Roadside Attraction: Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin North

The word taliesin means "shining brow" in the native language of Frank Lloyd Wright's Welsh ancestors, and he chose it to describe the site he chose on 490 acres of rolling green countryside in Spring Green, Wisconsin to build a house and architecture studio. In the plan drawing below, the Workroom / Studio is immediately to the right of the Loggia, with the main living quarters to the left. The Garage is in the upper righthand corner…the first Model T had appeared only 3 years before Taliesin was built.

Wright chose to notch the sprawling complex into a hillside, rather than plunk it onto the top of that brow, because he said that placing a building at the summit of a hill would have the effect of losing the hill.  The first version of Taliesin was completed in 1911, the year before the Titanic sank.  The photo below shows how the complex looked during the winter of 1911-12...

By this time Wright had evolved the themes characteristic of the Prairie Style, and these included hipped (or sometimes flat) roofs with broad, sheltering eaves to shade bands of equal-height windows and to visually anchor forms to landscape, as well as rectilinear masses interlocking with exterior spaces which flowed into interiors at gardens, terraces and balconies. The effect was enchanting except when roofs leaked…Wright famously told a complaining client to move his chair when a roof leaked on a dinner party.  The photo below shows how the Taliesin complex looked in the summer of 1912.  Living quarters are to the right of the loggia (breezeway); the architecture studio is off to the left.

Forensic engineers will tell you that the steady drip of water over decades destroys more buildings than dramatic events like tornadoes and fires…this may be changing as we watch wildfires caused by global warming consume houses in the West.  But structures at Taliesin were destroyed by fire twice, in 1914 and 1925,  in a locale not known for wildfires.

That first fire was the result of arson, when in August 1914 a deranged employee killed Wright's mistress, Martha Borthwick, her two children, and 3 others before setting the dining room around them on fire. Only two of Wright's staff escaped the blaze.  Wright, traveling on business during this disaster, returned to find much of the living quarters in charred ruins.  This tragedy, a bit more than two weeks after the beginning of World War I, occurred when Wright was spending time on projects like the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which was completed in 1915.  

He returned to redesign and rebuild the Taliesin complex, only to see it burn again as the result of an electrical fire in 1925.  During the Twenties, Wright's studio in Taliesin produced projects for Los Angeles clients with a Mayan-inspired theme unrelated to the Prairie Style, but their third version of the Taliesin complex after the 1925 fire experimented with roof and window shapes that were refinements of Prairie Style...

In 1928, Wright consulted on the design of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, but it opened only 8 months before the stock market crashed, and new commissions disappeared, along with jobs for millions, as the Great Depression took hold in the early Thirties. Frank Lloyd Wright's third wife, Olgivanna, suggested starting an architecture school at the Spring Green compound; this became the Taliesin Fellowship.  Opening in 1932, it proved to be a source of steady cash flow from tuitions, and also a source of drafting personnel for the studio...

It kept the studio going until new commissions, like the Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine and the Fallingwater house for the Kaufmann family in Pennsylvania, arrived in the mid-Thirties and sparked an interest in Wright that put him on the cover of Time Magazine.  It also put Wright and Olgivanna in a position to buy the Arizona property that became Taliesin West*, where the Fellowship established a winter headquarters for the studio and school that opened by 1940. Work continued at Taliesin Spring Green, which was now also known as Taliesin North.  When I visited, the buildings and grounds were well-maintained, but preservation experts were still addressing some unresolved details relating to roofing, flashing and water intrusion, the unglamorous but essential routine of keeping buildings intact over time...

The Taliesin North complex was listed as a National Landmark in 1976, and by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2019.  Other structures on the site included as National Landmarks, but not in the World Heritage Site, included Wright's Romeo and Juliet windmill from 1896, the house he designed for his sister and brother-in-law in 1907, the 1901 Hillside Home School for Wright's aunt, and the Midway Barn from 1920, which served agriculture which is today continued by tenant farmers. The green, wooded property has expanded over the years to include 600 acres...

In January 2020 the Taliesin School of Architecture was closed a season before a global pandemic would suspend in-person class attendance at many schools and universities. In the case of Taliesin, the ending to nearly nine decades of educational efforts resulted from unresolved disputes between the school's board and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.  Tours of the buildings at Taliesin North can still be scheduled, however, at taliesinpreservation.org.

*Footnote:   For a brief look at the other (and later) studio and educational compound carrying the Taliesin name, see "Roadside Attraction: Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, and the Taliesin Vehicle Fleet", posted here on January 22, 2022.  

Monochrome Photo Credits:

Wikimedia

Plan Drawing:  

franklloydwright.org

Color Photo Credits:  

All color shots are by the author. 

Boulder Coffee & Classics: Espresso to Go with Alfas, but You'll Want Tea with a DB4 GT and a Silver Cloud

The Boulder Coffee & Classics began its season on what was supposed to be a rainy day in a very dry April.  Fittingly enough, there were plenty of English cars, including this rare Aston Martin DB4 GT once raced by Stirling Moss.  Compared with the DB4* introduced in fall of 1958, the GT introduced a year later featured a shorter wheelbase (93" vs. 98"), and a twin-plug version of the DB4's then-new 3.7 liter inline six with its twin overhead cams, aluminum block and heads.  Brakes were discs all around, with independent front suspension and a live-axle rear, much like the contemporary Maserati 3500 GT.  With over 300 hp, it would enter competition with Ferrari's 250 GT SWB, and at the time was claimed to be the fastest road-legal production car.  "Production" meant 100 chassis...

The interior reflected the car's road racing mission; most GTs lacked the rear seats of the DB4, and these cloth seats were lighter than those on the 4-seater car, which Aston insisted on calling a saloon. Thirty of the DB4 GTs were built with left-hand drive.  

The side view shows the clean lines, emergency electrical shut-off switch in the rear quarter window, and the air extractor vents in the front fenders that became an Aston trademark. Along with the 12 spark plugs and twin distributors, the Tadek Marek-designed engine, also used on the DBR2, featured triple Weber carbs.  First examples were released in late 1959, just in time to celebrate Aston's 1st & 2nd place finish in the 1959 Le Mans with the 3 liter DBR1/300; the winning car was driven by Roy Salvadori and an obscure Texan named Carroll Shelby. Owner Terry Hefty confirms the 100 chassis figure for the GT, but says 84 are in this Superleggera style and 16 with Zagato bodies.  Most sources say this car is rarer than he thinks, with 75 in this style, 19 Zagatos, 1 car supplied to Bertone (the Jet*), and a handful of cars built decades later by Aston and Zagato as Sanction II cars.  In any case, it's a rare visitor from a vanished era when racers could be driven to the track, run a race and then drive home...

The 1949 MG TC below is also a visitor from a vanished era; right after World War II GIs returned Stateside with curiosity about the 2-seater roadsters they'd seen in Britain. The TC offered fun on a budget to a fun-starved population and set off a boom in amateur road racing.  

This was despite the fact that all were right-hand drive. Here, the owner /driver has substituted a smaller-diameter steering wheel for the original. 

This red TC, also a 1949, was equipped with the now-rare Shorrock supercharger on the 1,250cc OHV inline four. 

Appropriate to an event welcoming cars from England, there were plenty of canine visitors on Sunday morning.  The feline visitor in the background is a 1967 Jaguar E-type fixed head coupe, flanked by a red 1974 Alfa Romeo GTV (more on that later) and a black 1986 Ferrari 328GTS we described last summer.  There was a bevy of Porsches, mostly 911s, including the nice silver 993 example in the 2nd shot background below.

John Kelly drove his 1960 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II to the event after organizer Mike Burroughs encountered him while walking his dog.  Silver Clouds were made from 1955 to 1966, and the L-type V8 in this example replaced the earlier inline 6 in 1959. The V8 displaces 380 cubic inches and is an overhead valve design, unlike the previous six, which was an F-head (inlet over exhaust) design similar to Rovers of the period.  Smoothness and silence were priorities, and power, in the Rolls tradition, was quoted by the factory as "adequate." 

The V8 was a mainstay of Rolls and Bentley products for six decades (kind of like a small-block Chevy, only expensive) and was last used in the Bentley Mulsanne in 2020.  Each engine took about 30 hours to assemble by hand.  The center-hinged hood on the Cloud was designed for accessing the inline 6, but made servicing the V8 a bit of a nightmare.  John said that some basic maintenance tasks required removing a front wheel for engine access.  He also commented that the car feels big until he parks it next to one of today's gargantuan SUVs, most of which weigh more than the 4,550 pound Cloud II.  Still, it's a big car by European standards, on a 123" wheelbase (the limo SCII was 127") and 212" long.  For comparison, those are the same dimensions as Elwood Engel's classic "downsized" 1961 Lincoln Continental, which weighed 400 pounds more...

That size allowed driver and passengers to stretch out in comfort, surrounded by polished wood and leather.  The wood picnic tables in the rear make it a comfy place to have tea; we somehow missed a picture of those, so here's the pilot's wheelhouse...

Below, a pristine Ferrari 246 Dino from 1968 takes a nap next to a first series MGB with factory hardtop from the '63-67 period. We talked to the Ferrari owner last summer and featured lots of photos of this mid-engined pioneer. The MG owners were nowhere to be found, perhaps they wandered off in search of coffee...or tea.

Alfa Romeos also appeared in impressive numbers for the espresso-drinking crowd.  The Milano below is a seldom-seen example of the V6-powered sedan with rear transaxle in 3.0 liter form. The Milano debuted in 1985 in Europe as the Alfa 75 (to celebrate 75 years of Alfas) and was available there with a variety of engines including Alfa's evergreen twin-cam four, but was initially brought to America with the 2.5 liter Busso-desiged V6 in 1986, adding the 3.0 liter Milano Verde the next year.  Milanos were essentially sedan versions of the sweet-handling GTV-6 on a slightly longer wheelbase, and they were the last Alfas released before the Fiat takeover, and the last rear-drive sedans until the 2015 Giulia. The Alfa 75 remained in production for Europe through 1991, overlapping production of the front-drive Alfa 164.  

There were a couple of nice Alfa GTVs as well, including this 2000 GTV from 1974. The Bertone body, one of designer Giorgetto Giugiaro's greatest hits, has aged well, and this car, restored in the late 90s, features lightly flared wheel arches to clear wider wheels.  Bumper regulations meant that 1974 was the last year for the GTV in the US market, and in that year Alfa was able to dodge the 5 mph bumper requirement by classifying the car as a two passenger.  Instead of removing the rear seats, they simply applied a sticker notifying buyers that the rear seats were not to be occupied while the car was in motion.  The rear seats did have seat belts…but they were there to get the car into the country, not to keep occupants in the car.

The silver GTV below shows off the standard wheel arches and standard wheels, and conveniently provides a size comparison to the adjacent Rolls...

Dave Asbury drove son Jonathan's black Alfa 164 from Fort Collins. This front-driver with transverse 3.0 liter V6 shared a basic chassis design with the Fiat Chroma, Lancia Thema, and Saab 9000, but featured completely distinct body styling by Pininfarina.  It was the car Italian police used to catch bank robbers…who drove the same car.  The 164 was offered in the US through Alfa's temporary departure from our market in1995.

A 1970 Lancia Flavia 2000 PF coupe matches the size, but not the mechanical design, of the adjacent Alfa GTV.  They're both 2 liter fours, but the Lancia is a boxer four driving the front wheels. 

Having started this survey with an exclusive road racer designed for drinkers of tea (and it must be faced, warm beer), we finish with Citroen's beloved 2CV, designed by Andre Lefebvre and introduced to war-depleted Europe as "an umbrella on 4 wheels."  The flat-twin, air-cooled front-drive Deux Chevaux, named for its taxable horsepower, put a whole nation on narrow, softly sprung wheels.  

A Belgian bakery in Boulder once used a 2CV to deliver baguettes to its customers...something wholesome to go with that all that black coffee and red wine.  And on a day when Emmanuel Macron was re-elected President of France, the humble twin-cylinder front-driver seems a fitting conclusion to our story.

*Footnote:  Previous posts in this blog reference some of the subject cars as follows.  Dates are in parentheses:

Aston Martin DB4 GT: "Rescued from Obscurity: Aston Martin in the 50s & 60s (5-11-20).

Aston Martin Jet Bertone:  "Cousins Where They Meet the Eye:  Aston Martin Jet and Ferrari 250GT Speciale" (12-31-18).

Jaguar E-Type: "Racing Improves the Breed" (8-13-17), and "Boomer's Story: Buy an Old Jaguar; Save a Marriage" (5-31-19).

Lancia Flavia 2000 Pininfarina coupe:  "The Car Search Part 2: The Fun Factor (4-24-16).

Photo Credits:  All photos are by the author.

Forgotten Classics: Lancia's Pourtout Retractables, Pinin Farina Jets, and Ghia B52s

This 1934 Lancia Belna with Pourtout* body showed up for the Monterey Car Weekend early in the present century (okay; it was 2006).  Lancia was a featured make at the Concorso Italiano, and because of that, there was plenty of unconventional engineering on display. Then again, there would've been plenty of enchanting engineering on view even if only a couple vintage Lancias had shown up.  But because the examples in attendance covered the golden era of Lancia, from the Twenties to the Sixties, there was plenty of exotic coachwork on display to go with all that engineering... 

One thing we wouldn't have expected, though, was a French-built Lancia with a retractable steel roof turning it from an all-weather coupe into a cabriolet. But from 1931 to 1936, Lancia operated a factory at Bonneuil-sur-Marne, built versions of its Augusta and later Aprilia models, and employed the services of French coachbuilder Marcel Pourtout* for a small series of retractable hardtops as well as some conventional cabrios and roadsters. For the French market, Lancia renamed the 1.2 liter V4-powered Augusta the Belna, and the later Aprilia the Ardennes. Pourtout's designer Georges Paulin* had pioneered the Eclipse retractable steel hardtop design on Peugeot chassis, and it fit equally well on the Belna chassis...

The sweeping lines of the Pourtout Belna conceal the car's small size; it sits on a 104 inch wheelbase and is relatively light.  Lucky thing, because the power available from the V4 is in the VW Beetle 1200 range. Two of the Pourtout-bodied Belna Eclipse retractable hardtops are known to survive...

The Pourtout-bodied Belna fits into a line of historic Lancias including Pinin Farina's Aurelia B24 Spider America in the foreground, the same designer's Flaminia coupe behind it, and behind that a 1924 Lambda, the production car in which Vincenzo Lancia introduced unitized body construction and V4 powerplants in 1922.

Below we find an early Sixties Flaminia Zagato Sport in red, a V4-powered Appia sedan, another Flaminia sharing the same 60-degree V6 and transaxle as the Sport, and an Aurelia B20 coupe with an earlier version of that drivetrain, but with a version of the sliding pillar front suspension that first appeared on the Lambda.

Jet airplanes were a new thing in the Fifties, and inspired automotive experiments with turbine engines* as well as jet-derived themes like fins and air intakes. Beginning in 1952, Pinin Farina began to explore these themes on a Jet series of PF200* show cars based on Lancia's Aurelia B52 chassis. Eventually PF would build a roadster, 2 convertibles and 3 coupes with this jet theme on Lancia chassis. Lancia and PF didn't need to bother with actual turbine engines; the Aurelia's aluminum V6, 4-speed transaxle and 4-wheel independent suspension made it the most advanced car on the market...

This convertible from 1953 shows off the jet-inspired, chromed oval air intake and long, low proportions of the PF design. Details differed between cars; the first-built roadster featured exhausts exiting where the tail lights are on this convertible, and one convertible lacked the chrome surrounding the air intake. 

The PF200c coupe, from 1952, shows off a glassy, cantilevered semi-fastback roof.  That cantilever and wraparound backlight recall earlier Studebakers, while the overall proportions and long wheelbase predict the Studebaker Starliner that would arrive in 1953.

In fall of 1954, Pinin Farina brought PF200 Jet Coupe II to the Paris Auto Salon, mounting the new design on a shorter wheelbase and abandoning the glassy, cantilevered rear roofline for a less-convincing scheme involving rear quarter windows with dark-tinted glazing and vertical vent slots. The shorter wheelbase improved the proportions, though...

The last of the jet-themed PF200 Aurelias appeared in 1955 on one of the handful of B55 chassis, featuring the new De Dion rear suspension on a shorter wheelbase than the B52. This unique B55 Jet, shown below, shared the wraparound windshield of the '54 car, but a different treatment of the rear roofline and greenhouse than on the earlier coupes...

On that last Jet from 1955, the shape of the rear quarter windows, along with the sail panels acting as C-pillars and flanking a recessed backlight, anticipates the Jaguar XJS, a design that would appear two decades later...

Below we see a 1953 Ghia*-bodied Aurelia B52 in turquoise and white, flanked on the left by a Zagato-bodied front-drive Fulvia Sport (1965-73), and on the right by an Appia Zagato from the late Fifites. The color scheme on Ghia's Aurelia, designed in 1952, predicts the kind of two-tonihg that would soon appear on Detroit's production cars...

Ghia built at least two bodies in alloy on Lancia's Aurelia B52 chassis to this design by Gian Paolo Boano, son of Mario Boano, who had designed the famous Aurelia B20 coupe.  The B52 chassis was aimed at specialist coachbuilders, unlike the production B10 sedan on the same 112.6 inch wheelbase.  Today the Ghia Aurelias, with their fully-enclosed wheels, recall Pinin Farina's designs for Nash, from the same period.  Unlike most special bodies by Pinin Farina and Vignale on the B52, Ghia avoided the traditional shield-shaped Lancia grille...

At the end of that 2006 Concorso, we managed to check out a few of the cars before they were loaded onto trailers.  Below, the Aurelia Jet convertible waits tor transport.  Note the right-hand drive; Lancia, like the specialist French car makers, held onto RHD well into the Fifties.  Behind the Pinin Farina Jet is an Iso Fidia S4 sedan from a decade and a half later, designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro for Ghia. 

In the foreground above we see an early Flaminia Zagato Sport coupe, the Jet convertible, a white Appia Zagato coupe, and on the right, an Aurelia B24 Spider America from the mid-Fifties.  Below is a close-up of that Series 1 Flaminia Zagato.  The Series 1 design, first shown in late 1958, featured aerodynamic bubbles over the headlights, light alloy bodywork with Zagato's trademark "double-bubble" roof, a 2.5 liter version of the aluminum block V6 from the Aurelia, and a four-speed transaxle.  Despite improvements made on later cars, including a 2.8 liter engine, collectors value the Series 1 for its rarity (99 built), purity of line, and those headlight bubbles.  Of all the cars lined up for the trailers, this one offered the most tempting invitation to ditch the trailer for a drive down Highway 1 to Big Sur and beyond...

*Footnote:  For a look at other designs by Georges Paulin for Carrosserie Pourtout, you might check out "The French Line Part 1: Carrosserie Pourtout---Well, Maybe Not for Everyone...", posted here on Jan. 17, 2020.  And for a brief history of Ghia-bodied cars from the late Forties through the Fifties, see our archives for "The Italian Line: Ghia Part 1—International Style", posted on October 22, 2020.  And for a discussion of Pinin Farina's Lancia Jets and related designs, see "Jet Cars, Part 1:  Real & Not So Real", posted May 21, 2016.

Color Photo Credits:  

All color photos are by the author.

Monochrome Photo Credits:   

1953 PF200C coupe + 1954 PF200 Coupe II:  Pinin Farina on viaretro.com

1955 PF200 Aurelia B55:  Pinin Farina on favcars.com

Aurelia B52 Ghia:  carrozzieri-italiani.com