About four miles from Spring Green, Wis., the hills splay into two soft ranges to let a fast stream flow toward the Wisconsin River. Facing southwest over this valley a big, long house folds around the summit of one hill, its roof lines parallel to the line of ridges, its masonry the same red-yellow sandstone that crops out in ledges along the stream. Under snow the house melts easily into the landscape. Its name is Taliesin, a Welsh word meaning
"shining brow." Its history is one of tragic irony. Its character is one of extraordinary repose. It is the home of Frank Lloyd Wright, the greatest architect of the 20th Century.
For the past five years Taliesin has been a workshop, farm and studio for more than a score of apprentices who are interested in architecture as Frank Lloyd Wright understands it. During its first winter the Taliesin Fellowship spent most of its time cutting wood in two shifts to keep the fires going. Since then, its life has been less defensive. After nearly a decade, the master of Taliesin has again had work in hand. In California, Texas, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania superb new buildings have grown from his plans. Last week the significance to modern architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright's new buildings was recognized in an issue of THE ARCHITECTURAL FORUM which broke all precedents for that magazine. Its main body of 102 pages, Lid out and written by Architect Wright, was an album of his work, an anthology of sturdy quotations from Thoreau and Whitman, and a compendium of Weight's building philosophy.
To the U. S. man-in-the-street 15 years ago, the name Frank Lloyd Wright meant, if anything, the builder of a hotel in Tokyo which by some engineering magic withstood the great earthquake of 1923. To the U. S. man-in-the-subway, his name was associated with scandalous episodes ground from the inhuman human-interest mill of the tabloid newspapers. A decade ago, when the brand-new International Style in architecture was seriously taken up by U. S. architects, many of them were surprised to discover that Wright had been its forerunner 30 years before, that by great European architects such as J. J. P. Oud and Mies van der Rohe he was regarded as a master spirit. In 1932 Wright published his Autobiography, a book which combined magnificent self-revelation with the most stimulating discussion of architecture ever heard in the U. S.
Natural Builder, The valley in which Architect Wright lives was settled by his Welsh grandfather when it was wild. Wright was born there and grew up on the farm of one of his uncles. His first adventurous piece of architecture was a windmill. He felt and has developed a stronger sense of the earth's reality than most poets. Wright has conceived himself a participant in Nature, not a communicant. "Man takes a positive hand in creation," he has said, "whenever he puts a building upon the earth beneath the sun."