Spring Green, WI is home to two interesting, and polar opposite, attractions: Taliesin, the home built by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the House on the Rock, the home built by Alex Jordan Jr. One is exquisite, even with its signs of deterioration; the other is just plain weird.
Wright, a flamboyant, womanizing architect who had already made his reputation, built Taliesin between 1909 and 1911 on land in southwestern Wisconsin where he had spent many a summer in his youth. He longed to create a home there for his mistress, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, and himself out of the public eye of Chicago’s critics. Wright, after all, had left his wife of twenty years with whom he had six children for Mamah, the wife of one of his clients. It was scandalous behavior in those days, but then Wright could always be counted on for scandal of one kind or another.
Taliesin is named for a Welsh poet from post-Roman days. Wright’s family was Welsh, so the name is well-fitted. There is little left of the bard’s work, and perhaps this was prophetic of what’s happened to the architect’s legacy as well. There are relatively few Wright homes intact anymore.
To say Taliesin is among them is problematic. It still stands in its original location and houses much of Wright’s original furniture and other possessions. At the same time, the current home is the third incarnation of the residential portion of the estate. The first Taliesin burned in 1914, killing Mamah, her two children, and four others. After burying the woman he loved, Wright rebuilt the home only to have it ravaged by an electrical fire in 1925. Once again he rebuilt it, and this is the version Earl and I saw today.
Wright was an experimenter and saw Taliesin as a place to test his theories. He was also more interested in drama than permanence, which could account for the fact that he didn’t establish a solid foundation for the home. Currently, work is being done to shore the home so it doesn’t fall off the mountain to which it clings.
Yet, even with these problems the house is magnificent, especially if one adheres to the Prairie School of Architecture. Taliesin is a great airy example. We have seen the Dana House in Springfield, Illinois; while it is touted as being one of the most authentic Wright home is existence today, in my mind it doesn’t compare to the lightness of Taliesin, regardless of the dark deeds done there.
After finishing our tour of Wright’s home, we drove six miles down the road to The House on the Rock built by Alex Jordan Jr. This edifice is said to be Wisconsin’s most popular tourist attraction, and judging from this one day in early September I’d say there were 400 percent more cars in the parking lot than at Taliesin. Earl wasn’t particularly interested in another tour, so he decided to listen to the ball game (White Sox vs. Twins) on the car radio while I ventured forth alone. (Shades of Reptile Gardens, see September 1 blog.)
I chose the least expensive tour, which included only Jordan’s gate house, his main house, his gardens, and a museum that worked hard to make Jordan special. I did the museum first to learn about this man who spent almost fifty years creating his monument. He wasn’t well known in any other field; he didn’t do well in school; I’m not sure he ever married; and I never found out how he acquired the money to build this monument to himself. I say “monument” because there were two other tours for purchase that allowed visitors to see his massive collections of musical instruments, calliopes, planes, a whimsical whale, and other eccentricities. Given that I’ve already seen a lifetime of collections in the past three weeks, I saved the money.
What I did see was merely strange. Jordan seemed to carve his house from the very rock itself, so that many walls in many rooms were the actual stone. The house itself felt like a cave with few windows and narrow hallways. Perhaps there is architectural cohesion, but I failed to see it. One of the final rooms Jordan built is the Infinity Room, a long narrow corridor with over 3,000 small windows that juts 218 feet out over the main building to reveal incredible views of the valley 156 feet below. The last 140 feet of the room are suspended, unsupported in midair. It is not for the faint hearted. I qualified, but I did go into the room as far as my fears allowed.
Jordan seems to be as much of a recluse as Wright was a public figure. It’s interesting that today Jordan’s work is more popular. Yet, Wright’s home with its connection to the land and its connection to the architect himself cannot be dismissed. Is it merely better marketing that makes Jordan’s home more popular? Or is it that Wright died in 1959 while Jordan died in 1989? Or what? You have to visit both the House on the Rock and Taliesin to decide for yourself.
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