University Place  Jonathan Henken Lost Stories of Frank Lloyd Wright  November 10, 2012 UP801   cc >> One would think, given the popularity of the self-declared greatest architect of the 20th century, the study of Frank Lloyd Wright, the man and his prolific output, would be on the decline. And yet, what I call Wright studies is a flourishing field. A recent conference I attended in Mason City, Iowa, attracted several hundred homeowners, Wright enthusiasts, and scholars of Wright's architecture to visit several Wright buildings and numerous others by his followers in this quite rural part of north central Iowa. Today's panel shows the continued vitality of Wright's studies and offers us new avenues of investigation into the master's life and output. Ron McCrea's new book, "Building Taliesin: Frank Lloyd Wright's Home of Love and Loss," contains previously unpublished photos of Taliesin's construction and new information about Wright's creative partnership with his lover Mamah Borthwick. Sarah Leavitt's book, "Taliesin Diary: A Year With Frank Lloyd Wright," meanwhile, brings us the diary of Priscilla Henken, member of Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural colony known as the Fellowship and provides invaluable insights into architectural practice in the 20th century and the cultural history of the period in general. We're also very pleased for today's panel to have three members of the Henken family here to comment on Leavitt's work and experiences with Wright and the Fellowship. Through this panel, then, we'll have new insights into Wright and his work, reminding us that there's ever more to know about out architectural native son. For the introductions today, I will ask a distinguished guest to kick us off by introducing Ron McCrea, and then I will introduce the other panelists in this session. So, if I may ask Tony Earl to please join us at the podium to introduce Ron McCrea. 

[APPLAUSE]  >> Thank you very much. First of all, I want to say to Ron what an honor and a privilege it is to be asked to participate in this event. I've known Ron for a number of years, and I've known him to be committed almost to the point of being obsessive about Frank Lloyd Wright. And, for my own part, like anybody's who's lived in Wisconsin for more than 10-15 years, I have a Frank Lloyd Wright story, and it fits, I hope. My late friend, and it involves two other Wisconsin icons, Marshall Erdman and Gaylord Nelson. And Gaylord used to love to tell a story that when he was a struggling young lawyer and Marshall was a struggling young builder, they were best of pals. Marshall called him one day and said, Gaylord, I got the break of my life. What is that, Marshall? He said, I'm going to build a Unitarian church for Frank Lloyd Wright; it will make my name. Of course, he was going to get commission because nobody else would work for Mr. Wright at that time. [LAUGHTER] And he said, I want you to come out to Taliesin with me and help me draw the contract. 

Gaylord said, boy, I'd be delighted; I'd love to meet the man. So, on a given day, Marshall and Gaylord drove out to Taliesin, marched up to the door, knocked on the door, Mr. Wright appeared imperiously in his cape, and he said who's this with you, Erdman? And Marshall said, well, this is my friend, a lawyer, Gaylord Nelson; he's going to help us write the contract, Mr. Wright. And Frank Lloyd Wright said, dismiss the scrivener. [LAUGHTER] Now, if Mr. Wright had had a chance to read Ron McCrea's book, he would never say dismiss the scrivener about this book. It's a lovely book. It is a terrific book. I am a Luddite. I don't like electronic books. This book wouldn't work electronically. It's got to be on your lap. 

Beautiful photos, beautiful dedication to Elaine. It is a book that is clearly lovingly written, beautifully written, and although I fancy myself to know a bit about Frank Lloyd Wright, I learned a hell of a lot more. And this book is a delight for anyone who loves books. The tactile sensation. The visual sensation. The intellectual stimulation. This is a book for book lovers, and the guy who is responsible for it is my good friend Ron McCrea. [APPLAUSE]  >> It's nice to have you having my back for a change. [LAUGHTER]  I'm so pleased to be here and privileged to be introduced by one of my great Wisconsin heroes as well as friends, Tony Earl. And I want to say for a moment here that it was 30 years ago this Election Day that Wisconsin elected Anthony Scully Earl our governor. 

[APPLAUSE] He was faced with a situation, there was a fiscal cliff in front of him, too, at the time, but he took quite a different approach from our current governor. He did very much what the president is proposing to do now nationally, and it really worked for Wisconsin. Four years after he took office, Wisconsin was in the black and out of deficit. He did it by raising, temporarily putting a surcharge on the income tax based on the ability to pay. He increased the sales tax by a penny for tax and consumption. He also froze state employee pay for one year, including, notably, the faculty and staff of the University System which was highly unpleased with this, but it was fair, it was shared pain, and it did not destroy the traditions or institutions of Wisconsin, and it left it stronger at the end. He also did some very creative appointments. He appointed a lot of women to the bench, and he appointed minorities. He appointed a very diverse number of people. And I think that one of the most interesting appointments, other than my own... 

[LAUGHTER] That he made was the hire of a young intern in constituent relations. And her name was Tammy Baldwin. [APPLAUSE] And so, this man gave that woman her start in public service 30 years ago. And we honor him for that. We honor her, and I want to say as we go back to Taliesin I a hundred years ago, that there was another election in Wisconsin a hundred years ago when the presidential ballot included Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, and Eugene V. Debs. Quite a ticket. [LAUGHTER] But only men could vote, and there was a statewide referendum on the ballot of 1912 asking the voters of Wisconsin whether women should have the vote. And it was defeated 2-1. And so I think it's very symmetrical that a hundred years after Wisconsin defeated women's right to vote we have elected our first woman to the Senate of the United States. [APPLAUSE]  We are a two-book session today, and I'm going to try to keep mine much more brief than I would like because there's a lot to talk about. 

We are kind of looking at a tale of two Taliesins here, and they're very different. Mine is sort of the creation story. I'm calling my book, I refer to it as Taliesin's Book of Genesis, because it is the creation story, and to some degree it's a book of Revelation as well. [LAUGHTER] And I often like to say, luckily for Taliesin, there was no book of Leviticus. [LAUGHTER] In any event, this is the Book of Genesis. It's a creation story. And Taliesin I, which was conceived in Italy in 1910 and destroyed in the summer of 1914, a very small window of time, it lived for a very short career, but it was a very brilliant career and there's very little that's been known about it until recent times when new photographs have surface and new letters have surfaced that allowed me to mine the letters for references and learn a great deal more about the daily life of Taliesin I for the first time. And the Taliesin we're looking at, let me just see if I can start this. Oh, that's me in 1987 when I was starting my Taliesin studies. That's the bird walk off of Taliesin. 

That was just after Tony and I both left office and left it to Tommy Thompson and let us have just a moment of schadenfreude. [LAUGHTER] All right, and this is a wonderful photo of Taliesin as it is today. This is Taliesin III. One of the things I like to point out about this photograph is that there's no development around it. And if you could imagine Taliesin with development of strip malls and big mansions on those hills, it would lose a great deal of its, what Wright would call, spell power. But you can also see that Taliesin is not just buildings. It is a full composition. It's a composition that includes land and buildings, and, in fact, nature may be even more important than the buildings. And here's another one taken from the rear, over the rear looking toward the Wisconsin River that shows Taliesin. Unfortunately, the crown of the hill now is bare of those wonderful oak trees that meant so much. 

The Taliesin, I'll try not to do this, the Taliesin that we're discussing today is one that was about half the size of Taliesin III, the Taliesin that the Henkens experienced. It was smaller. It was more intimate. The hillside, which in Taliesin III was the School of Architecture, it had a movie theater, it had dormitories, and this time it was still a hillside home school and it was a boarding school run by Wright's aunts. And this is the time of horses and buggies and hand tools, and Taliesin was built very rapidly between the spring of 1911 and the spring of 1912. But, basically, the basic construction work was all done in the spring and summer using teams of horses and quarrying rock and using natural materials, and it must have been quite something to see. And it took its inspiration from a villa in Italy. This is our, let me introduce our couple. This is Frank Lloyd Wright, age about 38-39. That's the other thing, Wright is a much younger man in my book. 

He's a much more sensitive and gentle man, I think, in this time. This is the woman for whom Taliesin was built. And this is the first time this photograph has been seen. I was able to find it recently in Sweden at the home of Ellen Key. It turned out that Wright mentions sending a photograph, a portrait of Mamah, to Ellen Key in December of 1914 that was taken as a birthday present to him in that summer of 1914. And there were mentions of this photograph in letters, but it was not in the archive. So I simply asked the people, do you have any pictures of Mamah Borthwick? Are there any in photo albums? And they said, oh, yeah, here they are. [LAUGHTER] It's like, who knew? And that's one of the important things about Wright studies that I've found in the modern age with the Internet is asking the right questions, and asking questions makes all the difference. This is their view in Italy in the summer of 1910. This is my photograph of it. 

But they were in Europe from the fall of 1909 until the fall of 1910. And Wright wrote to a friend of his, Charles Ashbee, in England, "I have been very busy here in this little eyrie on the brow of the mountain above Fiesole, overlooking the pink and white Florence, spreading in the valley of the Arno below, the whole fertile bosom of the Earth seemingly lying in the drifting mists or shining clear and marvelous is this Italian sunshine, opalescent, iridescent." This is the place that they stayed called the Villino Belvedere, and it has a walled garden here. And the house actually goes down two stories. So, then on the right you can see this is the view overlooking Florence. This is another Italian seat near there. There was a Roman-Etruscan architectural park up on this hillside. This is Taylor Woolley, who was a young architectural draftsman from Salt Lake City who joined the Oak Park studio in 1908 and Wright trusted enough to bring him to Europe with him in 1909 and '10 to work on the plates for what was called a Wasmuth portfolio, which was a hundred plates of his best work that was going to be published and sold in Europe and then the United States. And so he's wearing this smock to protect his clothing from the India ink that they were using to do the drawings on probably velum or linen paper. This is his picture of the studio. I personally think that in these you can see on the wall some of the floor plans of Wright houses. 

I've actually been able to identify them in the book, which ones they're working on. And I think, personally, that Taylor moved that plant into the middle just for aesthetic purposes. This is a picture of a place that Wright writes about in Italy. This is the little table set for two under a rose bower. It was a very idyllic time, and it was, I think, an unusual experience of living indoors and outdoors for him, and I think it was one that gave him a feeling for the sweet Italian lifestyle and one that he wanted to keep going with her back in the United States, and they had to figure out a way to return. Catherine was not allowing him to get a divorce. She considered and called Mamah a vampire. And so she felt that by refusing to allow him to free him from the marriage, she was saving his soul. And Mamah, on the other hand, had no trouble getting a divorce from her husband Edwin Cheney and did that a year after she returned, right after she returned. And so she was divorced when she moved in with Wright and he was not. 

And let me just tell you, this is Taylor Woolley and his friend from Salt Lake City, Clifford Evans. There Clifford is 22, Taylor is about 27 or 26 in this picture. They're putting stain on the studio wing of Taliesin I. And he came at Wright's request in the late summer/mid-September of 1911 and stayed through the next summer when he returned to Salt Lake City. And that is where he left his negatives for his photographs that I was able to uncover just about a year ago. Here is what Mamah Borthwick said upon coming to her new home. This is the kind of rough outside entrance to what people never called Taliesin at the time. They called it the bungalow. And look at this. This is probably about the kind of situation that Mamah found when she arrived. 

It's still quite dug up. There's channeling going on to put heating pipes under the place, and it's not really habitable yet. The windows are still open to the elements. And she wrote to her mentor in Sweden, Ellen Key, who was the author of many books on many subjects, including fine design and the design of useful objects for the home in the arts and crafts movement tradition. But she also wrote on marriage reform and divorce reform, and in the four years that Frank and Mamah were together, she translated and published four of her books in English. One by Putnam in New York and three in Chicago. Wright, at the same time, wrote the book, "The Japanese Print: An Interpretation," and opened a whole second career for himself as a dealer in Japanese art. It was a very creative, productive time that they had in the four summers they had at Taliesin. So, her first report from Taliesin, she says, and I think she probably had been questioned by Ellen Key about taking up with a married man, and she says, "I have, as you hoped, made a choice in harmony with my own soul, the choice as far as my own life was concerned was made long ago, that is absolute separation from Mr. Cheney. A divorce was obtained last summer, and my maiden name is now legally mine. 

Also, I have since made a choice in harmony with my own soul and what I believe to be Frank Wright's happiness and am now keeping his house for him. In this very beautiful hillside, as beautiful in its way as the country about Strand," which is the name of Ellen Key's house on a lake in Sweden, "He's been building a summer house, and it's interesting she says a summer house suggesting there might have been a winter residence, perhaps in the city or townhouse, also planned, and there was a plan for a townhouse on the north shore of Chicago. The combination of site and dwelling, the most beautiful I have seen any place in the world. We are hoping to have some photographs to send you soon. I believe it is a house founded on Ellen Key's ideal of love. The nearest neighbor, a half a mile away, is Frank's sister where I visited when I first came here. She has championed our love most loyally, believing in her brother's happiness." And this is Jane Porter, and what that means is that she arrived at Taliesin but couldn't live there, so she moved in with Jane and her family which is on the grounds at a place called Taney Dairy which Wright designed in 1906 for his sister. In fact, all of the commissions in the valley were designed by Wright for women, including his aunts. I have thus far been very busy with the unfinished house and because of the fact that workmen were boarded here in a nearby farmhouse, sometimes as many as 36 at a time. Mr. Wright's sister has looked after this all summer, but when I came, it was turned over to me, and I've done very little of your translation work in consequence of the building. 

The house is now, however, practically finished and my time again free. Mr. Wright has his studio incorporated into the house, and we both will be busy with our own work with absolutely no outside interests on my part. My children I hope to have at times, but that cannot be just yet. And so, this is what she found, and listen to this. This is a suburban Illinois housewife with servants. There were two servants in the Cheney household. And suddenly she has turned into the construction crew cook arriving at Taliesin, which I think is kind of maybe the same sort of boot camp experience that the Henkens found when they arrived. Here's another, I call these pictures sweating brow because they're very... Here's the work crew, and this is Clifford again, standing and looking kind of preppy in the middle there. This is a little more cleaned up, and now the courtyard is taking shape. 

The statue there is called Flower in the Crannied Wall. It was a copy of one done for another woman client from Springfield, Illinois, Susan Dana. But if you notice here, it's still just a dirt path up the hill to what would become the tea circle. And later this would have stones and a stone circle and be much more developed. Now, this was a huge surprise when I saw this. This is a puppet theater. It's a puppet theater sitting in the unfinished living room of Taliesin that Wright has designed for his youngest son, Llewellyn, who was going to turn eight on November 15, 1911. So this is a very early picture. I knew what it was because there had been one other article with a picture from 1914 of this object, but we, until we saw this picture, we didn't know when and where it had been built And if you look at the scenery, it is an Italian scene. You can see the Cyprus trees in it. 

In fact, in one of the sketches it looks like there's a tower and a balcony, and it looks like he's created Romeo and Juliet. And this is little Llewellyn, a picture that his daughter sent me from France where she's a retired professor. This is a triptych of the living room from three photographs. This is a little more refined now. This is Mr. Wright's studio but at this point is still full of lumber and is being used as a carpenter shop. This is the draftsman drafting studio, and there was a bunk room off of that and a sitting room and draftsmen came and went. There were certain people, like Herbert Fritz, Sr, who were there all the time, but it was kind of an itinerant group of architects who would go between Chicago and Spring Green and spend time. And there were artists and other guest who came, but it was nothing like Taliesin III where you had resident school and apprentices. And this is, I love this photograph, this is one of the photographs, and these are stone masons who have just cemented in place the plaque on the pier at the entrance to Taliesin at the lower one next to the sort of waterfall or spillway that says "Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect," and that means Taliesin is officially open for business and they have just finished doing this. Well, the interesting thing, this is one of those other little how do you discover lost history. 

I met a woman who's 86 years old from Baraboo, and her name is Barbara Dresser. And she was the granddaughter of a man named Alfred Larson who was a stone mason, and I sent her all the pictures in the book and said, do you recognize anybody? And she said, well, only my grandfather. [LAUGHTER] So, this man here is Alfred Larson who was the grandfather of Barbara, and Barbara, her father was Herbert Fritz, Sr, and his mother was Alfred Larson's wife, Elvira. So, there were a lot of Taliesin aristocracy here and over the generations. I just love this picture that suggests this is the way it's done. And you can see it has a kind of tassel-like look from down the hill. And this is an open porch which is where Mamah and her children were killed in August 1914. It was never rebuilt. And Taliesin was sort of reoriented so that no one would ever actually live in that space again. For gardeners here, this is a really interesting photo because what you have here is gardeners with stakes and chalk laying out a grid on the slope below Taliesin for grid planting which is a very Italian way of planting on a slope. 

And I consulted Jerry Minnich, who wrote the Wisconsin Garden Guide, about this. And Wright used both contour and grid planting. And, in the next picture, you'll see some of the results. This is probably the spring of 1912. And here is the fall of 1912. These photographs were taken by a man named Fuermann, Clarence Fuermann, from Chicago. Jack Holzheuter found these photographs on eBay. They had not been published before, but I was able to, he got them for the State Historical Society which then made them available to me in time for the book. And you can see the same view. Now the courtyard, the inner courtyard is really much more pulled together and beautiful, and the tea circle is in place. 

And if you look closely through the opening at the far end of the building, you can see a Holstein calf and cow. And by the way, when I came to work for Tony Earl, I did not know the difference between and udder and a teat. [LAUGHTER] And I've always thought it was wonderful that I had to learn that fact from the governor of Dairyland. [LAUGHTER] Now, this is another picture in the Fuermann series that was not published before. And what's interesting about it, for me, is look at the vantage point. It's from the tea circle. It's looking toward the portico share. Under the portico share you see two children and a horse. Now, look at the next photograph. This is the same vantage point in 1914, shortly after Taliesin was burned down. 

The residential wing was burned down. Julian Carlton made his rampage, attacked, murdered seven people and swallowed acid, died himself cell 48 days later. And you can see that the portico share has now crashed to the ground. The studio wing remains. I don't think Wright is in this picture. There's a man sitting in the breezeway with a rifle over his lap. There's a man with a long beard who maybe Jenkin Lloyd Jones or Enis talking with some other guys. The studio wing was spared thanks to the efforts of William Weston, who, even though wounded, sprayed a water hose, garden hose, on it. And Wright did sometimes say that maybe that God disapproved of his life but approved of his work, but I don't think he really believed that. This is another picture of gawkers coming to look at the ruins. 

This is the story of the death of Julian Carlton, who, actually one of the nice things I like to say in these presentations is that small-town Wisconsin behaved wonderfully and nobly and responsibly in the aftermath of the crime of the century. They gave this man due process. He was given a court-appointed attorney. He was given two court appearances. He was given a special visit by the judge to counsel him on a plea that would allow him to die in a Dodgeville jail rather than at Waupun State Prison. He received good medical attention from very prominent doctors, and he basically got his rights even though he had committed, quite clearly, the crime of the century and horrible murders. But small-town Wisconsin behaved wonderfully, and the local press did not treat this tremendously luridly. It was full of racism, of course. All the headlines were "Black Beast" kills such and such; "Negro Slayer." Even the death certificates say, as cause of death, "killed by a Negro," as though that were a separate category of murder. But, basically, when it came, for the time and place, small-town Wisconsin behaved better and they may have behaved much better than Chicago did. 

This is Mamah's gravestone, and I know I've ruffled a few feathers by suggesting this is kind of inappropriate for them to put Mr. Cheney's name on her headstone after she had very firmly rejected it. And, at the very end, Wright went to Chicago and had to think things through. And he wrote a letter in December to Ellen Key. I'm looking for it. Looking for it. Basically, he says to her that I have a decision to make. I can either give in to despair or I can, as the heart of her would have me do, basically put her spirit into the work that takes shape under my hands. That's what he says. That basically he has decided to honor her by devoting his work to her. This is Ellen Key, a tough customer. 

[LAUGHTER] This is actually one of those portraits that Mamah mentions in a letter saying, "I saw this portrait by Nielsen, couldn't you have them erase those ugly balls on either side of your head because they look ugly." And so I looked around and was able to find the portrait she's talking about. Coming toward the end here, I think maybe I need to end. Let me have, do I have five minutes? I think I have five. I want to tell just a couple of stories about how you discover lost history. This Hiroshige print was found hanging on the wall of Ellen Key's home, and there's a letter from Mamah that says Frank is sending you a little Hiroshige that we hope you may care to hang in your new home. And a Swedish scholar, a woman, looked at this and happened to turn it over and found this inscription that it was a print by the great Japanese artist Hiroshige and a gift from the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Well, there had been no knowledge of a connection between Wright and Ellen Key before, so she went to the Swedish National Library and found in her archives these 10 letters from Mamah which then really unlocked everything we know about Taliesin I. And this is Ellen Key's partner desk, and you can see the Hiroshige hanging down the hall. What I want to tell you about this is that I, quite by accident, found a Stockholm architect who was willing to drive half way across Sweden and make these photographs for me and photograph the Hiroshige and find it, send it to me, asking nothing. People who are into Frank Lloyd Wright do all these things for the love of it. 

So I asked some of these people to send me pictures of themselves. This is her balcony. Not bad. [LAUGHTER] And this is Bjorn Sjunnesson, my unknown friend in Stockholm who provided this information. Now, at the very beginning, when it was first discovered that they were living together at Taliesin because he'd told everyone they had broken up, and he secretly built Taliesin with the help of his mother and this was found out, there was a huge spasm of coverage in the Chicago press, and this is typical of it. With "castle of love" and there are going to be sheriff's posses, there was even talk of tar and feathers, but in the middle of all of it, Mamah mentions in one of her letters that she's sending a column by a guy named Floyd Dell. Now, Floyd Dell was the editor of the Chicago Evening Post Literary Review and a great leader of the Chicago Avant Garde, and he has this wonderful thing where he says you can't, these people are being hounded to death for behaving sincerely and you're going to lose, it's not fair to her and you're going to lose a great career. And this had never been known or published. This is Floyd Dell looking a little bit peaked or jaundice. Well, I put a Northwestern University graduate student named Whitney Harrod on the trail of this column as a sort of graduate assistant. 

And she looked all over creation to find it, and she finally located it at the Widener Library at Harvard. And this is Whitney, and I like this picture because I say we are getting the news from the horse's mouth. [LAUGHTER] Finally, one of the treasures of the State Historical Society is a collection of photographs of the valley taken by Frank Lloyd Wright himself in 1900. Panoramic photographs that have almost an Asian quality to them, and when I was looking through the prints, my wife Elaine said I think that those prints go together. And we looked closer and she was able to see the junctures between three of them. And suddenly, what Wright was intending all along became apparent which was to take a panoramic photograph of the valley from the vantage point at the end of the valley looking toward the Wisconsin River. And so you see Taliesin's future site is up here on this side. But this is a discovery in itself. The pictures had been known for a while, but no one had ever seen this part of it. And so, who was my discoverer? My one and only, Elaine. 

[LAUGHTER] And here she is with Wright's muse. So I thank her, and I leave you back at Taliesin III, which was built twice more and had another, quite a different life when the Henkens arrived some time. I've read their book. It's really quite a different kind of place. In fact, sometimes I think, well, Taliesin I felt more like Tuscany; Taliesin III feels more like Transylvania. [LAUGHTER] So I give this to you. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]  >> If you want to come up, that's fine. >> Wonderful. All right, I want to introduce our next sort of part of the panel. 

We have four people in this. So, I'll begin by introducing Sarah Leavitt, who will be, I think, reading for us today. Sarah's curator at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, where her recent exhibitions have included House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage of 2009 and House and Home of 2012. She previously held the position of associate historian and curator at the Office of NIH History at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Her other research and museum experience include positions at the consulting firm History Associates as well as the Women of the West Museum in Boulder, Colorado, and the Slater Mill Historic Site in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Her book, "From Catharine Beecher to Martha Stewart: A Cultural History of Domestic Advice," was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2002. Other publications include articles on the history of the pregnancy test, online motherhood communities, and the television show Veronica Mars. She's most recently the editor of a publication called Taliesin Diary: A Year With Frank Lloyd Wright, and you'll hear about that today. Sarah graduated from Wesleyan University and holds a master's degree in museum studies and a PhD in American studies from Brown University. We will also hear from the three members of the Henken family. 

And I'll begin with Elissa Henken. Elissa R Henken earned her bachelor of arts in folklore and mythology at Radcliffe College at Harvard, her master's in Welsh language and literature at the University College of Wales, and her PhD at the Folklore Institute at Indiana University. She now teaches folklore and Celtic studies as a professor at the University of Georgia. Her published works include two books on Welsh saints, one on the Welsh national redeemer, Owain, I don't know how to pronounce this, Glyndwr. [LAUGHTER] And one co-authored with Mariamne H Whatley on folklore and human sexuality. She has also published articles on civil war legendary and developments in contemporary legend. Jonathan T Henken is a professional bagpiper and cabinetmaker. After earning his bachelor of science in oceanography from New York University, he develop his concurrent careers, using the knowledge of carpentry he developed growing up in Usonia. He serves as the Pipe Major of Mount Kisco Scottish Pipes and Drums, while also doing extensive solo piping. His work has been diverse, including being the Forbes Corporate and family piper, serving as the US Piper for the Bank of Scotland, performing as a guest soloist with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall and with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, playing at curling matches, fashion shows, and social events, including the opening of the Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

He also has an animal rescue farm and restores, shows, and rides antique motorcycles. Mariamne Henken Whatley is professor emerita in the Departments of Gender and Women's Studies and Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin Madison, where she also served for many years as the chair of GWS and as associate dean in the School of Education. She earned her bachelor of arts in English from Radcliffe and her master of science and PhD in biological sciences from Northwestern University. She has taught and written extensively about women's health, feminist approaches to science and sexuality education. She co-edited, with Nancy Worcester, five editions of women's health text and co-authored, with Elissa Henken, "Did You Hear About the Girl Who...?: Contemporary Legends, Folklore, and Human Sexuality." So, I want to welcome all our panelists, and I look forward to an exciting discussion. [APPLAUSE]  >> Hi. Of course, my most important qualification bringing me here today is that I am from the great state of Wisconsin, and it's a pleasure to be back here today. I'm just going to really briefly tell you a little about our book, and I'm going to let these folks read from the diary and really give you a sense of what the process was. I want to say just a little bit about the National Building Museum. For those of you who have never been to see use in Washington, DC, we're a museum of architecture and design. 

So, we were pretty excited when we got this diary that Mariamne sent a couple years ago. We, who like to think we know something about Frank Lloyd Wright and the Fellowship, were just thrilled to learn so many new things just opening random pages of the diary, which is what we started doing. And it seems like on every page after you get through the part about cooking all the food, which there's a lot about that which I found fascinating also, there was so much interesting material about the rights. We've jumped, of course, 30 years since Ron McCrea's story into the 1940s. Very different place at Taliesin. Very different architect in Frank Lloyd Wright. He's, of course, been through several iterations of his home, several wives, several projects himself. At the Building Museum when we first got the book, we, in fact, had just done a program from one of our founding members, Beverly Willis, studies women in architecture specifically and had just worked on a little movie project about women who had worked with Frank Lloyd Wright. So this was a particularly opportune moment for us to get this diary. And when we first opened, I just give just for an example since we're in the first week or so of November, in the first week of November in the diary Priscilla Henken talks about, first of all, a little postmortem of Halloween. 

Halloween was a big deal at Taliesin. All the fellows dressed up, and the year that she was there, they dressed up as famous paintings or people that were in famous paintings. She goes on about what everybody dressed up like, which was pretty neat. She also voted in Wisconsin. She was pretty excited that you could just walk right up to the polls, register to vote, and take away. She voted a straight socialist ticket that year. And then also in the first week of November, besides, again, cooking a lot of food, she talks about Armistice Day, which, of course, we now know as Veterans Day, and that led into a whole story about World War II and what it was like to be at Taliesin during World War II. And, of course, the story of conscientious objectors there at Taliesin, which led us into a whole story, it's a thrill to have Marcus Weston here with us today because he, as you'll see when you read the diary, plays a very big part, both in Priscilla's world at Taliesin but also, of course, in the history of the Fellowship. Anyway, so we decided that what would be really great is for all of us in the curatorial staff who are usually working on exhibitions, we really got to get into some primary source research and do some history writing, which was a real thrill for us. And one of the things that we did was look into the story of conscientious objection at Taliesin, and we used the Freedom of Information Act to FOIA his, Frank Lloyd Wright's file, FBI file, which is, as you maybe can imagine, very large. 

[LAUGHTER] And it was really fun. We spent several days, our whole staff, just pouring through. There's a lot of redacted material, a lot of black lines, but there's several telegrams between J Edgar Hoover and the Milwaukee FBI office, specifically about what was going on at Taliesin right in 1942-1943, in that period when Priscilla and David Henken were there. So that was a real thrill for us, and we got to really look into that and write about that experience. Another thing that we looked into was the film program at Taliesin. That was a really innovative and unique project that Wright was doing there, getting a lot of films from New York and from distributors. He showed a lot of Russian films. He showed a lot of Disney films. There's a pretty big variation in the film program there, and Priscilla goes through every week in the diary and talks about every film that they watch and some of her impressions and the other fellows impressions and also Wright's impressions of those films. So that was something that we kind of pulled out of the diary as we were looking through it. 

Another thing that we found really interesting was her discussion of being a Jewish couple moving from New York City into rural Wisconsin, and one of the things that we all kind of think we know about Wright is his antisemitism. So that was interesting watching her kind of grapple with that throughout the year that she was there. Of course, another thing that she talks about a lot is her experience of just being in Wisconsin, of traveling around. They went to Mineral Point. She traveled through, she came to Madison, walked around the lakes, she talks about the Isthmus, and she went into the State Historical Society and the Capitol. It was neat for me, having, of course, this connection with Madison, to hear her views about what she called the soldier town, since, of course, she was here during the war. So, I going to turn this over to the Henkens so they can read from the diary, and you'll get a sense of her. But I just do want to say it's such an honor for us to be part of this project, and one of the most fun things is when you read someone else's diary, of course, it's a very personal story, but the way that Priscilla writes the diary, she's a little snarky. She's not always, she is very free with her discussion of Wright and also Olgivanna Wright, the third Mrs. Wright, and that makes it fun to read, but it's also a really nice, on-the-ground reporting of what was happening there. One of the things that, as Wright scholars that we've read all of these memoirs of the fellows that are written so many decades after the fact, she's really writing, she's able to be a little more free in what she's saying, which, of course, makes it fun for us. 

So, we went through and tried to really pick out all of her cultural references and expand on those a little bit to make the diary easier to read. And we like to think of it as kind of our story too, that she's kind of telling this broader story about Wright that we can then learn to kind of fill in our understanding of Wright and his world. But, of course, most importantly, it's also her personal story, her family's story. And, with that, I'll turn it over to the Henkens. [APPLAUSE]  >> So, I'm Mariamne. Jonathan, Elissa, and as you can tell from our biographies, we're very well prepared to talk to about Frank Lloyd Wright architecture and historical diary research. [LAUGHTER] In October 1942, so 70 years ago, our parents, Priscilla and David Henken, left New York City to join the Taliesin Fellowship in order to study with Frank Lloyd Wright. Priscilla, who graduated from Hunter College and had a master's in English from Columbia by age 19, was a high school English teacher. David, who had a master's in mechanical engineering from City College, worked as a designer. Both were children of Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine who worked in the garment and millinery trades and were active in unions. 

David and Priscilla had a dream of forming a cooperative community in rural area outside New York City. When they saw an exhibit on Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City, David realized that Mr. Wright could help them with both the architectural and social visions for such a community. By the way, they also actually found out that Frank Lloyd Wright was still alive and that it was possible to work with him when they went to that exhibit because he was such an icon, they thought he had died. [LAUGHTER] Priscilla took leave from teaching and, with Mr. Wright's permission and his offer to have David's tuition cover both of them, accompanied David to Taliesin. They were 24 and 27 during their year at Taliesin. Priscilla kept a daily diary while she was there. While occasionally she read to us, her three children, short, entertaining passages from her diary, most memorably a vivid description of the Halloween party that Sarah mentioned, we never read it in its entirety until long after her death at age 50 in 1969 and after our father's death in 1985. For us, the diary gave us much better understanding of an experience that had been so central to their lives and, therefore, so central to our lives. The environment we grew up in was very strongly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright. Employing Mr. Wright's principles, our father designed and built our home in a community our parents founded, Usonia Homes in Pleasantville, New York, in which Mr. Wright was very involved in its initial years. 

We grew up hearing stories of Taliesin and the Wrights from many of our parents' friends who had been at Taliesin, including Pedro Guerrero, the great Wright photographer who died recently. And, as Sarah mentioned, another very great friend, an old family friend, Marcus Weston is in the audience, who was a Taliesin apprentice with them and played a prominent role in the diary. In a diary entry-- Oops. >> Sorry. >> That's okay. Marcus. [LAUGHTER] In a diary entry in her last week at Taliesin, Priscilla wrote that Marcus is one of the things for which we have to be grateful to Taliesin. >> Because the diary does not lend itself to the reading of long passages, we've put together some themes found throughout and illustrated those with short readings from the diary. The diary begins in October 1942, 70 years ago, on their first day as they eagerly throw themselves into observing, working, and learning.  >> Sorry. 

Our first view of Taliesin in daylight after 6:50 rising. Beautiful view of sloping hills. [MICROPHONE FEEDBACK] A carved wooden figure in the attitude of prayer outside our bedroom window. Fluffy white feathers on the stairs as we went up to breakfast, escorted by David Davidson. Feathers are peacocks', white, gray, iridescent. There are two little pea chicks. There were five, but they died as a result of being stuck to a newly tarred roof. [LAUGHTER] Met Mr. Wright. Wonderful, warm personality. A man is no good without his wife. 

Dug up parsnips in the vegetable garden with Ruth. It's fun turning over the rich brown earth and using a spading fork. Her enthusiasm frightens me. She bit into a parsnip with the wet earth clinging to it and liked it. I brushed mine off gently before attempting to follow suit. David hauled gravel from Mazomanie. Picked 6 bushels of apples with Ruth and Marcus. At tea, Mr. Wright told David to sit next to me, and I said he had to because I was the only familiar thing he had seen all day. >> Entries recorded Fellowship conversations and, of course, Mr. Wright's comments about his views, life, work, and his many famous friends. >> West despises Carl Sandburg because he's a millionaire many times over and poses as a common man. 

As a matter of fact, FLW teases him for this too, once dressing him up in corduroy baggy trousers gathered at the ankle, artist's cape, velveteen beret. Both of them were snapped and Sandburg has been trying to get the picture ever since, fearing that if it was published, it would destroy his man of the people reputation he's been building up for years. November 7. >> Apprentices and their partners were responsible for almost all cooking, so it is not surprising that the diary includes many passages about food preparation and menus. The cooking also included some risks. In this passage, a cooking injury reveals a very charming Mr. Wright. >> Peeled apples again. Cut watermelon rinds for pickling. Knife went through middle of my thumbnail and underneath. Messy. 

I nearly fainted twice. The second time, FLW saw me turn green. A shade he afterward said contrasted nicely with my hair, which was red. [LAUGHTER] Led me to the hill garden and spread a Chinese rug for me. I said when I write my autobiography, I'll say FLW spread a carpet for me. October 6. >> She never had a chance to write her autobiography, but she did leave us this diary. Some of the most interesting passages of this contemporaneous diary are those that expose the reality behind the public accounts of Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin, whether presented by Wright and the Fellowship or by former apprentices in memoirs written many years later. The diary shows Priscilla's and David's deep respect for Mr. Wright as a genius and great architect but also reveals many negative aspects to their Taliesin experience. A Taliesin was apprenticeship was described publicly as a time of learning architecture and aesthetic principles from the master. 

Apprentices were supposed to become well-educated in the arts, especially the visual arts and music, and to learn construction, stone masonry for example, in order to understand fully the principles of architecture. Apprentices, who all paid tuition to Mr. Wright, also were expected to share in the work of maintaining the Fellowship and farm. This may sound very good, but the diary shows a strong imbalance in which the work of supporting the Fellowship, and more specifically the Wright family, was the primary role of the apprentices. The architectural instruction, even work such as a drafting, took a back seat. In October 1942, there were 22 people living and working at Taliesin, as well as special guests who came for visits of various lengths. Priscilla's work included being the cook one week a month for lunch and dinner for the entire group, with separate menus for the Wrights. KP duty, vegetable gardening, and other farm chores, weaving, canning, cleaning, typing, editing Mr. Wright's autobiography, doing architectural drawings, and learning to play the recorder to participate in the concerts given by the Fellowship. David's work included farm chores. Hauling gravel, boiler duty, tending to the boiler in the winter could be a full-time job involving getting up every two hours during the night. KP duty, baking for and preparing afternoon tea, building stone walls, drafting, doing building repairs, and, after Mr. Wright found out David was the only one who knew a great deal about electricity and lighting, rewiring Taliesin and putting in permanent wiring in certain areas for the first time. 

There is no mention in the diary of instructional time, only of Mr. Wright talking with the boys in the evening. Though sometimes there was praise, the hard work was made more difficult due to frequent criticism and ever-changing demands, mostly by Mrs. Wright. Examples of this often show up in descriptions of cooking duty. >> Cooked all day with the last minute's rush. Not even time to sit down. Mrs. Wright felt too nauseous for roast chicken, so I boiled it for her. When it was completely boiled, she sent word that she felt better and wanted it roasted. [LAUGHTER] So, presto chango, a boiled chicken became a roasted one. November 29. My hatred for la dame is burning with a gem-like flame. 

[LAUGHTER] Steak approved by Kay and specially prepared for her was too dry. Jell-O, too hard. It's a comfort to know that FLW yelled, "Dammit, woman, that's the way I like it." When I told her she would have beef shortly because they had butchered yesterday, she whined, "Now I won't eat the meat. Don't you know I can't have personal relations with animals. I'm too sensitive." February 6. >> As we grew up hearing of long conversations with former apprentices at the dinner table, we realized that while everyone showed great respect for Mr. Wright even while recognizing some of his less admirable traits, the behavior of his wife, Olgivanna, evoked comments that showed their pain and anger. Everything they did, no matter how small, was open to a criticism. While some of her comment may be dismissed as merely irritating, Mrs. Wright's attacks could be more serious and led to the dismissal or resignations of apprentices. >> Gordon Lee, fine draftsman, owned a dog of which he was very fond. When its barking became too annoying, Mrs. W asked him to shoot the dog, whereupon he told her to shoot Twip, her dog. 

Up shot, immediate dismissal. November 4. >> One apprentice, Eleanor, had become very ill from an abscessed tooth and was being nursed by another apprentice, Kenn. >> Mrs. Wright discovered today, though why not sooner with Kay around I don't know, that Eleanor was being taken care of by Kenn in his room. She stormed up after supper, told her her behavior was disgusting and morally revolting. What would people think if they knew that she had a male nurse? That she was a burden to the fellowship and she'd always been. That she should have taken Mrs. Wright into her confidence where she was or that her room was too cold, etc, etc, etc. Eleanor returned pretty nearly in kind. Eleanor decided to leave tomorrow, though we tried to dissuade her. December 11. 

>> FLW once drove his car and wrecked it so badly that repairs cost $1500. He asked Rowen and Jerry to pick it up on their return from a visit to California, and asked Rowen's father for the money. Rowen, Sr, refused. Wright wrote him, "If this is all the Fellowship means to you, both your children can leave immediately." They did when things became more unpleasant. Temper, temperament, or God. November 3. >> As can be seen, it was not just Mrs. Wright who acted imperiously. With Mr. Wright, the precipitating factor could be what he viewed as disloyalty or, more often, an issue of money, as the last example shows. One of the recurring themes of the diary, as well as stories many of you may know from former apprentices, Spring Green merchants, building suppliers, contractors, clients, involved Mr. Wright's debts, refusal to pay bills, an expectations of what should be paid to him as a great architect. [LAUGHTER] >> Financial ethics here are dormant, if at all alive. 

Eleanor was once asked to pass a bad check for lumber, and after months of hiding in the desert every time collectors were eminent, the bill was finally paid. November 3. Mr. Wright asked David to lend him money so that he could $1,000 for the last installments on the car. David explained that he didn't get money from his parents but worked for everything he paid into this. Mr. Wright reminded him of the favor he was doing in regards to me, and David is signing a note for $450, the rest of his tuition fee due in January. The same old struggle about whether the world owes Wright a living. He knows it does. But are the apprentices the world? They certainly give as much or more than they take. November 23. Everyone's labor here is cheap, but that of the king and queen. 

Mrs. Williams, the housekeeper, is paid 25 cents an hour. The seamstress working 9 to 10 hours a day was paid $6 a day. She even worked Sunday. Hers was the sort of professional skill that should have received from $75 to $100 for a 5-day week. The same tactics they use on chicken farmers and small storekeepers here. Credit and credit with no cash to back it up but wild hopes that they may beg or borrow some and very few debts paid. The world owes me a living, hey-ho. December 8. I have a sneaking suspicion that an army of Wright creditors could write an amazing subrosa biography. [LAUGHTER] November 24. 

As debts mount and credit is harder to get, it seems that the farming going on at Taliesin would help with its survival. While the Fellowship may have strived for self-sufficiency, inefficiency, inexperience, or poor management undermined a lot of hard work which was especially important during the shortages and rationing during World War II. >> Five rows of lettuce plowed under. Ditto two rows of peas. Ditto three of chard. A hundred sixty quarts of peas and beans spoiled. One hundred fifty pounds of pig inadvertently spoiled in the sun. Vegetables picked, forgotten, and thrown to the pigs or chickens. Seventy eggs going into three loaves of babba, which is then rocked in a pillow so it won't settle. Plows, rakes, hoes, wire, rusting in weather of all sorts and forgotten. 

Berries neglected on the bushes. Man power used to dress up a house instead of to repair it. All to show off for guests. A tempting false front and shabby rear. August 6. >> Imagine a young couple arriving from New York City with all their youthful idealism and dreams, expecting a supportive, creative, intellectually stimulating environment, full of hard work but also learning. Instead, they find that the community is not very open to new-comers who are then judged quickly as suitable or not. There's a strong in group with power residing with Mrs. Wright and her favorites and exclusion of those deemed unworthy. Apparently, from the diary and from other apprentices' stories and memoirs, it was wrong to be too knowledgeable, too funny, too intellectual, too much a lefty, and to be a Jew at all. While Mr. Wright and many others did not agree with all these approaches, it was not easy to change the dynamics. 

>> Fortunately, Mr. Wright protects most people from his wife's tongue, seeing in them human faults, frequently his own. But no one dares speak up for anyone officially disliked. He must hide his affection or loyalty like a light under a bushel. November 26. >> It seems our parents were not expecting to encounter antisemitism at Taliesin. It came from some apprentices, such as the one who told another, referring to David, that he'd like to do something to that dirty kike who's always monopolizing the conversation. The situation was even more difficult because Mrs. Wright, obviously a powerful force in the Fellowship, held her own strong negative views on Jews and intellectuals. >> When I went down to Mrs. Wright to ask her about her meal, she sidetracked by an article by Ben Hecht in Reader's Digest to the Jewish problem. Why don't the Jews get a great military leader who is also an idealist and fight for a land of their own? They could concur any country they wanted to. When I suggested Herzl and Zionism and Arab-Jewish unions and opposition by feudal lords instigated by England, she ranted, "There you go again, like all Jews, intellectualizing. 

You have no creative urge and no initiative. Your only initiative takes the bad form of aggressiveness. I told a Jewish friend of mine that the only reason she's creative is that she's part gentile." February 3. >> The diary ends abruptly with no explanation. In the weeks leading up to the last entry, there are brief comments about plans to return to New York, but the departure seems very sudden, with no discussion of packing or leave taking. We guess that tirades, like the above for Mrs. Wright who held so much power along with the behavior of her clique of followers, made Priscilla's time there unpleasant enough to leave. >> As we discussed in an essay in the book, not only did our parents survive the experience, they also used what they learned to create their dream of a cooperative community: Usonia Homes, which, by the way, this past September 5th was listed with the National Register of Historic Places. While the architectural instruction at Taliesin was not often direct, the emerging process seems to have worked for those like David and many other apprentices who pushed hard to learn. At David's request, Mr. Wright was actively involved in the Usonia project for several years, including drawing up the original site plan and designing several houses, for two of which David was the builder. David designed 13 of the homes built in Usonia and many others in New York and nearby states. 

As we were growing up, we watched enumerable groups, architectural classes, and individuals tour through Usonia, often walking around our house and staring in the windows. In 1952, David supervised the construction on the site where the Guggenheim now stands of the pavilion and model home designed by Mr. Wright for an exhibit celebrating 60 years of his work. Currently, an exhibit at the Guggenheim is celebrating the 60th anniversary of that 1952 exhibit. Priscilla returned to high school teaching but also wrote. One of her essays is in the book. And gave lectures on Wright's organic architecture and on Taliesin. Our presentation has given you only brief glimpses into the diary, but we hope you will be intrigued by this personal account of a young, idealistic couple's year at Taliesin and the insights it provides into Frank Lloyd Wright and his Fellowship. [APPLAUSE]