Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
jects to build ponds, wetlands, and a wildlife area, a green tension line of sorts. In fact,
Spring Green didn't get a stoplight along busy U.S. 14 until 1995.
Sights
Throw a dart blindfolded in the Spring Green area and it'll hit the word “Wright.” In 1911,
three miles south of Spring Green's village center in the Jones Valley, Frank Lloyd Wright
began work on
Taliesin
(Welsh for “Shining Brow”) on the homestead of his Welsh an-
cestors. He had already made quite a name and reputation for himself in Wisconsin and
in architectural circles, both good and bad. An unabashed, monumental egoist, Wright in
his lifetime had a profound artistic and architectural influence upon the Badger State. He
also enraged proper society with his audacity and uncanny ability to
épater les bourgeois,
that is, to stroke his own famed devil-may-care predilections. When he wasn't dashing off
preternaturally radical designs, he was alternately a deadbeat dad, a browbeater, and—one
dare say—a megalomaniac. And one who cut a figure with his ever-present cape and pork-
pie hat. As he said, “I had to choose between hypocritical humility and hated arrogance.”
Hismostfamousexchangeoccurredoveraclient'sphoningWrighttoinformhimthatrain-
water was dripping on his table in his new Wright home. To which the master purportedly
replied, “Move your table.”
Wright stressed the “organic” in everything, and his devotion to the natural world pred-
ated environmental consciousness by generations (though the Japanese had it figured out
millennia before Wright visited Tokyo and apparently had an epiphany). Taliesin is a per-
fect example—gradually pulling itself along the crown of a hill, not dominating the peak.
As it's the preeminent architectural design school, today thousands of acolytes (not
really an exaggeration) study under the Taliesin Fellowship. The 600-acre grounds consist
of his residence, Taliesin; Hillside Home School, a boardinghouse for a school run by an
aunt; a home built for his sister (Yan-Y-Deri, Welsh for “under the oaks”); a windmill (his
first commissioned project); and Midway Farm, all built between 1902 and 1930 while
Wrightandhisassociatesoperatedhisstudioandworkshopfromthemainbuilding.Locally
quarried sandstone is the predominant rock, and everywhere, those unmistakable Frank
Lloyd Wright roofs. Wright would shudder to see how time has begun to ravage his es-
tate—herculean efforts are under way to restore aging and nature-damaged structures.
The
visitors center
(877/588-7900,
www.taliesinpreservation.org
or
www.wrightinwisconsin.org
)
, more like a huge gift shop, is open 9am-5pm daily May
1-October 31, shorter hours April and November-mid-December.
