HISTORIAN’S CORNER: August 24
Taliesin Preservation’s historian Keiran Murphy’s weekly round-up of noteworthy FLLW resources.
This Sunday marks the 91st wedding anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright and “Olgivanna”. Wright married Olga Lazovich Milanoff on August 25, 1928 in Rancho Santa Fe, California and spent the remainder of his life with her. Taken in the early 1950s, this photo shows them arriving at the Hillside structure on the Taliesin estate in Wisconsin. Wright spent the bulk of most days in the Hillside drafting studio, then rested at the main house at Taliesin before evening dinner with the Taliesin Fellowship. [Property: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).]
TRENDING ONLINE:
Get design inspiration via this assortment of architectural images from different periods of time and cultures: pinterest.com/infillnc/architecture-awesomeness/
TALIESIN FELLOWSHIP/SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AT TALIESIN
Check out this innovative residence in Tucson, Arizona designed by Nick Mancusi and Victor Sidy, two former Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture students: residentialdesignmagazine.com/14905/design-lab-tucson-residence-by-mancusi-design-and-victor-sidy-architect/. (*Fun fact: Sidy was the school’s dean from 2005-2015 before it was renamed The School of Architecture at Taliesin.)
DISCOVERIES AT TALIESIN:
Wright used Taliesin as a “sketchbook” from 1911-1959 in addition to it being his own home. Thus trusting the Taliesin drawings is often discouraged since the architect put things in drawings that never came to fruition—or changed things without keeping drawings of them. We usually, therefore, avoid relying on these sketches to reach factual conclusions about Taliesin’s history. Except when they’re not, like when in the early 2000s (during a major drainage project at Taliesin), the top of a series of stairs was revealed which had only previously appeared in one floor plan.
The drawing, executed in 1941 for the book “In the Nature of Materials, 1887-1941: The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright” (by Henry-Russell Hitchcock), illustrated where the steps stood. The steps were perpendicular to where they stand now. For a few years, these descending stairs stood parallel to a pool in Taliesin’s Breezeway—in front of the later door into Taliesin’s “Little Kitchen.”
Fortunately, the existence of the top riser does not interfere with the structural integrity of the Breezeway or “Little Kitchen“. So the steps previously discovered over 15 years ago have been left untouched and were covered back up when restoration in the area was completed.
