Building Taliesin: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home of Love and Loss

Front Cover
Wisconsin Historical Society, Jun 12, 2012 - Architecture - 223 pages
Through letters, memoirs, contemporary documents, and a stunning assemblage of photographs - many of which have never before been published - author Ron McCrea tells the fascinating story of the building of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, which would be the architect's principal residence for the rest of his life. Photos taken by Wright's associates show rare views of Taliesin under construction and illustrate Wright's own recollections of the first summer there and the craftsmen who worked on the site. The book also brings to life Wright’s "kindred spirit," "she for whom Taliesin had first taken form," Mamah Borthwick. Wright and Borthwick had each abandoned their families to be together, causing a scandal that reverberated far beyond Wright's beloved Wisconsin valley. The shocking murder and fire that took place at Taliesin in August 1914 brought this first phase of life at Taliesin to a tragic end.
 

Contents

Chapter 1 From Tuscany to Taliesin
13
Chapter 2 The Beloved Valley
33
Chapter 3 Building Taliesin
59
Chapter 4 Life Together
121
Chapter 5 Transformations
173
Acknowledgments
210
Illustration Credits
215
Index
217
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2012)

Ron McCrea is a prize-winning journalist and former Alicia Patterson Fellow who worked on the news desks of New York Newsday, the San Jose Mercury News, the Washington Post, the Washington Star, the Boston Globe, and the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, where he served for a decade as city editor. He appears in the E! Entertainment Network’s documentary Mysteries and Scandals: Frank Lloyd Wright and the BBC’s Frank Lloyd Wright: Murder, Myth and Modernism, and wrote the script for “The Making of Monona Terrace: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Last Public Building,” a finalist at the New York Film Festival. He serves on the board of directors of AIA Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Society of Architects, as a professional affiliate member, and was the communications director for Wisconsin governor Tony Earl. He holds degrees from Albion College and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.