two under a rose bower.
It was a very idyllic time, and
it was, I think, an unusual
experience of living indoors and
outdoors for him, and I think it
was one that gave him a feeling
for the sweet Italian lifestyle
and one that he wanted to keep
going with her back in the
United States, and they had to
figure out a way to return.
Catherine was not allowing him
to get a divorce.
She considered and called Mamah
a vampire.
And so she felt that by refusing
to allow him to free him from
the marriage, she was saving his
soul.
And Mamah, on the other hand,
had no trouble getting a divorce
from her husband Edwin Cheney
and did that a year after she
returned, right after she
returned.
And so she was divorced when she
moved in with Wright and he was
not.
And let me just tell you,
this is Taylor Woolley and his
friend from Salt Lake City,
Clifford Evans.
There Clifford is 22, Taylor is
about 27 or 26 in this picture.
They're putting stain on the
studio wing of Taliesin I.
And he came at Wright's request
in the late summer/mid-September
of 1911 and stayed through the
next summer when he returned to
Salt Lake City.
And that is where he left his
negatives for his photographs
that I was able to uncover just
about a year ago.
Here is what Mamah Borthwick
said upon coming to her new
home.
This is the kind of rough
outside entrance to what people
never called Taliesin at the
time.
They called it the bungalow.
And look at this.
This is probably about the kind
of situation that Mamah found
when she arrived.
It's still quite dug up.
There's channeling going on to
put heating pipes under the
place, and it's not really
habitable yet.
The windows are still open to
the elements.
And she wrote to her mentor in
Sweden, Ellen Key, who was the
author of many books on many
subjects, including fine design
and the design of useful objects
for the home in the arts and
crafts movement tradition.
But she also wrote on marriage
reform and divorce reform, and
in the four years that Frank and
Mamah were together, she
translated and published four of
her books in English.
One by Putnam in New York and
three in Chicago.
Wright, at the same time, wrote
the book, "The Japanese Print:
An Interpretation," and opened a
whole second career for himself
as a dealer in Japanese art.
It was a very creative,
productive time that they had in
the four summers they had at
Taliesin.
So, her first report from
Taliesin, she says, and I think
she probably had been questioned
by Ellen Key about taking up
with a married man, and she
says, "I have, as you hoped,
made a choice in harmony with my
own soul, the choice as far as
my own life was concerned was
made long ago, that is absolute
separation from Mr. Cheney.
A divorce was obtained last
summer, and my maiden name is
now legally mine.
Also, I have since made a choice
in harmony with my own soul and
what I believe to be Frank
Wright's happiness and am now
keeping his house for him.
In this very beautiful hillside,
as beautiful in its way as the
country about Strand," which is
the name of Ellen Key's house on
a lake in Sweden, "He's been
building a summer house, and
it's interesting she says a
summer house suggesting there
might have been a winter
residence, perhaps in the city
or townhouse, also planned, and
there was a plan for a townhouse
on the north shore of Chicago.
The combination of site and
dwelling, the most beautiful
I have seen any place in the
world.
We are hoping to have some
photographs to send you soon.
I believe it is a house founded
on Ellen Key's ideal of love.
The nearest neighbor, a half a
mile away, is Frank's sister
where I visited when I first
came here.
She has championed our love most
loyally, believing in her
brother's happiness."
And this is Jane Porter, and
what that means is that she
arrived at Taliesin but couldn't
live there, so she moved in with
Jane and her family which is on
the grounds at a place called
Taney Dairy which Wright
designed in 1906 for his sister.
In fact, all of the commissions
in the valley were designed by
Wright for women, including his
aunts.
I have thus far been very busy
with the unfinished house and
because of the fact that workmen
were boarded here in a nearby
farmhouse, sometimes as many as
36 at a time.
Mr. Wright's sister has looked
after this all summer, but when
I came, it was turned over to
me, and I've done very little of
your translation work in
consequence of the building.
The house is now, however,
practically finished and my time
again free.
Mr. Wright has his studio
incorporated into the house, and
we both will be busy with our
own work with absolutely no
outside interests on my part.
My children I hope to have at
times, but that cannot be just
yet.
And so, this is what she found,
and listen to this.
This is a suburban Illinois
housewife with servants.
There were two servants in the
Cheney household.
And suddenly she has turned into
the construction crew cook
arriving at Taliesin, which I
think is kind of maybe the same
sort of boot camp experience
that the Henkens found when they
arrived.
Here's another, I call these
pictures sweating brow because
they're very...
Here's the work crew, and this
is Clifford again, standing and
looking kind of preppy in the
middle there.
This is a little more cleaned
up, and now the courtyard is
taking shape.
The statue there is called
Flower in the Crannied Wall.
It was a copy of one done for
another woman client from
Springfield, Illinois,
Susan Dana.
But if you notice here, it's
still just a dirt path up the
hill to what would become the
tea circle.
And later this would have stones
and a stone circle and be much
more developed.
Now, this was a huge surprise
when I saw this.
This is a puppet theater.
It's a puppet theater sitting in
the unfinished living room of
Taliesin that Wright has
designed for his youngest son,
Llewellyn, who was going to turn
eight on November 15, 1911.
So this is a very early picture.
I knew what it was because there
had been one other article with
a picture from 1914 of this
object, but we, until we saw
this picture, we didn't know
when and where it had been built
And if you look at the scenery,
it is an Italian scene.
You can see the Cyprus trees in
it.
In fact, in one of the sketches
it looks like there's a tower
and a balcony, and it looks like
he's created Romeo and Juliet.
And this is little Llewellyn,
a picture that his daughter sent
me from France where she's a
retired professor.
This is a triptych of the living
room from three photographs.
This is a little more refined
now.
This is Mr. Wright's studio but
at this point is still full of
lumber and is being used as a
carpenter shop.
This is the draftsman drafting
studio, and there was a bunk
room off of that and a sitting
room and draftsmen came and
went.
There were certain people, like
Herbert Fritz, Sr, who were
there all the time, but it was
kind of an itinerant group of
architects who would go between
Chicago and Spring Green and
spend time.
And there were artists and other
guest who came, but it was
nothing like Taliesin III where
you had resident school and
apprentices.
And this is, I love this
photograph, this is one of the
photographs, and these are stone
masons who have just cemented in
place the plaque on the pier at
the entrance to Taliesin at the
lower one next to the sort of
waterfall or spillway that says
"Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect,"
and that means Taliesin is
officially open for business and
they have just finished doing
this.
Well, the interesting thing,
this is one of those other
little how do you discover lost
history.
I met a woman who's 86 years old
from Baraboo, and her name is
Barbara Dresser.
And she was the granddaughter of
a man named Alfred Larson who
was a stone mason, and I sent
her all the pictures in the book
and said, do you recognize
anybody?
And she said, well,
only my grandfather.
[LAUGHTER]
So, this man here is
Alfred Larson who was the
grandfather of Barbara, and
Barbara, her father was Herbert
Fritz, Sr, and his mother was
Alfred Larson's wife, Elvira.
So, there were a lot of Taliesin
aristocracy here and over the
generations.
I just love this picture that
suggests this is the way it's
done.
And you can see it has a kind of
tassel-like look from down the
hill.
And this is an open porch
which is where Mamah
and her children were killed
in August 1914.
It was never rebuilt.
And Taliesin was sort of
reoriented so that no one would
ever actually live in that space
again.
For gardeners here, this is a
really interesting photo because
what you have here is gardeners
with stakes and chalk laying out
a grid on the slope below
Taliesin for grid planting which
is a very Italian way of
planting on a slope.
And I consulted Jerry Minnich,
who wrote the Wisconsin Garden
Guide, about this.
And Wright used both contour and
grid planting.
And, in the next picture, you'll
see some of the results.
This is probably the spring of
1912.
And here is the fall of 1912.
These photographs were taken by
a man named Fuermann,
Clarence Fuermann, from Chicago.
Jack Holzheuter found these
photographs on eBay.
They had not been published
before, but I was able to,
he got them for the State
Historical Society which then
made them available to me
in time for the book.
And you can see the same view.
Now the courtyard, the inner
courtyard is really much more
pulled together and beautiful,
and the tea circle is in place.
And if you look closely through
the opening at the far end of
the building, you can see a
Holstein calf and cow.
And by the way, when I came to
work for Tony Earl, I did not
know the difference between and
udder and a teat.
[LAUGHTER]
And I've always thought it was
wonderful that I had to learn
that fact from the governor
of Dairyland.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, this is another picture
in the Fuermann series
that was not published before.
And what's interesting about it,
for me, is look at the vantage
point.
It's from the tea circle.
It's looking toward the portico
share.
Under the portico share you see
two children and a horse.
Now, look at the next
photograph.
This is the same vantage point
in 1914, shortly after Taliesin
was burned down.
The residential wing was burned
down.
Julian Carlton made his rampage,
attacked, murdered seven people
and swallowed acid, died himself
cell 48 days later.
And you can see that the portico
share has now crashed to the
ground.
The studio wing remains.
I don't think Wright is in this
picture.
There's a man sitting in the
breezeway with a rifle over his
lap.
There's a man with a long beard
who maybe Jenkin Lloyd Jones or
Enis talking with some other
guys.
The studio wing was spared
thanks to the efforts of William
Weston, who, even though
wounded, sprayed a water hose,
garden hose, on it.
And Wright did sometimes say
that maybe that God disapproved
of his life but approved of his
work, but I don't think he
really believed that.
This is another picture of
gawkers coming to look at the
ruins.
This is the story of the death
of Julian Carlton, who, actually
one of the nice things I like to
say in these presentations is
that small-town Wisconsin
behaved wonderfully and nobly
and responsibly in the aftermath
of the crime of the century.
They gave this man due process.
He was given a court-appointed
attorney.
He was given two court
appearances.
He was given a special visit by
the judge to counsel him on a
plea that would allow him to die
in a Dodgeville jail rather than
at Waupun State Prison.
He received good medical
attention from very prominent
doctors, and he basically got
his rights even though he had
committed, quite clearly,
the crime of the century
and horrible murders.
But small-town Wisconsin behaved
wonderfully, and the local press
did not treat this tremendously
luridly.
It was full of racism,
of course.
All the headlines were
"Black Beast" kills
such and such; "Negro Slayer."
Even the death certificates say,
as cause of death, "killed by
a Negro," as though that were
a separate category of murder.
But, basically, when it came,
for the time and place,
small-town Wisconsin behaved
better and they may have behaved
much better than Chicago did.
This is Mamah's gravestone, and
I know I've ruffled a few
feathers by suggesting this is
kind of inappropriate for them
to put Mr. Cheney's name on her
headstone after she had very
firmly rejected it.
And, at the very end, Wright
went to Chicago and had to think
things through.
And he wrote a letter in
December to Ellen Key.
I'm looking for it.
Looking for it.
Basically, he says to her that I
have a decision to make.
I can either give in to despair
or I can, as the heart of her
would have me do, basically put
her spirit into the work that
takes shape under my hands.
That's what he says.
That basically he has decided to
honor her by devoting his work
to her.
This is Ellen Key,
a tough customer.
[LAUGHTER]
This is actually one of those
portraits that Mamah mentions
in a letter saying,
"I saw this portrait by Nielsen,
couldn't you have them erase
those ugly balls on either side
of your head because they look
ugly."
And so I looked around and was
able to find the portrait
she's talking about.
Coming toward the end here,
I think maybe I need to end.
Let me have, do I have five
minutes?
I think I have five.
I want to tell just a couple of
stories about how you discover
lost history.
This Hiroshige print was found
hanging on the wall of Ellen
Key's home, and there's a letter
from Mamah that says Frank is
sending you a little Hiroshige
that we hope you may care to
hang in your new home.
And a Swedish scholar, a woman,
looked at this and happened to
turn it over and found this
inscription that it was a print
by the great Japanese artist
Hiroshige and a gift from the
great American architect
Frank Lloyd Wright.
Well, there had been no
knowledge of a connection
between Wright and Ellen Key
before, so she went to the
Swedish National Library and
found in her archives these 10
letters from Mamah which then
really unlocked everything we
know about Taliesin I.
And this is Ellen Key's partner
desk, and you can see the
Hiroshige hanging down the hall.
What I want to tell you about
this is that I, quite by
accident, found a Stockholm
architect who was willing to
drive half way across Sweden and
make these photographs for me
and photograph the Hiroshige and
find it, send it to me, asking
nothing.
People who are into Frank Lloyd
Wright do all these things for
the love of it.
So I asked some of these people
to send me pictures of
themselves.
This is her balcony.
Not bad.
[LAUGHTER]
And this is Bjorn Sjunnesson,
my unknown friend in Stockholm
who provided this information.
Now, at the very beginning, when
it was first discovered that
they were living together at
Taliesin because he'd told
everyone they had broken up, and
he secretly built Taliesin with
the help of his mother and this
was found out, there was a huge
spasm of coverage in the Chicago
press, and this is typical of
it.
With "castle of love" and there
are going to be sheriff's
posses, there was even talk of
tar and feathers, but in the
middle of all of it, Mamah
mentions in one of her letters
that she's sending a column by a
guy named Floyd Dell.
Now, Floyd Dell was the editor
of the Chicago Evening Post
Literary Review and a great
leader of the Chicago Avant
Garde, and he has this wonderful
thing where he says you can't,
these people are being hounded
to death for behaving sincerely
and you're going to lose, it's
not fair to her and you're going
to lose a great career.
And this had never been known or
published.
This is Floyd Dell looking a
little bit peaked or jaundice.
Well, I put a Northwestern
University graduate student
named Whitney Harrod on the
trail of this column as a sort
of graduate assistant.
And she looked all over creation
to find it, and she finally
located it at the Widener
Library at Harvard.
And this is Whitney, and I like
this picture because I say we
are getting the news from the
horse's mouth.
[LAUGHTER]
Finally, one of the treasures
of the State Historical Society
is a collection of photographs
of the valley taken
by Frank Lloyd Wright himself
in 1900.
Panoramic photographs that have
almost an Asian quality to them,
and when I was looking through
the prints, my wife Elaine said
I think that those prints go
together.
And we looked closer and she was
able to see the junctures
between three of them.
And suddenly, what Wright was
intending all along became
apparent which was to take a
panoramic photograph of the
valley from the vantage point at
the end of the valley looking
toward the Wisconsin River.
And so you see Taliesin's future
site is up here on this side.
But this is a discovery in
itself.
The pictures had been known for
a while, but no one had ever
seen this part of it.
And so, who was my discoverer?
My one and only, Elaine.
[LAUGHTER]
And here she is with
Wright's muse.
So I thank her, and I leave you
back at Taliesin III,
which was built twice more
and had another,
quite a different life when
the Henkens arrived some time.
I've read their book.
It's really quite a different
kind of place.
In fact, sometimes I think,
well, Taliesin I
felt more like Tuscany;
Taliesin III feels more like
Transylvania.
[LAUGHTER]
So I give this to you.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
>> If you want to come up,
that's fine.
>> Wonderful.
All right, I want to introduce
our next sort of part of the
panel.
We have four people in this.
So, I'll begin by introducing
Sarah Leavitt, who will be, I
think, reading for us today.
Sarah's curator at the National
Building Museum in Washington,
DC, where her recent exhibitions
have included House of Cars:
Innovation and the Parking
Garage of 2009 and House and
Home of 2012.
She previously held the position
of associate historian and
curator at the Office of NIH
History at the National
Institutes of Health in
Bethesda, Maryland.
Her other research and museum
experience include positions at
the consulting firm History
Associates as well as the Women
of the West Museum in Boulder,
Colorado, and the Slater Mill
Historic Site in Pawtucket,
Rhode Island.
Her book, "From Catharine
Beecher to Martha Stewart:
A Cultural History of Domestic
Advice," was published by
the University of North Carolina
Press in 2002.
Other publications include
articles on the history of the
pregnancy test, online
motherhood communities, and the
television show Veronica Mars.
She's most recently the editor
of a publication called Taliesin
Diary: A Year With Frank Lloyd
Wright, and you'll hear about
that today.
Sarah graduated from Wesleyan
University and holds a master's
degree in museum studies and a
PhD in American studies from
Brown University.
We will also hear from the three
members of the Henken family.
And I'll begin with Elissa
Henken.
Elissa R Henken earned her
bachelor of arts in folklore and
mythology at Radcliffe College
at Harvard, her master's in
Welsh language and literature at
the University College of Wales,
and her PhD at the Folklore
Institute at Indiana University.
She now teaches folklore and
Celtic studies as a professor at
the University of Georgia.
Her published works include two
books on Welsh saints, one on
the Welsh national redeemer,
Owain, I don't know how to
pronounce this, Glyndwr.
[LAUGHTER]
And one co-authored with
Mariamne H Whatley on folklore
and human sexuality.
She has also published articles
on civil war legendary and
developments in contemporary
legend.
Jonathan T Henken is a
professional bagpiper and
cabinetmaker.
After earning his bachelor of
science in oceanography from New
York University, he develop his
concurrent careers, using the
knowledge of carpentry he
developed growing up in Usonia.
He serves as the Pipe Major
of Mount Kisco Scottish Pipes
and Drums, while also doing
extensive solo piping.
His work has been diverse,
including being the Forbes
Corporate and family piper,
serving as the US Piper for the
Bank of Scotland, performing as
a guest soloist with the New
York Pops at Carnegie Hall and
with the New Haven Symphony
Orchestra, playing at curling
matches, fashion shows, and
social events, including the
opening of the Alexander McQueen
exhibit at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
He also has an animal rescue
farm and restores, shows, and
rides antique motorcycles.
Mariamne Henken Whatley is
professor emerita in the
Departments of Gender and
Women's Studies and Curriculum
and Instruction at the
University of Wisconsin Madison,
where she also served for many
years as the chair of GWS and as
associate dean in the School of
Education.
She earned her bachelor of arts
in English from Radcliffe and
her master of science and PhD in
biological sciences from
Northwestern University.
She has taught and written
extensively about women's
health, feminist approaches to
science and sexuality education.
She co-edited, with Nancy
Worcester, five editions of
women's health text and
co-authored, with Elissa Henken,
"Did You Hear About the Girl
Who...?: Contemporary Legends,
Folklore, and Human Sexuality."
So, I want to welcome all our
panelists, and I look forward
to an exciting discussion.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Hi.
Of course, my most important
qualification bringing me here
today is that I am from the
great state of Wisconsin, and
it's a pleasure to be back here
today.
I'm just going to really briefly
tell you a little about our
book, and I'm going to let these
folks read from the diary and
really give you a sense of what
the process was.
I want to say just a little bit
about the National Building
Museum.
For those of you who have never
been to see use in Washington,
DC, we're a museum of
architecture and design.
So, we were pretty excited when
we got this diary that Mariamne
sent a couple years ago.
We, who like to think we know
something about Frank Lloyd
Wright and the Fellowship, were
just thrilled to learn so many
new things just opening random
pages of the diary, which is
what we started doing.
And it seems like on every page
after you get through the part
about cooking all the food,
which there's a lot about that
which I found fascinating also,
there was so much interesting
material about the rights.
We've jumped, of course,
30 years since Ron McCrea's
story into the 1940s.
Very different place at
Taliesin.
Very different architect in
Frank Lloyd Wright.
He's, of course, been through
several iterations of his home,
several wives, several projects
himself.
At the Building Museum when we
first got the book, we, in fact,
had just done a program from one
of our founding members, Beverly
Willis, studies women in
architecture specifically and
had just worked on a little
movie project about women who
had worked with Frank Lloyd
Wright.
So this was a particularly
opportune moment for us to get
this diary.
And when we first opened, I just
give just for an example since
we're in the first week or so of
November, in the first week of
November in the diary Priscilla
Henken talks about, first of
all, a little postmortem of
Halloween.
Halloween was a big deal at
Taliesin.
All the fellows dressed up, and
the year that she was there,
they dressed up as famous
paintings or people that were in
famous paintings.
She goes on about what everybody
dressed up like, which was
pretty neat.
She also voted in Wisconsin.
She was pretty excited that you
could just walk right up to the
polls, register to vote, and
take away.
She voted a straight socialist
ticket that year.
And then also in the first week
of November, besides, again,
cooking a lot of food, she talks
about Armistice Day, which, of
course, we now know as Veterans
Day, and that led into a whole
story about World War II and
what it was like to be at
Taliesin during World War II.
And, of course, the story of
conscientious objectors there at
Taliesin, which led us into a
whole story, it's a thrill to
have Marcus Weston here with us
today because he, as you'll see
when you read the diary, plays a
very big part, both in
Priscilla's world at Taliesin
but also, of course, in the
history of the Fellowship.
Anyway, so we decided that what
would be really great is for all
of us in the curatorial staff
who are usually working on
exhibitions, we really got to
get into some primary source
research and do some history
writing, which was a real thrill
for us.
And one of the things that we
did was look into the story of
conscientious objection at
Taliesin, and we used the
Freedom of Information Act to
FOIA his, Frank Lloyd Wright's
file, FBI file, which is, as you
maybe can imagine, very large.
[LAUGHTER]
And it was really fun.
We spent several days, our whole
staff, just pouring through.
There's a lot of redacted
material, a lot of black lines,
but there's several telegrams
between J Edgar Hoover
and the Milwaukee FBI office,
specifically about what was
going on at Taliesin right in
1942-1943, in that period when
Priscilla and David Henken were
there.
So that was a real thrill for
us, and we got to really look
into that and write about that
experience.
Another thing that we looked
into was the film program at
Taliesin.
That was a really innovative and
unique project that Wright was
doing there, getting a lot of
films from New York and from
distributors.
He showed a lot of Russian
films.
He showed a lot of Disney films.
There's a pretty big variation
in the film program there, and
Priscilla goes through every
week in the diary and talks
about every film that they watch
and some of her impressions and
the other fellows impressions
and also Wright's impressions of
those films.
So that was something that we
kind of pulled out of the diary
as we were looking through it.
Another thing that we found
really interesting was her
discussion of being a Jewish
couple moving from New York City
into rural Wisconsin, and one of
the things that we all kind of
think we know about Wright is
his antisemitism.
So that was interesting watching
her kind of grapple with that
throughout the year that she was
there.
Of course, another thing that
she talks about a lot is her
experience of just being in
Wisconsin, of traveling around.
They went to Mineral Point.
She traveled through, she came
to Madison, walked around the
lakes, she talks about the
Isthmus, and she went into the
State Historical Society and the
Capitol.
It was neat for me, having, of
course, this connection with
Madison, to hear her views about
what she called the soldier
town, since, of course, she was
here during the war.
So, I going to turn this over to
the Henkens so they can read
from the diary, and you'll get a
sense of her.
But I just do want to say it's
such an honor for us to be part
of this project, and one of the
most fun things is when you read
someone else's diary, of course,
it's a very personal story, but
the way that Priscilla writes
the diary, she's a little
snarky.
She's not always, she is very
free with her discussion of
Wright and also Olgivanna
Wright, the third Mrs. Wright,
and that makes it fun to read,
but it's also a really nice,
on-the-ground reporting of what
was happening there.
One of the things that, as
Wright scholars that we've read
all of these memoirs of the
fellows that are written so many
decades after the fact, she's
really writing, she's able to be
a little more free in what she's
saying, which, of course, makes
it fun for us.
So, we went through and tried to
really pick out all of her
cultural references and expand
on those a little bit to make
the diary easier to read.
And we like to think of it as
kind of our story too, that
she's kind of telling this
broader story about Wright that
we can then learn to kind of
fill in our understanding of
Wright and his world.
But, of course, most
importantly, it's also her
personal story, her family's
story.
And, with that, I'll turn it
over to the Henkens.
[APPLAUSE]
>> So, I'm Mariamne.
Jonathan, Elissa, and as you can
tell from our biographies,
we're very well prepared to talk
to about Frank Lloyd Wright
architecture and historical
diary research.
[LAUGHTER]
In October 1942,
so 70 years ago, our parents,
Priscilla and David Henken, left
New York City to join the
Taliesin Fellowship in order to
study with Frank Lloyd Wright.
Priscilla, who graduated from
Hunter College and had a
master's in English from
Columbia by age 19, was a high
school English teacher.
David, who had a master's in
mechanical engineering from City
College, worked as a designer.
Both were children of Jewish
immigrants from the Ukraine who
worked in the garment and
millinery trades and were active
in unions.
David and Priscilla had a dream
of forming a cooperative
community in rural area outside
New York City.
When they saw an exhibit on
Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre
City, David realized that
Mr. Wright could help them with
both the architectural and
social visions for such a
community.
By the way, they also actually
found out that Frank Lloyd
Wright was still alive and that
it was possible to work with him
when they went to that exhibit
because he was such an icon,
they thought he had died.
[LAUGHTER]
Priscilla took leave from
teaching and, with Mr. Wright's
permission and his offer to have
David's tuition cover both of
them, accompanied David
to Taliesin.
They were 24 and 27 during their
year at Taliesin.
Priscilla kept a daily diary
while she was there.
While occasionally she read to
us, her three children, short,
entertaining passages from her
diary, most memorably a vivid
description of the Halloween
party that Sarah mentioned, we
never read it in its entirety
until long after her death at
age 50 in 1969 and after our
father's death in 1985.
For us, the diary gave us much
better understanding of an
experience that had been so
central to their lives and,
therefore, so central to our
lives.
The environment we grew up in
was very strongly influenced by
Frank Lloyd Wright.
Employing Mr. Wright's
principles, our father designed
and built our home in a
community our parents founded,
Usonia Homes in Pleasantville,
New York, in which Mr. Wright
was very involved in its initial
years.
We grew up hearing stories of
Taliesin and the Wrights from
many of our parents' friends who
had been at Taliesin, including
Pedro Guerrero, the great Wright
photographer who died recently.
And, as Sarah mentioned, another
very great friend, an old family
friend, Marcus Weston is in the
audience, who was a Taliesin
apprentice with them and played
a prominent role in the diary.
In a diary entry--
Oops.
>> Sorry.
>> That's okay.
Marcus.
[LAUGHTER]
In a diary entry
in her last week at Taliesin,
Priscilla wrote that Marcus is
one of the things for which we
have to be grateful to Taliesin.
>> Because the diary does not
lend itself to the reading of
long passages, we've put
together some themes found
throughout and illustrated those
with short readings from the
diary.
The diary begins in October
1942, 70 years ago, on their
first day as they eagerly throw
themselves into observing,
working, and learning.
>> Sorry.
Our first view of Taliesin in
daylight after 6:50 rising.
Beautiful view of sloping hills.
[MICROPHONE FEEDBACK]
A carved wooden figure
in the attitude of prayer
outside our bedroom window.
Fluffy white feathers on the
stairs as we went up to
breakfast,
escorted by David Davidson.
Feathers are peacocks',
white, gray, iridescent.
There are two little pea chicks.
There were five, but they died
as a result of being stuck
to a newly tarred roof.
[LAUGHTER]
Met Mr. Wright.
Wonderful, warm personality.
A man is no good without his
wife.
Dug up parsnips in the vegetable
garden with Ruth.
It's fun turning over the rich
brown earth and using a spading
fork.
Her enthusiasm frightens me.
She bit into a parsnip with the
wet earth clinging to it and
liked it.
I brushed mine off gently before
attempting to follow suit.
David hauled gravel from
Mazomanie.
Picked 6 bushels of apples with
Ruth and Marcus.
At tea, Mr. Wright told David to
sit next to me, and I said he
had to because I was the only
familiar thing he had seen all
day.
>> Entries recorded Fellowship
conversations and, of course,
Mr. Wright's comments about his
views, life, work, and his many
famous friends.
>> West despises Carl Sandburg
because he's a millionaire many
times over and poses as a common
man.
As a matter of fact, FLW teases
him for this too, once dressing
him up in corduroy baggy
trousers gathered at the ankle,
artist's cape, velveteen beret.
Both of them were snapped and
Sandburg has been trying to get
the picture ever since, fearing
that if it was published, it
would destroy his man of the
people reputation he's been
building up for years.
November 7.
>> Apprentices and their
partners were responsible for
almost all cooking, so it is not
surprising that the diary
includes many passages about
food preparation and menus.
The cooking also included some
risks.
In this passage, a cooking
injury reveals a very charming
Mr. Wright.
>> Peeled apples again.
Cut watermelon rinds for
pickling.
Knife went through middle of my
thumbnail and underneath.
Messy.
I nearly fainted twice.
The second time, FLW saw me turn
green.
A shade he afterward said
contrasted nicely with my hair,
which was red.
[LAUGHTER]
Led me to the hill garden
and spread a Chinese rug for me.
I said when I write my
autobiography, I'll say FLW
spread a carpet for me.
October 6.
>> She never had a chance to
write her autobiography, but she
did leave us this diary.
Some of the most interesting
passages of this contemporaneous
diary are those that expose the
reality behind the public
accounts of Frank Lloyd Wright
and Taliesin, whether presented
by Wright and the Fellowship or
by former apprentices in memoirs
written many years later.
The diary shows Priscilla's and
David's deep respect for
Mr. Wright as a genius and great
architect but also reveals many
negative aspects to their
Taliesin experience.
A Taliesin was apprenticeship
was described publicly as a time
of learning architecture and
aesthetic principles from the
master.
Apprentices were supposed to
become well-educated in the
arts, especially the visual arts
and music, and to learn
construction, stone masonry for
example, in order to understand
fully the principles of
architecture.
Apprentices, who all paid
tuition to Mr. Wright, also were
expected to share in the work of
maintaining the Fellowship and
farm.
This may sound very good, but
the diary shows a strong
imbalance in which the work of
supporting the Fellowship, and
more specifically the Wright
family, was the primary role of
the apprentices.
The architectural instruction,
even work such as a drafting,
took a back seat.
In October 1942, there were 22
people living and working at
Taliesin, as well as special
guests who came for visits of
various lengths.
Priscilla's work included being
the cook one week a month for
lunch and dinner for the entire
group, with separate menus for
the Wrights.
KP duty, vegetable gardening,
and other farm chores, weaving,
canning, cleaning, typing,
editing Mr. Wright's
autobiography, doing
architectural drawings, and
learning to play the recorder to
participate in the concerts
given by the Fellowship.
David's work included farm
chores.
Hauling gravel, boiler duty,
tending to the boiler in the
winter could be a full-time job
involving getting up every two
hours during the night.
KP duty, baking for and
preparing afternoon tea,
building stone walls, drafting,
doing building repairs, and,
after Mr. Wright found out David
was the only one who knew a
great deal about electricity and
lighting, rewiring Taliesin and
putting in permanent wiring in
certain areas for the first
time.
There is no mention in the diary
of instructional time, only of
Mr. Wright talking with the boys
in the evening.
Though sometimes there was
praise, the hard work was made
more difficult due to frequent
criticism and ever-changing
demands, mostly by Mrs. Wright.
Examples of this often show up
in descriptions of cooking duty.
>> Cooked all day with the last
minute's rush.
Not even time to sit down.
Mrs. Wright felt too nauseous
for roast chicken, so I boiled
it for her.
When it was completely boiled,
she sent word that she felt
better and wanted it roasted.
[LAUGHTER]
So, presto chango, a boiled
chicken became a roasted one.
November 29.
My hatred for la dame is burning
with a gem-like flame.
[LAUGHTER]
Steak approved by Kay
and specially prepared for her
was too dry.
Jell-O, too hard.
It's a comfort to know that FLW
yelled, "Dammit, woman, that's
the way I like it."
When I told her she would have
beef shortly because they had
butchered yesterday, she whined,
"Now I won't eat the meat.
Don't you know I can't have
personal relations with animals.
I'm too sensitive."
February 6.
>> As we grew up hearing of long
conversations with former
apprentices at the dinner table,
we realized that while everyone
showed great respect for
Mr. Wright even while
recognizing some of his less
admirable traits, the behavior
of his wife, Olgivanna, evoked
comments that showed their pain
and anger.
Everything they did, no matter
how small, was open to a
criticism.
While some of her comment may be
dismissed as merely irritating,
Mrs. Wright's attacks could be
more serious and led to the
dismissal or resignations of
apprentices.
>> Gordon Lee, fine draftsman,
owned a dog of which he was very
fond.
When its barking became too
annoying, Mrs. W asked him to
shoot the dog, whereupon he told
her to shoot Twip, her dog.
Up shot, immediate dismissal.
November 4.
>> One apprentice, Eleanor,
had become very ill from an
abscessed tooth and was being
nursed by another apprentice,
Kenn.
>> Mrs. Wright discovered today,
though why not sooner with Kay
around I don't know, that
Eleanor was being taken care of
by Kenn in his room.
She stormed up after supper,
told her her behavior was
disgusting and morally
revolting.
What would people think if they
knew that she had a male nurse?
That she was a burden to the
fellowship and she'd always
been.
That she should have taken
Mrs. Wright into her confidence
where she was or that her room
was too cold, etc, etc, etc.
Eleanor returned
pretty nearly in kind.
Eleanor decided to leave
tomorrow, though we tried to
dissuade her.
December 11.
>> FLW once drove his car and
wrecked it so badly that repairs
cost $1500.
He asked Rowen and Jerry to pick
it up on their return from a
visit to California, and asked
Rowen's father for the money.
Rowen, Sr, refused.
Wright wrote him, "If this is
all the Fellowship means to you,
both your children can leave
immediately."
They did when things became
more unpleasant.
Temper, temperament, or God.
November 3.
>> As can be seen, it was not
just Mrs. Wright who acted
imperiously.
With Mr. Wright, the
precipitating factor could be
what he viewed as disloyalty or,
more often, an issue of money,
as the last example shows.
One of the recurring themes of
the diary, as well as stories
many of you may know from former
apprentices, Spring Green
merchants, building suppliers,
contractors, clients, involved
Mr. Wright's debts, refusal to
pay bills, an expectations of
what should be paid to him as a
great architect.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Financial ethics here are
dormant, if at all alive.
Eleanor was once asked to pass a
bad check for lumber, and after
months of hiding in the desert
every time collectors were
eminent, the bill was finally
paid.
November 3.
Mr. Wright asked David to lend
him money so that he could
$1,000 for the last installments
on the car.
David explained that he didn't
get money from his parents but
worked for everything he paid
into this.
Mr. Wright reminded him of the
favor he was doing in regards to
me, and David is signing a note
for $450, the rest of his
tuition fee due in January.
The same old struggle about
whether the world owes Wright a
living.
He knows it does.
But are the apprentices the
world?
They certainly give as much or
more than they take.
November 23.
Everyone's labor here is cheap,
but that of the king and queen.
Mrs. Williams, the housekeeper,
is paid 25 cents an hour.
The seamstress working 9 to 10
hours a day was paid $6 a day.
She even worked Sunday.
Hers was the sort of
professional skill that should
have received from $75 to $100
for a 5-day week.
The same tactics they use on
chicken farmers and small
storekeepers here.
Credit and credit with no cash
to back it up but wild hopes
that they may beg or borrow some
and very few debts paid.
The world owes me a living,
hey-ho.
December 8.
I have a sneaking suspicion that
an army of Wright creditors
could write an amazing subrosa
biography.
[LAUGHTER]
November 24.
As debts mount and credit is
harder to get, it seems that the
farming going on at Taliesin
would help with its survival.
While the Fellowship may have
strived for self-sufficiency,
inefficiency, inexperience, or
poor management undermined a lot
of hard work which was
especially important during the
shortages and rationing during
World War II.
>> Five rows of lettuce plowed
under.
Ditto two rows of peas.
Ditto three of chard.
A hundred sixty quarts of peas
and beans spoiled.
One hundred fifty pounds of pig
inadvertently spoiled in the
sun.
Vegetables picked, forgotten,
and thrown to the pigs or
chickens.
Seventy eggs going into three
loaves of babba, which is then
rocked in a pillow so it won't
settle.
Plows, rakes, hoes, wire,
rusting in weather of all sorts
and forgotten.
Berries neglected on the bushes.
Man power used to dress up a
house instead of to repair it.
All to show off for guests.
A tempting false front
and shabby rear.
August 6.
>> Imagine a young couple
arriving from New York City with
all their youthful idealism and
dreams, expecting a supportive,
creative, intellectually
stimulating environment, full of
hard work but also learning.
Instead, they find that the
community is not very open to
new-comers who are then judged
quickly as suitable or not.
There's a strong in group with
power residing with Mrs. Wright
and her favorites and exclusion
of those deemed unworthy.
Apparently, from the diary and
from other apprentices' stories
and memoirs, it was wrong to be
too knowledgeable, too funny,
too intellectual, too much a
lefty, and to be a Jew at all.
While Mr. Wright and many others
did not agree with all these
approaches, it was not easy
to change the dynamics.
>> Fortunately, Mr. Wright
protects most people from his
wife's tongue, seeing in them
human faults, frequently his
own.
But no one dares speak up for
anyone officially disliked.
He must hide his affection or
loyalty like a light under a
bushel.
November 26.
>> It seems our parents were not
expecting to encounter
antisemitism at Taliesin.
It came from some apprentices,
such as the one who told
another, referring to David,
that he'd like to do something
to that dirty kike who's always
monopolizing the conversation.
The situation was even more
difficult because Mrs. Wright,
obviously a powerful force in
the Fellowship, held her own
strong negative views on Jews
and intellectuals.
>> When I went down to
Mrs. Wright to ask her about her
meal, she sidetracked by an
article by Ben Hecht in Reader's
Digest to the Jewish problem.
Why don't the Jews get a great
military leader who is also an
idealist and fight for a land of
their own?
They could concur any country
they wanted to.
When I suggested Herzl and
Zionism and Arab-Jewish unions
and opposition by feudal lords
instigated by England, she
ranted, "There you go again,
like all Jews,
intellectualizing.
You have no creative urge and no
initiative.
Your only initiative takes the
bad form of aggressiveness.
I told a Jewish friend of mine
that the only reason she's
creative is that she's part
gentile."
February 3.
>> The diary ends abruptly
with no explanation.
In the weeks leading up to the
last entry, there are brief
comments about plans to return
to New York, but the departure
seems very sudden,
with no discussion of packing
or leave taking.
We guess that tirades, like the
above for Mrs. Wright who held
so much power along with the
behavior of her clique of
followers, made Priscilla's time
there unpleasant enough to
leave.
>> As we discussed in an essay
in the book, not only did our
parents survive the experience,
they also used what they learned
to create their dream of a
cooperative community: Usonia
Homes, which, by the way, this
past September 5th was listed
with the National Register
of Historic Places.
While the architectural
instruction at Taliesin was not
often direct, the emerging
process seems to have worked for
those like David and many other
apprentices who pushed hard to
learn.
At David's request, Mr. Wright
was actively involved in the
Usonia project for several
years, including drawing up the
original site plan and designing
several houses, for two of which
David was the builder.
David designed 13 of the homes
built in Usonia and many others
in New York and nearby states.
As we were growing up, we
watched enumerable groups,
architectural classes, and
individuals tour through Usonia,
often walking around our house
and staring in the windows.
In 1952, David supervised the
construction on the site where
the Guggenheim now stands of the
pavilion and model home designed
by Mr. Wright for an exhibit
celebrating 60 years of his
work.
Currently, an exhibit at the
Guggenheim is celebrating the
60th anniversary of that 1952
exhibit.
Priscilla returned to high
school teaching but also wrote.
One of her essays is in the
book.
And gave lectures on Wright's
organic architecture and on
Taliesin.
Our presentation has given you
only brief glimpses into the
diary, but we hope you will be
intrigued by this personal
account of a young, idealistic
couple's year at Taliesin and
the insights it provides
into Frank Lloyd Wright
and his Fellowship.
[APPLAUSE]