Tag: Taliesin treefall

Looking (plan) west in Taliesin's Drafting Studio. Frank Lloyd Wright's desk is on the right, with his vault behind the stone wall. Photo by Keiran Murphy

The Restoration of Taliesin’s Drafting Studio

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Today I’m going to write about the restoration of the Taliesin Drafting Studio from 1998-2000.

Why?

It’s a tangent.

On November 9, 2023 I watched a “Wright Virtual Visit” from the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. That afternoon, they broadcast a program about the current preservation work at the Hillside theater on the Taliesin estate.

Read about how Wright redesigned that part of the building after a fire in 1952.

The theater has been undergoing a restoration for several years (prolonged by, oh yah, a world-wide pandemic). The work includes moisture mitigation, climate control, and the construction of green rooms in Hillside’s dirt-floor basement. The photo below is what I think of when I think “Hillside basement”:

A dirt floor, stone walls and debris in the Hillside Home School basement. Photo by Keiran Murphy.

I took this photograph in 2009.

That ain’t so anymore. In fact, to see what’s happening is—personally—mind bending. Getting a climate control system into the Hillside Theater was first talked about in the late 1990s.

The prospect became like getting heat back into the house.

So I thought

“Yeah, SURE you’re gonna do that….”

Taliesin, at least, has wooden floors. The only wooden floors at the Hillside theater are on the stage. Everywhere else has stone, concrete, single-pane glass, and metal furniture.

He didn’t care so much once he no longer lived in Wisconsin year-round.

Major preservation of the Theater started moving in 2018 with the announcement of a Save America’s Treasures grant to restore the space.

See Taliesin Preservation’s blog post about the project.

Since the Wright Virtual Visit showed how close it is to being done, 

I love

that the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation got to show their work.

Taliesin’s Director of Preservation (Ryan Hewson) kept me and my husband apprised about what they were going to do, and one of my photos of him in the basement is below:

Looking east in Hillside's basement while the space is being prepared for rehabilitation. By Keiran Murphy

I took the photo above when Ryan gave us a tour in September, 2020.

Here’s the before/after photos from the Virtual Visit:

Before and after photos of the Hillside Home School Basement on a Wright Virtual Visit.

In my photo of Ryan, he was standing to the right of where they later put the red Exit  sign.

As I watched

This Wright Virtual Visit, I thought about the work the Preservation Crew did to restore the Taliesin Drafting Studio in 1998-2000.

The work, completed in just over 2 years, mostly didn’t get press coverage.1

So that’s why today

I will give you the shorthand version of that project.

On June 18, 1998

an 80-m.p.h. (129 km/h) straight-line wind storm came through Wisconsin and knocked the 229-year-old Taliesin Tea Circle oak tree onto the roof of the Front Office at Taliesin.

Photograph of Taliesin Tea Circle in the summer of 1994.

Photograph by Keiran Murphy.

Of course I was there. Well, not literally standing there, but I worked at Taliesin. And those facts:

  • the date,
  • the wind velocity,
  • and the age of the fallen oak,

were branded into my brain.

The tree fell on the first day of my weekend.

But while I wasn’t working that day, I drove to Taliesin when I heard that something might have happened with the Tea Circle tree. As I drove up the hill around Taliesin, I was disconcerted because the tree’s crown was… in the wrong place. That’s because, of course, the tree had fallen over.

Check out images of the fallen tree and building from Taliesin Preservation’s Facebook page.

It was so weird that the big oak with its canopy of leaves sheltering the Taliesin Tea Circle—and at least half of the courtyard—was, suddenly, gone.

A positive observation

came from former Wright apprentice, Herb Fritz.2 Herb asked a friend (and former guide)3 to bring him to Taliesin after the tree and its debris were taken away.

Why?

Herb said that he had waited his entire life to see Taliesin without that tree.

Its disappearance opened an unobstructed view of the building.

Back to the point:

The tree was lost on a Thursday. The Preservation team came the next day to assess the damage, and began planning the restoration.

Ideally, you wouldn’t have to restore a space while simultaneously repairing its pre-existing problems but there wasn’t any choice.

If you want to get into the damage assessment and exploration, look at this link.4 It’s from the Wayback Machine.

When the tree fell,

I wasn’t yet working as the historian. But other members of the staff worked quickly to figure out the history of the room at Wright’s death.

The major restoration work

WAS NOT

in Taliesin’s Drafting Studio.

It was in the Front Office, the space adjacent to it. However, one of the restoration issues was that not many photos showed that area.

Not only that,

but the room was, at that time, the office of the CEO and staff of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for 6 months every year.

It looked like an office.

It had a photocopy machine, a fax machine, and regular desks and drawers.

A door and non-original wall separated this office space from the studio, so they could keep working while Taliesin tours went on. You can see the wall in the photo by Judith Bromley in the Kathryn Smith’s book, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin and Taliesin West:

Taliesin studio with a drafting table, rug, fireplace, and artworks. Photograph by Judith Bromley.

Photograph taken in 1996. The wooden tall-back benches are in front of the wall that separated the studio from the Front office.

That wall had probably been there for over 25 years.

Everyone moved from the office while tours kept going through the Drafting Studio.

For future historians: that’s why the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation ended up in the former horse stable at Taliesin. That horse stable had been converted into office space when Taliesin Preservation started. That’s where I first worked with images and figured out the history of Taliesin’s dam.

The Preservation office created a plan on what to do.

That first winter:

The Preservation Crew had to work one floor below. They had to push the wall back into place and structurally secure the area.

But they could not stand upright in the area with the dirt basement. So, they shoveled out the dirt by the bucketload.

The shovel handles were too long.

So they had to cut the handles down so they had room to dig.

The other work

was figuring out what things in the 1950s looked like in Wright’s former office.

Fortunately, they found photos taken by Ezra Stoller in 1945 1951 (see through the link).

As well as photos that Maynard Parker took in 1955:

Looking (plan) southwest in the Taliesin studio in 1955. By this time, he used the studio as his office. 

You can see them at work in the photos below:

Reconstruction of Taliesin's Front Office in 1999. Photograph by member of the preservation department.

Two photographs taken in 1999 by someone from the preservation department. Courtesy Taliesin Preservation.
If you take a tour you walk through both of these spaces.

The left-hand photo shows that insulation was installed under the roof. They figured the extra thickness less than an inch (or about 2 cm) was acceptable. On the right-hand photograph, the red vertical lines were used for the post placement in the rebuilt bookshelf you see below:

Taliesin's Front Office. Photograph by Stilhefler in 2018.This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

If you want to know what was there on that wall: there had been built in cabinets that were used by the office, including all of the office supplies.

Once the crew did the important structural work they had to restore the studio.

When doing that, they reconstructed a couple of built-ins around the fireplace and a box in front of the stone vault.

Additionally,

I recall that they found Wright’s office desk. It had been in a former work space and had to be restored. Unfortunately I forget who gave the money for that. So when you go into the former studio today, that desk is original. A recent photo of it is through this link. But you see on historic photos that it was a LOT messier when Wright was alive: 

Photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright at his desk. Taken in 1957. Eugene Masselink is standing with him.
Wisconsin Historical Society.
Collection: Richard Vesey photographs and negatives, 1955-1963

It looks like Wright’s secretary, Gene Masselink, is talking to him at his desk in August 1957. Photograph by Richard Vesey.

Sometimes I think Wright’s desk should still be filled with all of this stuff, just like it was when he was alive. However I think that veers into hyperreality via Jean Baudrillard. That is: the fake is better than the real. So we gotta stick with the reality that’s there at Taliesin. Because, even though I love Taliesin, I will not dress up as a female Fellowship member in the 1950s. Making bread, playing musical instruments, working in the fields, and cleaning Mr. Wright’s Bedroom would make me cranky.

 

Published December 1, 2023.
I took the photograph at the top of this post in 2005.

Notes:

1. It’s not that we didn’t want to. There just wasn’t the money or staff. Plus, once the restoration work was mostly finished, the tour season (a.k.a. the money machine) started. All we could do was add “Come see the newly restored Taliesin Drafting Studio” on information about the upcoming tour season.

2. Herb (1915-1998) was the former apprentice whose offer of stone to Wright that I wrote about in my post, “In Return for the Use of the Tractor“.

3. That friend, Craig, is with me in this web page someone wrote about their visit to Taliesin.

4. At that time, Taliesin Preservation did the preservation/restoration work as well as tours. Since early 2020, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has carried out all the preservation work while Taliesin Preservation, Inc. does the tour program.

UPDATE:

I found the episode where the tree is discussed in All Things Considered. The story comes in the last 5 minutes of the June 21, 1998 episode.

Stage and audience before the beginning of The Rivals at The American Players Theatre

Up the Hill

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Photograph taken in the American Players Theatre on June 11, 2022, before the start of the show, The Rivals. Members of APT belong to the Actors Equity Association, so photographs are prohibited during performances.

I’m not writing this week about Frank Lloyd Wright, the Taliesin estate, or other non-Wright things I’ve delved into. I’m going to write about something close to the estate that contributes to the area around Wright’s Wisconsin home. This is the American Players Theatre.

Founded in the 1970s, “APT” is a repertory theater that operates during the warmer months. It puts on 8-9 plays each year, many of them simultaneously. 5 of these shows are “up the hill”: an outdoor, 1,089-seat amphitheater that you get to by literally walking up a hill (there are snacks once you get there, I promise).1 APT has a smaller theater near the base of the hill called the “Touchstone Theatre“. It seats 201, opened in 2009 and has 4 plays running during the season.

APT is made up of a core-acting company, as well as cast members coming from around the country each season. Its regular season starts in mid-June, and runs until the last night of the first weekend in October.

Perhaps Wright/Taliesin changed the town, or the town was changed due to so many other Wisconsinsites. However, APT is a notable factor in the town’s

current character.

In addition to many core acting members and the Stage, Production, and Operations Managers, in residence in/around town, every summer Spring Green’s population increases with more actors, directors, and everyone else involved in

Putting on a show!

Also, a yearly audience of around 100,000 people come to the shows, see the town, etc etc.

Now, I could keep going on with every stage person I could possibly think of that was/is involved. But I stopped because I realized I wasn’t writing a piece for Morning Edition. I apologize to those I left out.

And me? Well…

For a few years in the late 1990s I had a part-time job at APT (which, at that time, was only on the stage “up the hill”).2 In no way did I do anything important.

‘Coz informing people that Wright didn’t kill his second wife is important enough, man!3

No, I just worked on the House staff, 12-15 hrs a week. Getting over $300+ bucks a month was nice.4

Here’s what I did the majority of time:

  • Told people where to park in the lot before the show
  • Stood near the top of the hill and ripped the top off of tickets when theater goers got up there
  • Worked the concession stand during intermissions
  • Following the play, went through the stands with the rest of the House staff and collected trash.

Really — why did I do this?

I thought it would be cool to see the APT shows, despite not having a background in theater

(except for being surrounded by friends in college who were actors, and taking a couple of acting classes)

And, as I worked completely in tours (as a guide, a House steward, and in the bookstore), it was refreshing to be completely anonymous.

The freedom to observe different plays through an entire season:

Gave me the chance to watch my favorite scenes over and over throughout the season. And see the actors play with their line delivery from night to night.

Or just slog along while the actors dealt with the wind, rain, heat, and cold.

Well, yes, and everyone who was in the stands had to deal with this, too. But the actors and other staff had to be there.

In particular,

there was a Saturday during a summer heat wave the season that one actor played both Richard III and Cyrano de Bergerac. This one day, Lee Ernst acted in Richard III—a play lasting several hours with the battle scene at the end—in the mid-afternoon show. And this was followed by him as “Cyrano” in the 8 p.m. show. The play in which Cyrano fights with a sword in his first scene.

These engendered moments of fascination. I knew a little of what it was like to be outside giving tours through spaces lacking climate control on hot and humid days. However, I wasn’t holding a sword and wearing a costume that covered me from my neck to my ankles.

APT eventually added a sunshade over part of the stage (as in this 2011 photo through Foursquare). I was told that at these times, the stage itself could be over 100F (38C). You could only wonder at the physical brutality that the actors went through.

My one full season

To get back to my easy work: I worked at the end of APT seasons (like the season with Cyrano and Richard III), and one whole season (1998). The plays at that time were:

I remember

It rained a lot that year. A LOT.

Oh, and June of that year saw an oak tree at Taliesin’s Tea Circle oak tree crash onto Wright’s front office, next to the Taliesin studio. Which was followed 10 days later by a landslide at Taliesin.

I think all the staff got to know the lines in the plays that referenced rain.

btw: Since APT’s Hill Theatre is exterior, they have lots of ways to deal with rain and do everything they can to make sure the show goes off. In fact, APT’s weather policy has its own webpage.

At the end of that season, there was a private party of APT staff, with awards that staff members gave each other.

A note about me in the Taliesin tour program:

The APT awards inspired me to start awards for our end-of-the-season parties. I put the awards together for about 5 seasons.

Some awards: “most chronometrically challenged tour guide”, “Answers the question, ‘Is this the House on the Rock?‘ with patience and aplomb,” etc. etc.

Another note on weather in another season:

One time while working on the House crew at the end of September, I watched snow flurries during “Much Ado About Nothing“. Not what’s envisioned:

Screen capture from the 1993 movie of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing"

That’s why the costumes allow actors to wear either heat or cold packs.

However,

Enough days and nights are magical that they make up for everything. There are nights at APT that are warm with the call of Whipporwills and the audience sees distant clouds discharging silent thunderbolts. Nights in which the lights come up at the end of the show and you look up and there are stars over your heads.

And, during one performance (as an audience member in 2017), a bat flew near the stage during the farce, “A Flea in Her Ear“. The actress playing the character of Olympe (a proprietor of the slightly run-down hotel, Coq d’Or), following the overhead visit by the flying little rodent, casually said, “don’t mind the bats” to her patrons while she walked out.

Lastly,

APT is the way I got introduced to my friend, Terry Teachout. He came out to Spring Green to review shows from APT and saw Taliesin, for the first time and met me. I can’t go too much into it since he died unexpectedly this past January. He just loved APT, and thinking about him gets me teary-eyed.

First published July 15, 2022.

 

Notes:

1 There are buses that drive people up the hill starting 45 minutes before showtime. We’re only hardy in Wisconsin; not sadistic, or murderous.

2 and given my post-Covid situation, $300/month sounds nice, too.

3 No: he didn’t kill his wife.
I thought we went over this.
Plus, she wasn’t his wife; she was his mistress/partner.

3 I’ve heard this at least once from staff over the years: sometimes APT receives complaints from people who have seen a show, and would like the “volume of the whippoorwill” to “be turned down.”

Granted, I have been in all-inclusive amusement parks where you don’t know what sounds or events are planned/piped in. However, in this case I can tell you: the whippoorwills at APT are real.