Taliesin, Wisconsin

Taliesin was the house and studio that the architect Frank Lloyd Wright built for himself, where he lived and worked for many years, and where he designed his most famous buildings: the Guggenheim Museum, Fallingwater, and the Johnson Wax Headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin. Taliesin was built on a 600-acre Wright family estate in Spring Green Wisconsin in 1911, and included a number of buildings that were there already, or added over the years, designed also by Wright for family members, or for other functions on the grounds. He moved here with his mistress, Mamah Borthwick, leaving his wife in Oak Park, Illinois. In 1914, an emotionally unstable employee set fire to the living quarters, and killed Mamah and six others with an axe. Wright was away in Chicago at the time. The house was immediately rebuilt, and known as Taliesin II. After a period of work abroad, Wright returned to the house in 1922. In 1925 an electrical fire destroyed the living quarters again, which was, again, immediately rebuilt, as Taliesin III. In 1932 Wright established a fellowship for architectural students at the site, and he spent the rest of his life based there, as well as wintering in Taliesin West, in Arizona. After he died in 1959, the site has been owned by foundations dedicated to its preservation, and is operated primarily as museum.