Two Eccentric Men

9-21-2010 Tuesday

We are headed down to southern Wisconsin today, to a town called Spring Green.  We are going to tour the home of Frank Lloyd Wright this afternoon.

Our drive this morning is thru lots of CORN fields.  We are seeing lots of farm land with rich black dirt and a few dairy farms.  We are seeing many geese flying their “V’s” as they migrate south.  They are landing in the corn fields to load up for their flights.  And we are seeing beautiful, big red barns. Terry is reading, there is music on the radio, and we have been munching on our sweet rolls that we purchased at Scaturo’s in Sturgeon Bay on the way out this morning.  My back is hurting from all the riding and sitting and not enough exercise.  Gotta pull out the rubber bands tonight and do some stretching.

We arrived in Spring Green at 11 a.m. and realized our tour was not until 3 p.m.  There were only two stores open in the town; all the others had closed down.  We had lunch and then went to tour a place called House on the Rock. 

This House on the Rock is another popular tourist spot for southern Wisconsin. The builders name was Alex Jordan and he built this big-ass house up on a mountain.  There was no road up the mountain at the time and he hauled all the materials up the mountain in baskets on his back.  And he built the house himself, which was built as his mountain re-treat.  In fact, there are no bedrooms in this house, as he only spent a total of 4 nights at the house in his lifetime.  The inside is dark, ceilings are low, and he incorporated rocks and trees in the inside of the house.   He collected art from all over the world, and had students who eventually came and worked at the house to build and design “artistic” things.  For instance, he has the world’s largest indoor carousel, and all the 269 horses are hand carved.  He has a dollhouse room that has over 200 fully furnished dollhouses.   At Christmas more than 6000 Santas are displayed.  He has garden areas and water areas that display beautiful flowers, waterfalls and little ponds.  One of the more spectacular rooms was called the Infinity Room.  This room extends 218 feet into space, 156 feet above the valley floor. 

As he was building the house, many townspeople and soon people from all over came wanting to look at this curious attraction.  He originally built it for his own self-enjoyment (he was a batchelor, although he dated the same lady for over 50 years); but after so many came he told the public he would let them tour it for 50 cents.   So, with the income he made from the “tourists”, he was able to raise enough money to keep adding to his collection.  Very interesting; very dark inside; very impractical.  Don’t need to see it again.

Our 2^nd tour of the day was Taliesin, a home Frank Lloyd Wright built for his lover at the time, Mamah Cheney.  Wright was a man of huge ego.  He touted one should not concentrate on the practical so much as the impractical.   He was an architect who designed famous buildings that to this day are still being used.  However he was also known to frequently go over budget and had even bankrupted a few men after the buildings were completed.  He was a man short in statue, 5’6”, and the low ceilings in the house testify to that fact.  The house itself was built on a hill and he purchased a lot of the surrounding land so that he could control how the land was used.  He designed all the furniture, the flower gardens, and sometimes fabrics for the interior.  He had Asian tendencies in his interior decorations, although he stated he did not like Asian tastes.  In some of the rooms he had little Buddhas inserted into the rock walls just for whimsy.  Wright did not have a college degree, or even high school degree.  However he did establish a school on the grounds where young men came to study under him and learn his techniques.  To this day there are men in their 90’s who were former students and live permanently at Taliesin.  And to this day there is still a Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.  The cost is $30,000 and other types of design are studied in addition to Wright’s.

Wright also built a house in the west.  He started dividing his time between the west and Taliesin.  He died out west but was buried in WI.  When she died, she left in her will that his body was to be exhumed and the ashes scattered out west.  Her family came in the middle of the night, burned his bones and scattered them according to her wishes.  There was a popular bumper sticker at the time that read “Frank Lloyd Wright, bring your ash back home”.

Our guide told us that Wright built several homes for people.  There were times when he could get the buyers to agree for his total control of the house.  This meant the building of the house, the design and placement of furniture in the house and the placing of decorations in the house.  Years later he may pop in and head towards the living room area.  If things had been added or rearranged, he promptly would restore the room to its order according to Wright, and bag up all the extras, admonishing the owners for going against their agreement.  Talk about control!

Apparently he was quite a womanizer.  While I am reading a book called Loving Frank, our guide tells us that the book called The Women is much better.  I shall see. 

All in all, this tour was more interesting, mainly due to more lighting.  But again, the house was very impractical, and was more of a showplace than a home.