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..Read More