Taliesin (studio) - Fires

Fires

Wright and Mamah Borthwick (now going by her maiden name) moved into Taliesin shortly after Christmas, 1911. On August 15, 1914, while Wright was in Chicago completing a large project, Midway Gardens, Julian Carlton, a manservant whom Wright had hired two months earlier, set fire to the living quarters of Taliesin and murdered seven people with an axe as the fire burned. The dead were: Mamah; her two children, John and Martha; Thomas Brunker, the foreman; Emil Brodelle, a draftsman; David Lindblom, a landscape gardener; and Ernest Weston, the son of the carpenter William Weston. Two victims survived the melee—William Weston and draftsman Herb Fritz—and the elder Weston helped to put out the fire that almost completely consumed the residential wing of the house. Carlton, hiding in the unlit furnace, survived the fire but died in jail six weeks later. His wife Gertrude also survived, having escaped the burning building through the basement; she denied any knowledge of her husband's actions.

Wright eventually rebuilt the living quarters, naming it Taliesin II. These living quarters were again destroyed by fire on April 22, 1925. According to Wright's autobiography, the fire appeared to have begun near a telephone in his bedroom. Wright also mentioned a lightning storm approaching immediately before noticing the fire. Wright scholars speculate that the storm may have caused an electrical surge through the telephone system, sparking the fire. Wright began the rebuilding of Taliesin, which he now named Taliesin III, shortly afterward.

Wright's interaction with Taliesin lasted for the rest of his life, and eventually, he purchased the surrounding land, creating an estate of 593 acres (2.4 km²). Over the following decades, Wright used the house as an experiment, continually changing it, often using his apprentices in the Taliesin Fellowship (founded in 1932) as the workforce; he also invited artists to stay and work with him in the Deco Decorative movement, and he started and mentored well-known artists such as Santiago Martinez Delgado. This was particularly true once he began a winter home, Taliesin West, in Scottsdale, Arizona (1937–1959), in 1937. After this, Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship "migrated" between the two homes each year. This allowed Wright the ability to return to each home with a new perspective. To Wright, Taliesin was perfected with each change, yet subject to continual evolution.