Roadside Attraction: Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, and the Taliesin Vehicle Fleet

 

The Great Depression resulted in record unemployment rates among architects as well as across other industries.  In 1932, Frank Lloyd Wright's wife Olgivanna suggested starting an architecture school at Wright's Taliesin compound in Spring Green, Wisconsin.  This proved to be a source of income in terms of tuitions, and also a source of enthusiastic labor for the many ongoing repair and remodeling projects at Taliesin. Members of the Taliesin Fellowship included 25-year old Edgar Kaufmann Jr., who left the Fellowship in 1935.  That same year, Edgar Kaufmann Sr., owner of a Pittsburgh department store, commissioned Wright to design a house at Bear Run, Pennsylvania that Wright named Fallingwater.  And in January of '35, Wright and Olgivanna had taken students to a site in the foothills of Arizona's McDowell Mountains.  With deep snowdrifts and temperatures of 40 below zero in Spring Green, the prospect of a winter in the warm, dry desert must have been seductive. Wright had been visiting the site since working as a design consultant on the Arizona Biltmore in Scottsdale in 1928. The hotel had opened only 8 months before the '29 stock market crash...

In 1937, when Wright received the commission for the Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine, Wright was able to purchase the land for his desert dreamscape.  By 1938, Fallingwater had been completed, the Johnson Wax Center was under construction, and Wright had appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.  Wright had sketched a plan for a school, architecture studio and living quarters including a music pavilion, with the idea that Taliesin West would serve as the winter headquarters for his architecture practice and school.

Taliesin West's truncated, pyramidal forms echo the mountain slopes, with the local rocks and sand imparting harmonious color to thick "desert concrete" walls. 

Wright echoed the theme of diagonals from his plan sketches in the roof structure of the architecture studio, where triangular supports extend their lines into a forest canopy of wood trusses... 

As Wright's career paralleled the rise of the automobile, the creation of Taliesin West paralleled the rise of Arizona as a tourist destination, and also presaged the explosive growth of suburbs after World War II.  

In the Thirties, the Taliesin team made their road trips in a convoy including small American Bantams, a Packard and a Cord.  The AC 16/80 roadster, shown above in the desert, first appeared in 1936 and might have been a chilly way to make the winter pilgrimage.  In the postwar era, the Taliesin fleet was updated to include Jeeps and Crosleys, including a pickup and two Hotshot roadsters shown in the snow at Spring Green.

Taliesin students were usually assigned to Crosleys on the long road trip, but Frank and Olgivanna seemed to enjoy them as well.  Below, a '49 Hotshot... 

After Wright designed the Park Avenue car showroom for Max Hoffman* in New York, Hoffman gave him a Mercedes 300 sedan and 300SL coupe as part of his architectural fee.  The 300SL was an early production Gullwing, and dates from 1954.  Both cars featured Wright's signature Cherokee red paint.

Taliesin West's diagonal wood beams and canvas-paneled roof surfaces echo the angles in plan and in the wood trusses, and the canvas reflects the material used on the original desert encampments built by students... 

When the structures at Taliesin West were completed, the place felt like an isolated oasis in the wilds of the desert. But when postwar development brought suburban sprawl and traffic, Wright complained to authorities (to no avail) that overhead power lines were impeding the scenic views, and asked for them to be placed underground.  In a way, Wright should've been the last person to be surprised by the explosive growth of suburbia.  He had never liked cities himself, and his Broadacre City proposal involved an acre of land for each house, but the Broadacre renderings produced at Taliesin showed much more lush greenery than would ever be supported by Arizona's scant rainfall...

The houses that sprouted in the desert across from Taliesin West were not to Wright's liking either.  After all, they had not been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright...

Taliesin West has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  And the street name has changed since the early days of tents in the desert; it's now called Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard.

Late in January of 2020, the School of Architecture at Taliesin ceased its operations after talks between the school's board of governors and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation deadlocked.  The buildings at Taliesin West are still open for walking tours, which need to be arranged in advance by contacting the tour department at 480-627-5375.

*Footnote:  We took a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Style work on Forest Avenue in Oak Park, Illinois, including notable houses and the nearby Unity Temple, in our post for November 2, 2017. The 1940 Lincoln Continental modified to Wright's design was pictured with his unbuilt Road Machine proposal in "Architect-Designed Cars: Part 2", posted May 21, 2017. Wright's showroom for Max Hoffman was pictured in "Max Hoffman: An Eye for Cars and the Studebaker Porsche", posted on May 1, 2016.

Photo Credits:  

All color photos:  the author

Monochrome photos: 

Arizona Biltmore:  franklloydwright.org

Plan drawing: archinect.com

Studio interior, Taliesin vehicle fleet, AC & Crosley roadsters:  Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

Wright with Mercedes:  carthrottle.com

Aerial view:  Google Earth