This is a World Heritage site, not a park site. The Guggenheim Museum in NYC is Frank Lloyd Wright’s final masterpiece completed after his death. Solomon Guggenheim was a guest at Taliesin. I first saw the architectural plans at Taliesin West, where I also noticed a nautilus. And the structure also reminds me of the curved, descending covered walkway that connects Fallingwater to the hill. The circular ramp is iconic, and perusing an exhibit called Measuring Infinity while slowly descending is delightful.
Jefferson’s entryway is like a science museum. The wind vane connects to a display on the ceiling outside, the clock connects to a series of weights that display the day of the week. The antlers on the wall show American megafauna, and the Native American artifacts represent various tribes. There’s a concave mirror which reflects your image upside down, and there are various maps, as one would expect from the sponsor of Lewis & Clark’s expedition. The rest of the house also includes various gadgets and experimental devices, so he apparently enjoyed being seen as a wizard.
To call the house symmetrical is an understatement. The other side also has columns, well, just look at the back of a nickel. There are long wing-like patios connecting outbuildings, a tunnel running the transverse length underneath, and a winding garden path. Monticello means ‘little hill’ in Italian, but the views are impressive. Jefferson used to peer down through his telescope at the University of Virginia, which he also designed and founded and which is also part of this World Heritage site.
Jefferson is unpopular today, due to his treatment of slaves, and today’s Monticello does an excellent job of describing the hard life of the hundreds of enslaved people who worked here. The house tour includes the slave tour, and the docents are knowledgeable and answer a whole range of difficult questions. DNA testing revealed many secrets of Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings—a child when it began—, and much more research has been done to unearth fascinating and desperate stories of slavery and a few of liberation. Jefferson knew slavery was wrong, and he had argued against it as a younger man. Some of his friends and colleagues freed their slaves and urged Jefferson to do the same, but with only a few exceptions, such as his own biracial children, he refused even in his will.
It is not wise to condemn the man entirely, however. If you believe that all men are created equal, that we all deserve freedom of religion without government interference, and many other American ideals, then you agree with Jefferson, who enshrined those ideals in our nation’s founding. We should hate the man for his racism and for perpetuating slavery instead of helping end it, but we should also admire his genius, as an architect, a revolutionary, and a renaissance man. Jefferson knew that the most memorable characters of the ancient classical ages all had tragic flaws that often destroyed them in the end, but that’s why we remember their stories—both good and evil—, to learn from them.
As you may be able to tell from the folks walking through my photo, Fallingwater is popular. There were tours for about a dozen each running every few minutes constantly. The house and 1500 acres were donated by the client’s son. The reserve is now 5,000 acres in rural Pennsylvania. I ate lunch at Polymath Park, about 45 minutes away, where they have four Wright homes, a Treetop restaurant and even let a few lucky folks spend the night.
This World Heritage site may be Wright’s greatest private home, his masterpiece of organic architecture. The multilevel home and guesthouse are built over the Bear Run Falls and into the rocky hillside. Several steps descend into the creek, and there are pools for swimming, for enjoying the creek and even for washing up. Unsurprisingly, the home has had some leaks, water and flood damage, but overall the waxed stone floors, stone walls and stucco covered steel reinforced cantilevered structures retain their stunning appearance. The many patios extend out over the water providing myriad views while adding to the modern exterior design.
The Kaufmanns owned Pittsburgh’s premier department store and welcomed employees here to play tennis, swim and enjoy nature. They also collected art, and much of their collection is still here, including an original from their friend Diego Rivera, who visited here with Frieda Kahlo. Much of the furniture is original and designed by Wright. Instead of abstract, complicated, multicolored glass window designs, Wright used plain glass windows, but in fascinating ways, especially by running the glass all the way to the corner from two sides without any corner support. From across the creek below the house, there is a stacked column of such windows running between floors, and each opens to provide an exquisite series of views that descend like the falls from the small upstairs room to the creek. Iconic.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s mother got him the job of designing a new church for her Unitarian congregation in their Oak Park neighborhood. Still used by the Unitarian Universalists today, this progressive architecture combines Egyptian and Japanese elements in a uniquely American temple. Wright’s signature custom light fixtures, intricate skylights, wheat colorings and guided journey from low, dark compressed spaces into the release of high open space and light from above, all contribute to a sense of awe. This World Heritage Site has been restored to exceptional condition and is open for excellent, detailed tours.
This classic 1910 Frank Lloyd Wright house is in the middle of the University of Chicago. Take the self-guided walking tour to learn about some of the nearby famous buildings. The campus is Oxford style, but Wright shattered traditional norms in this multilayered brilliant home.
The footprint is long and narrow, which Wright used to advantage, capturing light along the long south side, adding pointy ends, like the breakfast nook above on each end, and an open floor plan the length of the home. The colored glass in the window has iridescent multihued glazes on the outside, including pink, purple and lavender. Outside the home emphasizes the horizontal with brick colored mortar up and plain mortar sideways, and inside the vertical. From outside the home appears private, behind walls, with the front door hidden, but from inside, especially upstairs, the home has open views of what were once open fields and are now busy campus structures and spaces.
This World Heritage site is fascinating and is one of the most important architectural works of the 20th century.
OK, this is neither a park unit nor a heritage site, but there are a dozen Frank Lloyd Wright houses within a block or two, well worth a short stroll. And this was his working home, which he built at age 22 in 1889 and where he designed many of his best works. (Suburban Chicago ‘villages’ like this one grew rapidly after the Great Fire in 1871). Until you see the neighborhood with the fancy Victorian homes that were there when Wright began his career, it’s difficult to appreciate what he was competing against. Wright demonstrated that Americans could innovate and not merely copy European styles.
The home is notable for its Egyptian influence. At the time, Americans understood the East—near, mid & far—broadly as ‘Oriental’, and Wright even blended Mayan, Japanese and Egyptian styles together, in his own exotic mythology, not copied but stolen, reimagined and given new interpretation and life. Wright also used the home to experiment with bay windows, recessed lighting and various high ceilings and to display such modern conveniences as indoor plumbing and electricity. The home has been restored to 1907 including some rare pieces of furniture—and a Steinway built into a staircase that you have to see to believe—, to capture more of Wright’s ideas which reappear perfected in his later masterpieces.
Not all of Frank Lloyd Wright’s clients were extremely wealthy. He designed many homes for normal people, including this one in a residential neighborhood in Madison. Faced with a client, Mr Jacobs, who demanded a home for only $5,000, Wright also demonstrated that he could keep to a budget, building this for that price in 1936 during the Great Depression. He called this new style Usonian, which meant American Utopia open to the Democratic masses. The World Heritage committee must have been impressed with the full tour inside, but since it is still being lived in, the home is not open to tours.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Welsh grandparents bought a large parcel of land out here in Wisconsin, and his mother asked Frank to come back from Europe—where he was philandering with the wife of a client—and design a home here. He did and named it Taliesin (say ‘Tally-Essen’), which as I said before, means ‘brow’ in Welsh. To expand on that, it really is named after a 5th century bard of early Britain whose works were partly preserved in a Welsh book, so it takes on the meaning of ‘high-brow’ or ‘highly cultured, scholarly and well-versed in rare interests’. Wright obviously identified with the term positively, as he used it to name his most personal home, where he chose to live longest. In an amusing letter on display in the visitor center, Wright claims to love Wisconsin in part for the lack of ‘high-brows’, although he notes that Wisconsin does have several people who are ‘educated beyond their capacity’.
Unfortunately, his mistress and two of her children moved into the house and were killed in a fire started by a servant, who poured kerosene on the floors, locked the doors and dispatched all but one fire survivors outside with an axe. Wright rebuilt and lived here with his third wife (his second OD’d). The room above was built for a photo shoot in the 1950s, and shows the wooded hills and river valley that reminded his grandparents of Wales. Wright also built a high ‘bird-walk’, or narrow balcony jutting straight out, with phenomenal views that defines the home from the road below. The house is filled with Japanese influences and Asian art. His many students lived and worked in the barn they helped redesign and build, and a few still live here today.
Taos Pueblo has been continuously occupied for over 1,000 years—perhaps far longer—, much older than European settlements, and it is a World Heritage Site. Archaeologists have not extensively excavated the area—because the Red Willow people are still living there—, but there is evidence of trade with Mesa Verde and other early Native American settlements dating back many centuries. The multistory building above is home to many families, and folks on the upper floors climb ladders to access their apartments. While modern doors and windows have been added, the families, community and tribal government preserve the village in its original form, using mostly traditional building materials and avoiding electricity and plumbing anywhere within the village.
The pueblo sits below the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a significant portion of which were returned to the community by President Nixon, including the Blue Lake and the headwaters of the Red Willow Creek. The creek runs through the middle of the village, is the sole source of water and flows into the Rio Grande. The Rio Grande Gorge southwest of Taos is strikingly beautiful, as are the Palisades near Eagle’s Nest northeast. The pueblos in this area are at the crossroads of ancient trading routes from coast to coast and to Central America.
Taos means Red Willow in the Tiwa language, and it is a town in an area crowded with history. Coronado arrived in 1540, and the Spanish built the first San Geronimo Church in 1620. When their Native dances, songs and worship were prohibited, the people here joined the Pueblo Revolt, which destroyed this any many other churches and forced the Spanish to retreat to what is now Mexico. The Spanish eventually reconquered the area and rebuilt the church. After the Spanish were forced to cede their territory to end the Spanish American War, the US Cavalry eventually was sent to subdue the people, who took refuge in the church. There were no survivors of the artillery bombardment, and the old church grounds are now a cemetery. The new San Geronimo Church contains a statue of the Virgin Mary from the old church, and the villagers practice both their indigenous Nature-focused religion and Catholicism with indigenous elements.
The locals give tours, sell handicrafts and run bakeries and cafes. Al’Thloo’s (grandmother’s) Cafe serves excellent Piñon Coffee and a Taos Pueblo Taco on freshly baked Frybread. The proprietress explained that the creek is currently near record flooding, due to the unnatural heat this Spring, and she informed me about the havoc that the Climate Crisis is having on snowpack, wildfires, drought, irrigation, crops and ranching. Her husband fought in WWII, and her family has been involved in supporting Native American causes for decades from here to Standing Rock. I wish more people were as clear-eyed and passionate as she is.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home until his death in 1959, this World Heritage site is a remarkable example of his architecture. The architect preferred to build just below the top of a hill, on the ‘brow’ or taliesin in Welsh. The triangular pool brings the background mountains into the foreground, and the front walk forms a point like the bow of a ship to admire distant mountains, like islands across the undulating desert landscape where cholla cactus looks like coral. Besides the bright red door behind the rock and the small ornately carved scene to the right, there are Chinese influences throughout, including many more carvings, an elaborate story panel, a round garden door, a bell, a dragon and other architectural touches. Inside you can sit in his origami chairs and study the internal structure of a nautilus or the draft blueprint of the Guggenheim. Wright brought his students and apprentices to live and work, and he established an institute dedicated to his school of architecture. Situated in the tony Scottsdale neighborhood, the audio tour of the property is detailed, takes you around step by step and explains his architectural philosophy. Guided tours are also available, and schedules & numbers are strictly limited to keep a steady flow through the small parking lot and on the tours.
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