Today was a lot more laid back than yesterday was. First off, we did not have to drive six hours. Today’s featured facility came with a guided tour, and its environment was generally more relaxed than that of House on the Rock. We had to travel only a few miles down the road from House on the Rock to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin. He named his home Taliesin to honor his Welsh roots, translated it means furrowed brow and trumpets his belief that a building should not be built atop a hill, but on its forehead. He lived and worked on this property for fifty years, until his death in 1959. It burned twice and when he wasn’t rebuilding it from fire, he was changing it to meet his current needs, which were constantly evolving.

Dale our guide led us 24 tour members for four hours through many of the buildings that are the Taliesin complex, because that is how many seats were on the bus. After four hours, our tour ended at the brow of the hill. The site is under constant restoration. The current hot project is Wright’s bedroom, which is in danger of sliding off the hill. He began working on Taliesin at the beginning of the 20th-century, but the restoration’s goal is what it looked like in 1959. From a preservation point of view, you have to pick a specific date, because the place was always changing. I mentioned yesterday that Wright insulted his neighbor Alex Jordan, by telling him that he would not trust Jordan to build a chicken coup. I saw his chicken coups after they had been repurposed into cabins for his students. Wright might have had a point.

Taliesin is where he designed most of his signature works, from the Guggenheim Museum to Falling Water. One story that we were told was about Falling Water. Nine months after receiving this commission, Wright got a surprise phone call from the client. The client was in Madison and was about to board a train to come visit Wright and review his design. The train ride was two-and-a-half hours. Wright had not put anything on paper. Once off the phone, he summoned all of his students and instructed them to keep feeding him sharpened pencils. Drafting like crazy, strictly from memory, he had the design ready to present when his client stepped off the train.

We did a dawn launch this morning and headed north along the Mississippi River. Today’s attraction was a “house” in southwest Wisconsin called House on the Rock. Giving Chicago a wide berth, we ended up crossing the river three times. It was an easy drive that got us to our destination in seemingly plenty of time. The house was designed by Alex Jordan Jr. and as its name implies it was built atop a rock. He opened it in the early sixties and immediately began charging admission ($1 for adults, 50¢ for children). Jordan worked on the house for the rest of his life and work continued after his death. Promotional info indicated that four hours would be sufficient to see the house and grounds. We were about halfway through it, when one of the attendants buttonholed us and told us that if we didn’t get our butts in gear, we would not get to see everything. This complex is a maze, but running through it is a single path along with plenty of signage that one can follow and almost convince yourself that you have seen everything along the way. The site is packed with all manners of stuff. As we progressed ever onward, we were successively impressed and then more impressed again. The place is reminiscent of Saint Louis’ own City Museum and Santa Fe’s Meow Wolf.

One of House on the Rock’s oldest and most salient features is the so-called Infinity Room. Cantilevered 200′ and lined with thousands of windows, the room tapers to a point giving the illusion that it disappears into the distance. The story goes that Jordan once approached Frank Lloyd Wright with his plans for another building that he was working on at the time and sought his approval. Supposedly, Wright rebuffed him with the insult, “I wouldn’t hire you to design a cheese crate or a chicken coop. You’re not capable.” Afterwards, incensed by the insult, Jordan vowed to show up Wright and said, “I’m going to put a Japanese house on one of those pinnacle rocks and advertise it”. That is the creation story told about House on the Rock. The story continues, Jordan’s advertisements eventually angered Wright, who built is own estate just a few miles down the road from Jordan’s. It is called Taliesin and is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site. We plan on visiting it tomorrow.