Taliesen: Secrets, Shock, and Sadness in Spring Green
In the beginning of the 1900s many different aspects of America were changing alongside the start of the new century. New industries began to emerge, urban populations were growing, and the styles of the American people and their environments began to shift. Ushering in these new styles were artists, but some of them worked on pieces much larger than any canvas. In the early part of the 1900s American architecture began to shift, and one of the biggest names in the field was Frank Lloyd Wright. By the time Wright died in 1959 he was an icon of American architecture with landmark structures all over the world. He had a long and storied career, but one major event in Wright’s story does not involve style, bricks, and blueprints. In August 1914 Wright was in Illinois working on Chicago's Midway Gardens. He had no idea a bloodbath was unfolding back home.
By the time the calendar pages flipped to welcome in 1914 Frank Lloyd Wright was both famous, and controversial. The forty-seven-year-old architect was married to his wife Catherine and the pair had six children together, but for the last eleven years the Wright family had been broken. The rift unknowingly began within the Oak Park Women’s Club where Catherine Wright and Martha Cheney (also referred to as Mamah) were both members and the two women became close friends as did their husbands, Frank Lloyd Wright and Edwin Cheney. The Wrights and Cheneys were “neighbors and intimate friends” and as stated by the Fort Wayne Sentinel on February 26th 1912, “To the Cheneys the door to the Wrights always was open, and vice versa.” It only made sense that when Edwin Cheney was looking for a new home he approached his friend and in 1903 he commissioned Wright to build a house in Oak Park, Illinois. Edwin’s intent was to have a home for his family, but hiring Wright only tore it apart when the architect began an affair with his wife.
Frank Lloyd Wright circa 1953. Image via wikipedia.com.
By 1909 what may have started as a slow simmering secret in 1903 had transformed into a plan of action. Wright had made his way to Europe and was there on the day that Martha contacted her husband. She was in Colorado with the children when she reached out to Edwin requesting that he come get them from her, and when he arrived he was met by his children, but not Martha. Without his knowledge she had already left the country to meet Wright in Europe. The pair stayed overseas for approximately one year before Wright arrived back in the United States in 1910. Although Wright had returned to the States, Martha remained in Europe where she officially filed for divorce from Edwin on the grounds of abandonment. Edwin did not contest the divorce and while Martha was in Europe she resumed the use of her maiden name, Borthwick, and continued working on a project she had taken up translating the works of Swedish writer Ellen Key. With Borthwick still in Europe, Wright set his focus on another architectural project, but this was not for a client. This was to construct a home for himself and Borthwick, and he set his sights on Wisconsin.
By 1911 Wright may have believed everything was headed in the best direction. He had secured 600 acres of land near Spring Green, Wisconsin (signed for by his mother in order to not draw attention to the purchase), Martha had returned from Europe and after temporarily staying in Canada with her children, was back in the United States. In August of 1911 her divorce was finalized from her husband and it was in that same month she and Frank moved into Taliesin, a 75,000 sq foot estate that Frank built near Spring Green to serve as their new home. It was just before Christmas that year that the news of Frank and Martha living together made it to the surrounding village. The goal may have been to quietly start a new life, but the news of the two living together, especially since Wright’s wife never agreed to a divorce, reverberated loudly and the opinions on the two were harsh and unforgiving.
Wright may have named his new home “Taliesin” (meaning “shining brow” in Welsh) but the press referred to it as a “love cottage,” and “castle of love” both of which sounded far kinder than what the community had to say about it. The superintendent of Iowa County’s schools told a reporter “The scandal is bound to have a demoralizing effect on the school children of the community. It is an outrage to allow young men and women and boys and girls to grow up in the belief that a man and woman can go disregard the marriage bonds.” Threats were made, neighbors asked for the police to arrest Wright, and yet there was nothing that could be done. The construction on Taliesin continued and the pair went about their lives seemingly unbothered by the scathing opinions of them. The biggest question being asked was how Wright and Borthwick could possibly do this to their families. According to The Fort Wayne News and Sentinel published on February 26th 1912:
“More and more Mrs. Wright devoted herself to her home and her growing children. More and more Mr. Wright closeted himself with his work and gave himself up to his architectural dreams. When he sought recreation, diversion, communion of spirit, he found them less and less in the companionship of Mrs. Wright….Then he discovered that Mrs. Cheney was more nearly on his plane of thought, that she sympathized the closer with him, shared his dreams and ideals, appreciated his efforts, and gave him the inspiration for work which, he complained, he could not draw from the companionship at his own fireside. Thus, thought Mr. Wright both fate and the law were against him and his normal development.”
Clipping from The Washington Herald on December 31st 1911. Image via newspapers.com
Wright gave his own explanation, telling reporters that “Two women were necessary for a man of artistic mind—one to be the mother of his children and the other to be his mental companion, his inspiration and soul mate” and voicing his opinion that normal rules simply did not apply to him, saying “Laws and rules are made for the average. The ordinary man cannot live without rules to guide his conduct. It is infinitely more difficult to live without rules, but that is what the really honest, sincere, thinking man is compelled to do.”
Clipping from the Cincinnati Explorer on December 31st 1911. Image via newspapers.com.
Wright may have felt unstoppable, but his time with Mamah in their little paradise called Taliesin would not last long before it came crashing down.
On August 15th 1914 Frank Lloyd Wright was nearly two hundred miles from his new home, working in Chicago on the Chicago Midway Gardens. Back home in Taliesin, Martha and her two children eight-year-old Martha and twelve-year-old John, sat down on the porch for lunch. Also sitting down for lunch inside the main dining room was the construction crew still working on the home, settling in around a table and waiting to be served by Julian Carlton, a thirty-year-old man who worked at Taliesin as a servant and handyman. Carlton’s wife Gertrude prepared the food and after serving everyone soup, Carlton told his wife she had to leave the property.
It was shortly after that that Carlton went back onto the porch with a hatchet and brutally murdered Martha and her two children.
The crew seated in the dining room twenty-five feet away may not have even had time to process what was going on. Nineteen-year-old Herbert Fritz was among those seated at the table when he and the others heard loud swishing noises outside the door. Then they saw it, liquid pouring underneath the door and covering the floor. Even if the smell didn’t give it away first another man in the room, thirty-five year old carpenter William Weston knew what it was. Just before eating, Carlton had asked Weston permission to go get a canister of gasoline in order to clean some rugs. Weston said yes and now the gasoline was pouring into the room. The door was locked. Within moments the entire room was ablaze.
One of the first people to get out was Fritz, managing to break a window and escape the fire, rolling down a hill to extinguish the flames trying to devour him. Fritz’s timing was what may have saved him from a much crueler fate, as people from the dining room scrambled and broke through the barricaded door they were met with curtains of fire from Carlton spreading more gasoline along outside walls. Others rushed to broken windows believing they found an escape only to learn the horrible truth when they discovered Carlton waiting for them with the hatchet on the other side. Weston was one who fell right into the path of Carlton and was attacked with the hatchet but he was able to run, followed by Carlton, until he was again struck with the weapon. Believing him to be dead Carlton then returned to the home but Weston was in fact still alive, as was Fritz, and a third man who made it out of the house, landscape gardener David Lindblom. With an inferno of flames, shock, and confusion raging behind them the three men found each other and ran together to a home half a mile away to call for help.
Ciipping from Springfield News Sun August 23rd 1914. Image via newspapers.com.
When the smoke cleared the authorities were left with a horrifying scene. Multiple bodies were strewn both inside the home and outside, succumbing to either fire, a hatchet, or both. The building, intended to be a quiet place of peace and a starting point for new lives, was now a charred and silent tomb with Martha and her two children laying slaughtered in the remnants of the porch. Carlton was later found in the basement, hiding inside the furnace where he was alive, but barely conscious. Looking to exit this life alongside the horrors he created he had swallowed acid, severely damaging his throat and stomach but leaving him alive. However, Carlton’s still-breathing body would not bring any clarity to the situation. The former employee of Wright plead not guilty and refused to speak or give any explanation for his actions. When questioned, his wife Gertrude shed small glimmers of explanation, stating that Carlton had grown increasingly paranoid and hostile, even taking to sleeping with the hatchet next to him. She also confirmed that she and her husband were terminated by Wright and they were due to take a train back to Chicago the night of the attack. For seven long weeks Carlton remained in prison before dying of starvation, unable to consume anything due to the damage from the acid he swallowed.
Taliesen after the fire. Image via wikipedia.com.
When Wright received the note in Chicago it scarcely conveyed the tragedy that had unfolded in his home nearly two hundred miles away. Reading simply “Taliesin destroyed by fire” he would not learn until later that the loss was more than a house. Seven people were killed in Carlton’s rampage (David Lindblom, one of the men who ran for help later died from his burns) and with no definite explanation to the reason and his new family suddenly ripped from his life Wright now had to decide how to move ahead after the tragedy. He wrote a lengthy letter to his neighbors, an essay that sang the praises of Martha, addressed how their relationship was covered by the press, and thanking them for any and all courtesy extended to her while living in Taliesin. He also revealed two, probably surprising, actions. For one, Martha was buried in an unmarked grave in a small chapel cemetery near the home. And second, that he fully intended to rebuild Taliesin as a memorial to her, while also still continuing to live there as his permanent home.
Clipping from the Ogden Standard Examiner on September 5th 1914. Image via newspapers.com.
Wright rebuilt the home, now referred to as “Taliesin II,” and he did not stay there alone. After his wife finally agreed to a divorce Wright married again in 1923, to a woman named Maude Noel, who wrote him a condolence letter after the tragedy at Taliesin. But, the house was not done with him and in April of 1925 the home was gutted by an electrical fire. Like the first fire, he set out to rebuild it, finishing it later that year only to lose it to foreclosure in 1927, the same year he and Maude divorced. With some financial assistance he was able to re-purchase it back the following year ushering in the era of “Taliesin III.”
Wright used Taliesin III as his primary home and studio until the end of his life, sharing it with his third wife Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich, establishing a fellowship for architectural students, and designing some of his most famous works there including Fallingwater and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Upon his death in 1959 the home was left to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation who conducted renovations until 1990 when a nonprofit organization known as Taliesin Preservation Inc. (TPI) took over the location. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 and in 2019 it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Taliesen in 2024. Image via Warren LeMay from Chicago, IL, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Today, Taliesin still stands in Spring Green, Wisconsin and is visited by tens of thousands of people every year looking to walk the halls that were not only crafted by, but called home, by one of the world’s most prolific, influential, and important pioneers of architecture. The website for Taliesin welcomes the viewers with the words “take a stroll through paradise” and it’s easy to see how it earns that name. With its open floor plan, dramatic spaces, stone, ample natural light, and its integration into the natural landscape around it, the home is a picture of tranquility. It is hard to picture that beneath this air of artistic peace lies a tormented history filled with controversy, turmoil, and the horrific and bloody loss of eight lives that for a period of time marked it as the site of the deadliest mass murder in Wisconsin’s history.
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Sources:
Conradt, Stacy. “The Terrible Crime at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin.” Mental Floss, 5 Dec. 2017, www.mentalfloss.com/article/28519/taliesin-tragedy.
Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. “About Frank Lloyd Wright.” Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, 2019, franklloydwright.org/frank-lloyd-wright/.
Klein, Christopher. “The Massacre at Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Love Cottage” | HISTORY.” HISTORY, 8 June 2017, www.history.com/articles/the-massacre-at-frank-lloyd-wrights-love-cottage.
“Mystery of the Murders at Taliesin.” Bbc.co.uk, 14 Jan. 2001, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/1110359.stm.
“Take Queer View of Marital Life.” Newspapers.com, 26 Feb. 1912, www.newspapers.com/image/29239543/?match=1&terms=Frank%20Lloyd%20Wright%20.
“Taliesin History.” Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, www.taliesinpreservation.org/taliesin-history/.
“Taliesin: Wright at the Time.” Frank Lloyd Wright | Ken Burns | PBS, www.pbs.org/kenburns/frank-lloyd-wright/taliesin-frank.