Riverview Terrace Restaurant

The Riverview Terrace Restaurant, located in the Frank Lloyd Wright® Visitor Center, offers full-course dinners and fine dining, featuring locally grown ingredients, micro-brews and imported wines.

Dining schedule through the Taliesin tour season (May 1 - October 31):

May:
Breakfast and lunch served daily, open 9 – 4
Dinner served Friday and Saturdays, 5 – 9

June – September:
Breakfast and lunch served daily, open 9 – 4
Dinner served Tuesday thru Sunday, 5 – 9

October:
Breakfast and lunch served daily, open 9 – 4
Dinner served Friday and Saturdays, 5 – 9

The phone number for the cafe is: (608) 588-4507.

History

In 1953, Frank Lloyd Wright designed a building adjacent to the Taliesin® Estate, which he called the “gateway” to Taliesin. The building overlooked the Wisconsin River and included a restaurant and a meeting room for potential clients. While the architect began construction on the building in 1953, he was unable to complete it before his death in 1959. Former apprentices completed the building in 1967 and it operated as an independent restaurant, The Spring Green, for 25 years.

In 1993, Taliesin Preservation, Inc. purchased The Spring Green in order to convert it into a visitor center, with a bookstore and tour program. The building was renovated in 1993 and the next year saw the first full season of tours from the building. Thus, the building finally became the gateway that Wright had envisioned.

The visitor center houses the Taliesin Bookstore, the Riverview Terrace Restaurant, and is the departure point for all tours of the Taliesin Estate. It is free and open to the public from May 1-October 31, and on the weekends in November and April. It also houses offices for TPI tours administration, TPI preservation planning and research, and landscape management.