What It’s Like to Stay at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Longtime Home and Studio, Taliesin

Any fan of Frank Lloyd Wright knows his architecture is centered around harmony between indoors and out. On a recent, crisp summer evening, as I stood barefoot, in a towel, lost in the courtyard of what was once Wright’s personal home in Spring Green, Wisconsin, this principle had never been more apparent. I felt the judgmental gaze of his tall, cast-concrete garden sculptures of mythological female figures, called Sprites, their arms crossed, eyes gazed downward, but still seeming to wonder, what was *I* doing *there*? I hoped the guided tour in the living room couldn’t see me as I emerged from a dark, skinny hallway, where I’d showered in a yellow-lit bathroom next to a handful of bedrooms once used by Wright’s apprentices. But after a 6 a.m. flight and a corridor of identical doors, I couldn’t find my way back to mine.

I’m probably not the first person who has ended up lost at Taliesen, but I’m likely one of the first journalists. While there are many options for guided day tours of the 800-acre rural estate where Wright lived and worked for nearly five decades, staying overnight is a rare privilege. In 2021, Taliesin Preservation added weekend workshops with classes in crafts like baking, photography, and painting, which, for $1,500, grant everyday Wright fans the chance to stay on the grounds. In early June, though, for the first time in the property’s 113-year history, journalists were invited to spend two nights there for the reopening of its Hillside Theater after a five-year $1.1 million restoration.

Since the start of fellowships at Taliesen in 1932, the Hillside Theater served as a multiuse entertainment space for Wright’s apprentice program, which hosted movie screenings and concerts for the public on Sundays. (The theater is housed in the same building as the drafting studio used by Wright’s protégés.) In the mid-’50s, Taliesin fellows made a few structural updates to the theater following a fire. But since then, it remained unchanged. Though Wright is arguably the most famous American architect, and one of the most influential of our time, his buildings have a reputation of being difficult to maintain. The theater, among them, was aging poorly, prone to leaks, and in need of a restoration.

At the grand reopening gala, which coincided with what would’ve been Wright’s 157th birthday, I brushed shoulders with ticket-buying foundation members and owners of Wright-designed homes. After a performance in the theater, we ate dinner in the lofty, glass-ceilinged drafting studio, still outfitted with large tables and photos of Wright with his mentees. A cellist played next to a photo of Wright and John Lautner, and cakes with wildflowers were served.

Though Wright’s persistence to keep Taliesen alive against all odds makes for good lore, I have to admit: At first, I was nervous the house was haunted. 

Wright lived in his 37,000-square-foot home and studio from 1911 until his 1959 death. (In 1937, however, he and his fellows started spending winters at Taliesin West in much-warmer Arizona.) But his connection to the land goes back to the mid-1800s, when his ancestors, the Lloyd Jones family, homesteaded nearby. Wright spent summers on his uncle’s farm, which led to a love of the region and the building blocks of his organic architecture principles. Taliesin is considered the most complete embodiment of those ideas, cultivated from his earlier Prairie style works. The site’s history, though, is as complicated as Wright’s, whose personal difficulties are well recorded. 

Wright built the original Taliesin to live in with his mistress Mamah Borthwick after he designed a few structures on the property for his relatives, including the interior of a chapel for his minister uncle, and his sister’s residence (the design of which was based on his 1907 article titled "A Fireproof House for $5000"). In 1914, a few years after Wright finished the residence, a disturbed employee committed arson and murdered Brothwick along with six others on the property. After rebuilding, a second fire—this time accidental—destroyed the living quarters in 1925. Though Wright’s persistence to keep Taliesen alive against all odds makes for good lore, I have to admit: At first, I was nervous the house was haunted.

"Not in your wing," the staff reassured me without flinching. Later, when a representative from the foundation showed me burned ceiling beams in the outdoor passage between the living and working quarters from the second fire, they said Wright joked that the burning of his bedroom but not his office meant God approved of his work, but not his personal affairs. (I made it through the weekend unscathed, save a dozen mosquito bites.)

Spending the weekend at Taliesin is to live and breathe Wright’s celebrated architectural principles, and occasionally be confronted with evidence of his complex personal ones. In the main house, Wright and his third wife, Olgivanna, who helped him establish and run the fellowship program, slept in separate bedrooms with single beds, which was a fairly common setup in that era. The couple sometimes shared a third bedroom with a pink accent wall, a built-in fireplace, a bed that could fit the two of them, and of course, a working desk. Of the three, the room where Wright slept is the largest.

The decor pulls from Wright’s own designs, as well as his collection of Asian art from his trips to China and Japan. (After all, this is the man who wanted everything in the homes he designed to reflect his taste and not "take away" from his architecture.) Look close enough, though, and you’ll count three exceptions: busts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson, and a massive painting of his mother above a fireplace in the workroom. (Perhaps a questionable spot for a structure with such a history of fires.) Throughout the residence, the ceilings are low and there’s more furniture that encourages work than comfort. But just when you feel compressed, Wright’s signature release comes with a higher ceiling and a strategically placed window, an upholstered chair or a built-in sofa with seat pads. 

In the living room, there’s a grand piano next to an angular, carved-wood sheet music stand and chair unit, designed by Wright for a string quartet. In Taliesin’s heyday, architecture apprentices and live-in multidisciplinary artists would entertain the community with live music here after hours. Those parties were likely more riotous than the dinner I attended in the drafting studio, but their details come only in the form of chatter by foundation employees. Still, I like knowing that even under Wright’s notoriously watchful eye, Taliesen residents let loose. I can see why two former apprentices, 100-year-old Minerva Montooth and Effi Casey, still live on the property half a century later (part time for Casey).

Over the weekend’s packed schedule of tours, hikes, and meals, I notice that folks at Taliesen can’t seem to decide whether to call its founding architect Mr. Wright or simply Wright. I imagine staff members who push for the mononym are seeking to humanize the genius through his work, and not his tumultuous personal life, which has been pored over for years in the press, and even by Gen Z on true crime TikTok. Now that I’ve been a house guest, I opt to drop the mister.

Top photo by Tim Long Courtesy of Taliesin Preservation

Related Reading:

Tracing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Influence

3 Years and Over $2 Million: What It Costs to Restore a Frank Lloyd Wright Home

The Frank Lloyd Wright Road Trip You Need to Take