Mike Huberty [00:00:02]:

Wisconsin, a paranormal paradise with lake monsters, dogmen haunted hotels, famous ghosts, and deadly killers. It's a lot more than just America's dairyland. It's time for a deep dive into the weird, wonderful and terrifying that's lying just below the surface of reality. From American ghostwalks and Badgerland Legends. This is the Wisconsin Legends podcast.

Jeff Finup [00:00:30]:

Welcome into the Wisconsin Legends podcast. My name is Jeff Finup, and today.

Mike Huberty [00:00:35]:

I'm joined by Mike Huberty from American Ghost Walks.

Jeff Finup [00:00:39]:

That's right. We're back for season two. For the first episode, we're diving into the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright. He's known today as the greatest American architect of all time. He's the GOAT, an honor bestowed by the American Institute of Architects in 1991. He's firmly cemented that through his works over his 70 year career.

Mike Huberty [00:01:02]:

He's the only architect I can name besides, like, the dad from The Brady Bunch.

Jeff Finup [00:01:06]:

That'd be Mike Brady.

Mike Huberty [00:01:07]:

Okay, so Mike,

Jeff Finup [00:01:08]:

he's got the same name as you, Mike, so you should be able to remember that.

Mike Huberty [00:01:11]:

Mike Brady and Frank Lloyd Wright, two great American architects.

Jeff Finup [00:01:14]:

Well, his humble beginnings in rural Richland and Sauk County, Wisconsin, may have informed much of his style and aesthetic. The rolling prairies bluffs, the Wisconsin Riverway, the American Indian effigy mounts, and the limestone outcroppings certainly inspired his worldview when it came to architecture's place within nature. Wright's career in architecture spanned 73 years, and he's credited with many incredible works as well as the progenitor of a movement that reshaped how Americans live in their homes the Prairie School Movement. Although Frank Lloyd Wright garnered fame, notoriety and fortune, his life was riddled with numerous tragedies, scandals, heartbreak, misfortune, and financial ruin. Frank Lloyd Wright was born June 8, 1867, in Richland Center, Wisconsin. He was the son of Anna Lloyd Jones Wright and William Carrie Wright. Although Wright was born in Richland Center, near his mom's hometown, his father's, Wanderlust, led them across the country at an early age. Wright's father, William Kerry Wright, was an ambitious man who was trained and highly skilled in music.

Jeff Finup [00:02:22]:

He practiced as a lawyer, ran as a politician, spent time as a school superintendent, was a musician, composer, and even fabled to be a country doctor. He was a multitalented guy all around.

Mike Huberty [00:02:34]:

19Th century Renaissance man.

Jeff Finup [00:02:35]:

He was born a minister's son in 1825 in Westfield, Mass. He attended college to study law and music at only 14, he was precocious, to say the least, but he completed neither at that young age, and he left college in 1840 and moved in with his brother, who is also Reverend Thomas G. Wright, in New Hampshire. He later enrolled as a senior at Colgate, which was Madison University at the time, and he graduated there from in 1849 with a scholarship music. He quickly married a lady by the name of Permalia Holcomb in 1851, where they moved to Hartford, Connecticut. Now, Wright's wanderlust led him to Lone Rock, Wisconsin, during a time of westward expansion, it seemed he couldn't make ends meet out east, so he decided, head.

Mike Huberty [00:03:20]:

Out and go to Lone Rock.

Jeff Finup [00:03:21]:

That's right. Well, he hung a shingle as a lawyer in 1859. He's trained in music and law. His potential to the community was recognized immediately. He was a well educated man with talents useful to any upstart community. And then within a year, he was appointed as the commissioner of the Richland County Circuit Court. From there, he campaigned for county school superintendent. He was narrowly defeated the following election.

Jeff Finup [00:03:41]:

He campaigned again, and he won that superintendent job.

Mike Huberty [00:03:44]:

All right.

Jeff Finup [00:03:45]:

Things seemed to be on track for Mr. Wright. But just as he was gaining traction in that community, his wife and the mother of his three children died in 1864. Finally getting his feet underneath him, he gets the superintendent job, and then his wife dies and leaves him a widower with three children. Now, there's a good chance he was familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright's mother, Anna Lloyd Jones. At the time of Pamelia's death, she was a member of the Lloyd Joneses, a prominent family who settled only 7 miles away in nearby Spring Green. Richland center and Spring Green, not too far from each other. Small community.

Jeff Finup [00:04:18]:

Everybody probably knew each other. And seeing that he was the superintendent and she was a teacher, it's almost undoubtedly that they've had at least cross paths at meetings.

Mike Huberty [00:04:28]:

And these are the days before that kind of stuff at work would be considered inappropriate.

Jeff Finup [00:04:34]:

Yeah, he was very much a married man, but after his wife died, it would only be natural to say, you know, I need to find somebody to help me raise these kids. Anna Lloyd Jones was 17 years his junior. William C. Wright was 41. He was a widower. He had three children. And the Lloyd Joneses, they had some misgivings about the pair because Lloyd Jones was only 24 at the time, quite a bit younger, different worldview. They probably wanted her to marry somebody a little more prominent and not like just some old dude, some 41.

Jeff Finup [00:05:07]:

I'm 40. So I understand they had some misgivings. But the couple eventually wed. August 17 of 1866, anna Lloyd Jones was a Welsh immigrant. She immigrated with her family at the age of two in 1844. The family trekked to Milwaukee, then to Azonia in 1845. After a few years there, they moved to Spring Green. And that's really where they settled the roots.

Jeff Finup [00:05:27]:

The Lloyd Joneses. They were a tightly knit Unitarian clan. They had eleven children. Four alone were born right here in Wisconsin. They quickly became one of the most prosperous families in the south central part of the state. That's no small feat with eleven children.

Mike Huberty [00:05:40]:

Right?

Jeff Finup [00:05:40]:

But they were closely knit. Anna was a teacher, one of few careers for a young single woman at the time. It was likely the journeys between her home and rural school informed her of her love of nature and knowledge, two of her early abiding passions, something she surely instilled in Frank Lloyd Wright as a child. Now the senior Wright, he found richland center too confining. So you see the wanderlust kind of coming back and too unprofitable. The family moved to McGregor, Iowa, when Wright was only two, paw tuck at Rhode Island two years later. Weymouth mass three years later. This is all before Frank was even ten years old.

Jeff Finup [00:06:14]:

His father's inability to find income to match the perceived value was a stumbling block. Wherever he went, the lack of monetary recognition of his work led him to move to different communities in search of a suitable fit. It seemed the senior right was excellent in just about everything he did except churning a profit making a living for his family. This led to an unstable household with constant lack of resources, unrelieved poverty and anxiety. That was wright. In his own words, wright had what the architect would describe as a deeply disturbed and obviously unhappy childhood for all. Williams'faults it's said that Wright's father made an early impression on him in the form of art and music, two things that he was trained in formally and had a passion for. So Frank Lloyd Wright consistently maintained that a career in architecture was prenatally chosen for him by his mother.

Jeff Finup [00:07:07]:

But his lifelong attraction, Bach and Beethoven, definitely stimulated by his father. So you kind of see the two worlds kind of coming together.

Mike Huberty [00:07:16]:

Sure.

Jeff Finup [00:07:16]:

His father taught him to make structural comparisons between music and building. He introduced concepts for music like structure, form and composition. Now, these were universal principles that could be applied to music, art, and even design. Wright had a love hate relationship with his father. He loved him for schooling in art, music, but he felt neglected by his aging father of six who had little time for him. Anna received most of the accolades for Wright's inclinations towards art and design. Well, it seems like William's influence for young Wright carried the same theme, neglect. So Anna got all the praise.

Jeff Finup [00:07:47]:

He was a neglectful father, but at an early age, he found Wright's passion and kind of brought that out. While Frank was still in his crib, anna tore up pictures from Harper's Weekly. Each illustration showed in detail a famous European cathedral. She hung them in his nursery along with woodcuts of English cathedrals for inspiration.

Mike Huberty [00:08:05]:

All right, well, mom, it seems like he was a foregone conclusion.

Jeff Finup [00:08:08]:

Yeah, mom really instilled it in a young age that he was bound to be this grand genius. And whether that is right, writing this after the fact, or it really happened, it actually did happen. Whatever the origin story was, it fit. Yeah. It worked in 1876 during Philadelphia's Centennial Expositions. Now, that was a hundred years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence that the spark for the love of design, construction and mathematics and architectures were kindled in a young right. Now, he was nine years old at the time when he was exposed to these games by Friedrich Frable. They were known as Frebelian games.

Jeff Finup [00:08:58]:

The toys could be stacked, folded, arranged, and manipulated endlessly into two or three-dimensional constructions or compositions. I imagine these as like the small building blocks that kids use to model landscapes.

Mike Huberty [00:09:09]:

Well, I pictured like Lincoln Logs meet Jenga.

Jeff Finup [00:09:13]:

Yeah. And it's probably like a proto Lego. Now, kids have Legos at their fingertips and they can know create the world around them.

Mike Huberty [00:09:20]:

Right.

Jeff Finup [00:09:20]:

However they want. These toys inspired kids to think about geometric forms, basic shapes, and could construct and express these blocks into furniture, buildings, entire city plans. And Anna an educator. She purchased these gifts or toys as teaching aids for a job in the classroom. But Frank, he spent countless hours using them to refine his building methods, using the wooden blocks and shapes in their timeout east. Anna, like many of us that have left Wisconsin, she grew homesick for her native land. She urged William that it was time to move back home to raise her family. According to an 1878 newspaper, william was cited as a resident of Madison and a pastor at the liberal Unitarian Church of Wyoming.

Jeff Finup [00:09:59]:

Now, Wyoming is a small community just south of Spring Green, only miles from the current Taliesin site. Based on the historical record, we know that he made his way back. He lived in Madison and preached in Wyoming, which was probably quite the haul for a Sunday service.

Mike Huberty [00:10:13]:

Yeah, I was going to say if you're coming from Madison to there and you got to be in a horse and buggy or whatever, it's going to take you an hour to get there.

Jeff Finup [00:10:19]:

Yeah. This was before the time of the Model T even. Yes. At eleven, when the young right worked on his Uncle James's farm in Spring Green, the senior right who preached as a Baptist minister, found himself within the American Unitarian Church. Unfortunately, the new religion was no more financially rewarding than the Baptist church. Well, he also opened a music store in Madison and he went on the Lecturing circuit with the church to try and make ends meet. He had three different positions and he still couldn't make ends meet. The younger right was now of an age where he was gaining independence.

Jeff Finup [00:10:50]:

He invented things, published a one sheet neighborhood newspaper, attended parties and performed after dinner singing activities. Frank, he was popular among his peers, yet very shy around girls. He had little experience before his first wife and even like talking to girls.

Mike Huberty [00:11:04]:

Well, that would change.

Jeff Finup [00:11:06]:

Yeah, you'd have definitely made up for that in the coming years here. Now, he was prone to fantasy and would often retreat to his attic sanctum to read, draw, paint and write. At the time, he was living in Madison in the Tenney Park area. They have him at Gorham and Livingston, which anybody familiar with the geography or the layout of Madison. That's right downtown. He attended Madison High School where he was not an outstanding student. There's no record of him graduating that high school. Those records would have been destroyed.

Mike Huberty [00:11:33]:

Sure.

Jeff Finup [00:11:33]:

He enrolled at UW in 1886, it was said, as a special student. So it seems they may have made it an exception for him. And I'm not really sure what to make of that. He got into the UW.

Mike Huberty [00:11:45]:

Maybe he wowed him with art or a presentation or something like that.

Jeff Finup [00:11:50]:

It's very know he was a precocious kid. He had many talents and he was well trained in the arts, informally by his mothers. Maybe his preacher dad grease and palms or his mom, an educator, had an in. Well, by this time, Frank was coming into his own. His father and mother had divorced and it was uncontested. It seems like Anna was happy being back in Wisconsin and William was still plagued with that same wanderlust. William was a talented and ambitious man, but it seemed that the communities that welcomed him and valued him, but they were unable to reward him financially for the value he felt he brought to the community. After the divorce, Frank never saw his father again, despite him living until Frank was 37.

Jeff Finup [00:12:29]:

So the next two decades of his.

Mike Huberty [00:12:31]:

Life talk about a neglectful father.

Jeff Finup [00:12:34]:

Well, and it seems like less when.

Mike Huberty [00:12:35]:

You'Re alive, but but it seems like.

Jeff Finup [00:12:38]:

Frank was at the age at that time when he could have made that decision to just cut his father out of his life. The neglect kind of went both ways. But despite the rocky relationship, Wright took away an ethos instilled into him by his father. In regards to music, Wright later recalled Victor Hugo's comparison of Gothic cathedrals with musical forms, a comparison he may not have appreciated, but for his father. And you can see how in the coming narrative, how profound Victor Hugo's writings were on Wright.

Mike Huberty [00:13:07]:

And Victor Hugo is the guy that wrote the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Jeff Finup [00:13:10]:

Correct. Yes. He was an author and he had a philosophy that right. To exception to that I'll get into a little bit later and you could see how it kind of inspired him, almost a thorn in his side. And had it not been for his father in that training in music and the structure of music and comparing to buildings, he may not have appreciated that. And his life may have taken a different course.

Mike Huberty [00:13:31]:

You know that we know all these it really attests to the fact that Frank Lloyd Wright is so influential, the fact that so much has been written about him, that we have all these details of his life that we can talk about. Philosophies he liked he didn't like things of his youth and his past and like these little things that everybody's been paying attention to because they think his life is so valuable to study that the details are useful.

Jeff Finup [00:13:58]:

Yeah. And he did live an interesting life. So I think kind of going back and doing some archaeology on his early childhood is useful and instructive, as you said, to kind of broader understand the man and see what society can gain from what he learned and how he was shaped. Despite Frank taking Anna's side in the divorce, it seemed that he was very much his father's son. Both men had similar personality traits. They were discontent with living arrangements and locale. Wright was never happy with his designs and often tore them down and rebuilt them again. So that was like his personal living spaces.

Jeff Finup [00:14:32]:

He had the skill and resources to do such a thing, but those acts both made financial problems for him, and these impulsive spending streaks on remodels and later automobiles really cost him.

Mike Huberty [00:14:45]:

Well, sure. And I tell you, if he was trying to do that kind of stuff now, it would take him six months because you can't even get a contractor to come for an appointment until six months later.

Jeff Finup [00:14:54]:

Yep. And that's just the nature of the world now. But Frank Lloyd Wright had the connections to do this stuff, but it also took hit on his finances. Both him and his father's view on children as an inconvenience and an intrusion on their work. It seemed like he was very much his father's son, despite kind of rebuking his father feeling neglected. But, you know, it's the nature or nurture thing, and definitely some of his dad's nature definitely bled through the story to come.

Jeff Finup [00:15:38]:

Wright's time at the UW was short-lived. While studying there in 1885, wright also worked as a clerk in his professor Alan D. Conover's architectural firm. He did OD jobs on various projects, including a minor supervisor role on the university's most storied building, Science Hall, which Professor Conover was in part responsible for. There is a lot of lore around Science Hall, and if you have ever been on UW's campus, you see this big Romanesque looking building. Yeah, I know. You cover it on your tour.

Mike Huberty [00:16:05]:

Yeah, on the UW ghost tour, we definitely talk about Science Hall. It's an imposing structure right at the base of Bascom Hill. Construction was completed in 1888. That goes along with Frank Lloyd Wright starting college at UW in 1886. There was an original Science hall on that spot, but it burned down in 1884. So that's why they wanted to build a new one made of masonry and metal with no wood, because they wanted to keep it as fireproof as possible. It is the oldest all steel beam building still standing today, probably. So as far as the records go, it's the oldest of them, and it's most originally associated with pioneering geologist Charles Van Hise, who led the University of Wisconsin to having the first courses in sedimentation, oceanography and engineering geology in the United States.

Mike Huberty [00:16:51]:

Now, Van Hise has his own building, now named after him, and it's the second tallest building in Madison. It's the second tallest because in 1966, the City Council of Madison passed a, quote, capitol view preservation ordinance unquote that no buildings in the city are allowed to be taller than the state capitol.

Jeff Finup [00:17:08]:

That's right.

Mike Huberty [00:17:09]:

It looks like it could be a fortress. Like you said, romanesque Revival towers, blood red brick. And it's always the first place most students think of when they think of hauntings on the University of Wisconsin campus. And that's for a good reason, because it's where they kept the dead people. So when the anatomy department moved there in 1905, the fourth floor was partitioned in tiny rooms, painted what somebody called an odious orange with no windows. In each of these odious orange rooms, two first year medical students would be partnered with a cadaver. Their mission was to cut the corpses apart to learn the body's secrets. The fifth floor tower was also anatomy laboratory, and with no elevator installed here until 1925, students had to walk up ten long flights of stairs to the dissection room, where a judgmental professor and a dead body would wait for them at the end of their long workout.

Mike Huberty [00:18:00]:

There used to be a fire escape in the south wing, and there was a tunnel slide with a 50 foot drop going into the courtyard from the third floor. And children from the town of Madison would often come into the building on weekends to go down the slide themselves. And when the faculty would get annoyed by the kids, they would pour a bucket of water down it. But kids weren't the only ones who enjoyed it. Students would sneak up there and often do the same thing until it was eventually replaced in 1982. Not so cute was that sometimes they would leave the cadavers there. Hearses could be seen pulling up to the rear of Science Hall, and dead bodies would be lowered to the basement morgue. From there, they had a rope and pulley system to take the corpses from the basement to the dissection rooms in the north tower, and they called it the cadaver lift.

Mike Huberty [00:18:42]:

In fact, in addition to using the lift, these cadavers got to use the outdoor fire escape as well. Sometimes in the winter, they would leave the dead bodies outdoors on the platform of the third floor fire escape so that the bodies would freeze and then not go bad. You hate to think of meat going.

Jeff Finup [00:18:56]:

Bad, but that's gross.

Mike Huberty [00:18:58]:

The body parts of frozen corpses are much easier to solve, so that was one reason they left them out there. Part of the reason that Science Hall gets a grisly reputation is because when the anatomy department moved in 1956, they didn't take all the body parts with them. One professor talks about finding a jar with a pickled fetus under the sink in the office he was moving into. Another mentions finding the hip, foot and leg bones of a tall man while looking for a storage space in the fourth floor, and two graduate students found an embalmed human foot. Of course, all those bodies gave birth to legends over time.

Jeff Finup [00:19:31]:

Just one grizzly aside to you. My father in law was a longtime professor at the UW. Part of his training. He had a brain informaldehyde in a five gallon bucket that he kept in his office. And when he finally retired, he had to figure out how to properly dispose of his training aid. So I can see even, like, a less refined time, like the late 18 hundreds, at least I'm behind. Yeah, they're just like, we don't need these anymore. So I could see how the professor, he's done.

Jeff Finup [00:19:59]:

He hangs up his boot, so to speak, and he just leaves it behind for the next person to find. I think he did the responsible thing. I'll have to follow up to see whatever happened to that human brain that he had in his office for all the years.

Mike Huberty [00:20:11]:

One of the legends there is that they discovered female body parts in the building, and since only male bodies were used for research, it meant that a woman was murdered. Well, that's true that cadavers were mostly men, but that's because it was before the days of people donating their bodies to science. So for research, they had to use whatever bodies turned up dead and unknown near Madison. And a vast majority of those were derelict men.

Jeff Finup [00:20:32]:

So bums and people on State Street that froze to death, they just hauled them off to science hall and use them as training aides or cadavers. Right.

Mike Huberty [00:20:39]:

You either went to the pauper's grave or they went to the anatomy department. They did leave body parts around, though, and since students and professors were mostly interested in organs, they would often cut off the parts they weren't going to be studied, and they'd have the janitorial crew store them somewhere out of the way. Another legend of the building is that since the first building burned in 1884, a professor died there, and he haunts the new one. People talk of feeling a strange male presence on the fourth floor that sometimes makes beakers fall off shelves deliberately. Since only the geography department is still here, it'd be unusual for any beakers to be there in the first place. One of the haunted stories of the building is that a student committed suicide here. And sometimes you can see a body hanging in one of the windows. Or there's the story of the worker who died here during its construction, probably Frank Lloyd Wright's fault.

Mike Huberty [00:21:24]:

And people have claimed to see a man in 19th century workman's clothes, but both these stories have no historical basis. It's true that a graduate student who eventually became a professor here refused to work in one of the rooms that contained a drain where cadaver cuts used to empty into. He didn't like the idea of working in a place where the ghost might come back up the drain. But it's been investigated by paranormal groups over the years. In 2013, one investigation, a camera picked up a glowing light in one of the empty classrooms. They couldn't explain, but the best evidence that night was an EVP. That's where you set your microphones up and listen later to see if they pick up anything that your ears didn't. And the strangest thing they got was a voice that whispered, I'm here.

Mike Huberty [00:22:03]:

But who knows who was there? The facility manager for a long time was a guy named Thomas Toos, and he enjoys the history and he often gets questions about the hauntings, but unfortunately, he's not willing to admit to seeing anything himself. Science hall is an old, scary looking building where humans used to be dissected and body parts are found in strange places. And there are bats that live in the attic, so that's true.

Jeff Finup [00:22:23]:

Bats in the belfry.

Mike Huberty [00:22:24]:

But you have to just forgive all the students who see it, and they let their imaginations run a little bit wild.

Jeff Finup [00:22:30]:

Yeah. And you talk about that fire exit and I guess the legend was in. I think you thoroughly bunked that as a fire escape and not as, like, a body shoot because a lot of people said, oh, yeah, they just threw the bodies or the body parts down there for disposal. But it sounds like there was the.

Mike Huberty [00:22:46]:

Bodies had that was for the kids with the fire escape. The bodies had their own cadaver lift.

Jeff Finup [00:22:52]:

Sounds like if the kid was unaccounted for or a vagrant himself, he could meet his end at Science Hall and then also be studied there for science.

Mike Huberty [00:23:00]:

Yeah, it's a one stop shop.

Jeff Finup [00:23:01]:

Yeah. There you go. So, yeah, thanks for giving us this background. And I know I said that Science Hall was the most storied building on campus, and a lot of people might take exceptions saying, well, it's either south or maybe it's Bascom. But with Mike just shared with us, I think it's definitely The Contender.

Mike Huberty [00:23:17]:

That's the place to go for Ghost Story.

Jeff Finup [00:23:41]:

Back to Frank Lloyd Wright, you know, who worked on Science Hall, but then he kind of wanted to turn to bigger and better pursuits. He wanted to take his firsthand experience on building something. So in 1886, he was given a firsthand chance at additional experience in the design and construction. So he worked with a prominent architect from Chicago, joseph Lyman Silsby, where he designed All Souls Church for Wright's. Uncle Jenkins. Lloyd Jones. He was a prominent figure in the Unitarian world. Silsby followed up that work with the design for the Joneses Unity Chapel in Helena.

Jeff Finup [00:24:13]:

He got to see firsthand construction of Science Hall, now the All Souls, and then he got to follow that up in his own family's Unity Chapel in Helena. Now, the original sketch, which you can find online, maybe we'll put in the show notes, is signed FL Wright Del. Now. The del was for delineators. A delineator is an illustrator that converts preliminary sketches into perspective representations. So if you've ever seen a pamphlet for a new neighborhood or new development, you'll see kind of the artful, like the watercolors, and you see like, okay, this is what the campus is going to look like. Well, that was Frank Lloyd Wright's. First official job was Delineator.

Jeff Finup [00:24:47]:

So that would be like delineator would be like the artistic sketch, and the next person would be like the draftsman. And then there's the architect. The young Wright was more than just a pencil jockey. It was said that at the time, a boy architect belonging to the family looked after the three room interior of the chapel. So that was a young Frank Lloyd Wright's first real project. From there, Wright moved to Chicago the following years. In early 1887, he failed to find work at the five architecture firms he applied at, but he had an ace up his sleeve due to his work with Silsby. Once he had it in as a delineator, his path started to unfold for him.

Jeff Finup [00:25:20]:

He was receiving recognition for additional designs, including several houses and chapels. So you see the path open up for him. And then in March 1887, the 19 year old Frank Lloyd Wright, having newly moved to Chicago to become an architect, he received a letter from his aunt, Nell Lloyd Jones asking him to design a building for the school that she planned for his sister, Jenny Lloyd Jones. He oversaw the design of the project, and it was his first major solo work. Wright would go on to describe that work as amateurish. Now, I think that really exemplifies the ethos of Wright. He was routinely dissatisfied. It would have been a major accomplishment for any 19 year old of any era.

Jeff Finup [00:25:57]:

But it also showed that he was not happy with the status quo and looked to stretch and grow in his ability. Any 19 year old that designs something that gets built, that's a huge it's a massive achievement. Yeah, it's like, wow, he's a prodigy, but he looks back on it. Well, that was amateurish pursuit, right?

Mike Huberty [00:26:12]:

That was kids stuff.

Jeff Finup [00:26:13]:

After spending about a year in Silsby's employee, he signed on with Adlern Sullivan, a notable Chicago architecture firm. It seemed his short tenure with Silsby really kindled Wright's affinity for residential design, so he carried that with him for the years to come. Now, at Adler, he studied under the tutelage of the architect Louis Sullivan, the father of the skyscraper, as well as engineer Dankmar Adler. While at Adler Sullivan, wright started to find his signature style, and it was expressed in the Charlie House. It was a thoroughly modern building with clean lines, broad flat surfaces and contrasting reveals. Just looking at the house, you can surmise that it's a Frank Lloyd Wright. It has his style, and it was a little less refined, but you can kind of see the bones there of. His philosophy and his design.

Jeff Finup [00:26:56]:

In the after hour session, sullivan planted an important seed in the young draftsman. He espoused his philosophy underpinning his architecture. Sullivan said it was biological organisms birds, trees, flowers. He said they weren't designed to be pretty. Sullivan explained their forms evolved in response to their environment, in whatever was necessary to best perform a specific function. Buildings, he told Wright, should be designed the same way. The greatness of gothic architecture, for example, came from the fact that it was designed from nature's template. The principles gave rise to Sullivan's famous dictum, form follows function.

Jeff Finup [00:27:29]:

But Wright said that that had been misunderstood. Form and function should be one joined in a spiritual union. So he kind of took his master's ethos and said, well, you're right, but you're not quite there. It should be both, right?

Mike Huberty [00:27:43]:

He gives it the hippie treatment, or he gives it the holy trinity treatment. That form doesn't just follow function. Form and function are aligned spiritually.

Jeff Finup [00:27:51]:

Exactly. Although employed by Sullivan, like his father, wright struggled to make ends meet. During 1890, Wright designed about ten houses without his employer's knowledge. When Sullivan discovered the bootlegged ventures, he disapproved the twos parted way in 1893. That was a real rift for him to say, well, Wright's going behind my back, producing these architectural plans. And I think Sullivan felt not necessarily betrayal, but maybe some like, hey, man, why are you working on this stuff behind my back? I thought we had a deal, a relationship. The mentorship to the budding Wright, who was eleven years Sullivan's junior, is recognized. Wright's talents propelled him into almost an equal status as Sullivan in many respects.

Jeff Finup [00:28:33]:

In the few short years that he worked for Sullivan. The two were estranged until 1908, when Wright had time to reflect on the debt he owed to Sullivan for taking a chance on such raw talent. He was able to finally come around to the end and see, okay, I owe a lot of what I've learned in the few short years, and you can see that the trajectory was really there. After working for Adlern Sullivan, 93, we have a 25 year old Wright. He's a budding talent in the architectural scene. He's got 20 projects under his belt, and he's worked for a couple of well respected firms. 1893. It was an exciting time in Chicago.

Jeff Finup [00:29:17]:

It was the year of the world's Colombian exposition, better known as the Chicago world's fair. It was also dubbed the fair that changed America. Now, there's a legend that Wright had worked on some of the buildings there. Sullivan was commissioned for the transportation building, but it's not clear if Wright had any part of that design. Likely the drafts were already done by the time that Wright onboarded. And Wright, he was greenhorn draftsman. So he may have been assigned to the firm's smaller project and not the grand Colombian exposition. And I feel like if he had a part in it.

Jeff Finup [00:29:49]:

It would be well documented and written about, so I haven't been able to uncover anything.

Mike Huberty [00:29:52]:

He'd have bragged about it too?

Jeff Finup [00:29:53]:

Probably, yes. Sullivan was assigned to it. It's clear that Frank Lloyd Wright did attend his later writings about the fair, cast doubt about the part that he played in any project there. Wright wrote in criticism of the display of this old world architectural style, which had been a key feature of the Fair, wright wrote, by this overwhelming grandomania, I was confirmed in my fear that a native architecture would be set back at least 50 years. Seemed that a young Wright was intimating that a new world deserved a new architecture. In Frank Lloyd Wright, he'd go on to conceive such a style. Now, Wright was a modernist. After all.

Jeff Finup [00:30:27]:

He carried a disdain for classical architecture. Besides his beloved Gothic, where the rebirth of this classical architecture through the French Bozart style was offensive to his sensibilities. This would be the prevailing architectural style through his early years and informed local works such as Madison's, Second and Third Capital. In many of the works of the White City at Chicago's World Fair, Post and Sons, they built a couple of the buildings at the fair and they eventually won the contract for the latest iteration of the Capitol that we see today. Besides that architecture firm, another thing borrowed from that world's fair was the statue of the Republic. Now, the sculptor Daniel Chester French paid homage to his original work when he sculpted the Wisconsin statue, better known as the Forward, better known as the Golden Lady, or Lady Forward, which is perched top the highest point in Madison. And we talked earlier about how the Capital Planning Commission pretty much instilled that.

Mike Huberty [00:31:16]:

No, I mean, they made it a law.

Jeff Finup [00:31:17]:

They made it a law. You cannot build higher than that capital, the Golden Lady. Daniel Chester French's work, which was spawned from the Republic statue, will always be at the highest point in Madison.

Mike Huberty [00:31:27]:

And you can still see, like they have a copy of Republic statue in Jackson Park in Chicago. It's not the original, but they made a copy of it. And so you can still see one today.

Jeff Finup [00:31:37]:

It looks very, very similar to his work on Lady Forward.

Mike Huberty [00:31:40]:

Oh, absolutely.

Jeff Finup [00:31:41]:

Although he had much disdain for this neoclassical architecture style, he drew inspiration from one display there. The Garden of the Phoenix, which is a remnant of the fair, is an authentic Japanese garden nestled on the wooded island in the center of Jackson Park's Lagoon. The intricate garden stands on the former side of the Phoenix Pavilion, which was a recreation of the 11th century Buddhist temple from Japan. I've never been there. Have you visited Jackson Park?

Mike Huberty [00:32:05]:

Indeed I have. It's on our Devil in the White City tour that we do on Chicago hauntings. You can find that@americanghostwalks.com. You can go there too.

Jeff Finup [00:32:14]:

The Phoenix Pavilion was where Frank Lord Wright first encountered japanese architecture and aesthetic that would come to influence his coming work through his career. So you see all the pieces coming together in his early time in Chicago. His early works really cemented his style. He got to experience the Japanese architecture and aesthetic which he quickly fell in love with. It was just a matter of putting all those pieces together, along with his talents and skills that he acquired, along with experimenting with a lot of the aesthetics that he borrowed from Japanese as well as his native prairie upbringing. After 1893, he either resigned or was fired from Sullivan for the Moonlighting scandal. He worked on several suburban pieces, mostly homes for upper middle class businessmen. It was the Oak Park neighborhood of Chicago where he found several clients wanting a right.

Jeff Finup [00:32:56]:

People had caught wind of him as this hot young architect, and they said, we want a Frank Lloyd Wright. They commissioned him. And then 1898, what about five years later, he opened his Oak Park studio, which was an extension of his home. He lived there with his wife and kids and then worked out of his studio. As far as his personal life went, he had married in 1889. While employed at Sullivan, he wed Catherine Kitty Tobin, and then a year later, his first child and namesake was born frank Lloyd Wright, Jr. He was known professionally as Lloyd Wright. John Lloyd Wright was born two years later.

Jeff Finup [00:33:25]:

His first daughter, Catherine, was born in 1894, followed by another son, David Samuel Wright, in 1895, followed by another daughter, Francis Wright, 1898, and finally Robert Llewellyn, in 1903.

Mike Huberty [00:33:38]:

What I love is that Frank you said that he was like his dad and that his dad thought that kids were great, but they were an intrusion to his work. But that doesn't stop Frank quite right, from having a lot of kids in, like, 15 years.

Jeff Finup [00:33:53]:

A lot of kids, yes. And then within 13 years, Kitty gave birth to a litter herself. It totaled six kids. And I find it quite ironic that he kind of looked as kids as a nuisance or a way to get away from his work. But he ended up working with Park Studio as an extension of his residence, which probably definitely caused some tension and friction. But I think that was more of a financial thing than any well, you.

Mike Huberty [00:34:15]:

Think working at home's tough now. I would never imagine six kids running around yeah.

Jeff Finup [00:34:19]:

With no tablets. During his time in the Oak Park Studio, wright pioneered a unique vision for American architecture of the Prairie style. Inspired by the broad, flat landscape of America's Midwest, the Prairie style was the first uniquely American architectural style of what had been called the New American Century. The most defining characteristics of his new style is the emphasis of the horizontal rather than the vertical. Buildings spread out over the lots, featuring flat or shallow hipped roofs, rows of windows overhanging eaves and bands of stone, wood or brick across the surface. This fit Wright's philosophy of organic architecture, which promotes harmony between human habitation and the natural world. Buildings, furnishings and surroundings become part of a unified interrelated composition, which is interesting.

Mike Huberty [00:35:02]:

Because he studies under the guy Sullivan that they call the father of the skyscraper. So while Sullivan father, the skyscraper goes vertical, frank Lloyd Wright goes the exact opposite.

Jeff Finup [00:35:12]:

Yeah, it's a really interesting juxtaposition between the two because you can see in some of Sullivan's intricate detail work, both on interior and exteriors. Wright kind of borrows that. But like you said, Sullivan goes up, Wright goes out. He really wants to fit things to the landscape. And Wright later wrote, as a boy, I had learned to know the plan of the region in every line and feature. For me, now, it's elevation in the modeling of the hills, the weaving in the fabric that clings to them. I still feel myself as part of it, as the trees and the birds and the bees and the red barns. He really recognized man's fit within nature.

Jeff Finup [00:35:48]:

So they weren't opposed to nature, above nature. They were part of nature. And that's how he built his structures into the landscape. Now, he continued, no house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill belonging to it. Hill and house should live together, each happier for the other. The Oak Park studio years were incredibly prolific in Wright's career, with more than a third of his life's work produced at the site from 1898 to 19. Nine major buildings of that prairie style include the Larkin Building in 1904, unity Temple in 1908, and Wright's prairie style masterpiece, the Frederick C.

Jeff Finup [00:36:25]:

Roby House, 1910. Those were all done in this time period out of the Oak Park studio. It was during this time in Oak Park when Wright was designing a house for Edwin C. Cheney. He became enamored with Cheney's wife, mama borthwick Cheney? Mama was a moderate woman. Like Wright, she broke from tradition. She was an early feminist, and Wright viewed her as an intellectual equal. The two began a relationship that would become the talk of the town.

Jeff Finup [00:36:56]:

It's a scandal in 2022 when two married people step out on their marriages to be together in 1900, this was probably like a mortal sin. There was probably no redemption for this. And Wright, being a father of six, including a newborn, he was judged very harshly and rightfully for his infidelity stay classy. Frank and both in the media and the public were like, did he hear about Frank Lloyd Wright? Wright continued the affair despite the criticism. In 1909, Wright and Mama, they met up in Italy. They both left their children behind, except for Lloyd Wright, his oldest son, who was 17, who joined them later on their journey in Italy. Mama, she was granted a divorce by her husband, but Kitty refused. Now, after Wright returned to the States.

Jeff Finup [00:37:36]:

He convinced his mother, Anna Lloyd Jones, to buy a piece of property near their family property in Spring Green. Mommy, can you buy me this? I've been out gallivanting in Italy and.

Mike Huberty [00:37:45]:

Europe with my mistress.

Jeff Finup [00:37:47]:

I left my wife and six kids behind. But she did purchase the land for Wright. And Wright went to work drafting and building his dream home in the Wisconsin countryside. Now, when the media caught wind of the plans to build a new home for he and his mistress, they labeled it the Love Cottage, or Love nest. Undeterred by scandal, wright built the first iteration of the home, which he named Taliesin, and he and Mama put the sin in Taliesin. Hey. Taliesin is a Welsh name for a historical figure. Although he was a historical character, his life has since been highly mythologized.

Jeff Finup [00:38:21]:

In Celtic lore, he is a subject of many legends. In legends and medieval Welsh poetry, he is often referred to as Taliesin Binberd, or Taliesin chief of the Bards or Chief of poets. He is mentioned as one of the five British poets of Renown. In later story, he became a mythic hero, companion of Bran the Blessed, as well as a bard on King Arthur's court. Telesen is known as the last Celtic shaman. So he takes on a mythological interpretation, even though he was a historical character. Think kind of how George Washington is revered today. Bards were known as poets, musical entertainers, and even Court gestured, which is ironic, seeing that nearby Baribou was home to Wrangling brothers who were largely responsible for the birth of the modern American circus movement.

Jeff Finup [00:39:08]:

There's much speculation of what called the Lloyd Joneses to this sleepy river valley in south central Wisconsin. It was upon this land they prospered. Frank's mother, Anna, was called home to race her family here. And now it seemed as if Frank himself was subject to that same calling. What was it that inspired Frank to name his home Taliesin and his sister's nearby cottage, Tanyadiri, which translates to under the Oaks and Welsh? We know that the Celtic tradition is deep rooted, with the Lloyd Jones's lineage, welsh being a language and culture derived by these Indo European Celts. Our first clue to an arcane knowledge may have been within these ancient Celtic names used at the Wright's new commune, or perhaps Wright's use of the Celtic or Solar Cross as an insignia on his draft. In Celtic mythology, there are three gods depicted in their male triad of Gaunts, Tyranus, Tutatus and ISIS. From time to time, these gods would call for their own flavor of human sacrifice.

Jeff Finup [00:40:03]:

Tyranus, he was associated with thunder, lightning and fire. He preferred his sacrifices bundled or engaged in Wicker before they were sacrificed by the flame. Now, they think that's some of the Wickerman cults, that's what they do in.

Mike Huberty [00:40:16]:

The Wickerman movie or whatever.

Jeff Finup [00:40:17]:

Yeah, they're based on this tyrannus character from Celtic mythology. Now, ISIS, he preferred his sacrifices, dismembered and Tutus enjoyed his drought. On August 15, 1914, while Wright was working in Chicago, tragedy struck his humble hillside home. A male servant, Julian Carlton, set fire to the living quarters and wielded a hatchet to the workers and residents. In the end, seven were dead, including Wright's beloved Mama, along with their two children. The perpetrator Carlton is often described as Afro Caribbean, of West Indian descent, and is believed to have hailed from Barbados. But like much about this man, there's a lot of doubt behind his backstory. He was likely a black man from Alabama.

Jeff Finup [00:40:59]:

Wright first encountered him in Chicago and hired him to work as a chef or servant at Taliesin in 1914. He was 31 years old at the time. He came with his wife, Gertrude. Supposedly, Carlton's behavior had grown increasingly paranoid throughout the year, though initially he was described as a genial presence. It was only after he started staying up late at night with a butcher's knife that concern was raised. Wright started looking for another cook, and Carlton was given his notice. On August 15, 1914. While Wright was away in Chicago, cheney remained at Talieson with the kids and the staff.

Jeff Finup [00:41:31]:

And sometime around noon on the 15th, carlton murdered her and her children with a hatchet, then set the bodies on fire. The deceased were then transported to Wright'sister's cottage. Tanny Deary Carlton was apprehended after a failed suicide attempt. He attempted to drink my addic acid, but he died a week later of starvation in jail. The perp never gave a motive for his crime because he couldn't talk. Now some say that Mama never left Taniary and Linda Godfrey. In her book Haunted Wisconsin, she reported that a woman in a flowing white dress appears near dusk and the visitors sometimes catch a whiff of acrid smoke, a reminder of the unthinkable acts that were perpetrated at Taliassin.

Mike Huberty [00:42:09]:

Well, there were several theories as to why Julian Carlton might have done that, and at the time, this becomes like a huge thing in the papers because, I mean, Frank Lloyd Wright's already part of the social scene. He's already got Kanye West and Kim Kardashian because he's stepping out on his family and the social pages are always writing about. Then people thought that Carlton disapproved of Wright's lifestyle because he left his kids. It was one of the theories also that maybe he got paranoid and he was afraid of being deported and having to go fight in the First World War. That if he was from Barbados, whatever, they'd kick him out of the country and then he'd have to okay, so.

Jeff Finup [00:42:49]:

That would explain that Barbados backstory saying, I'm not even US. Born, so I shouldn't be eligible.

Mike Huberty [00:42:57]:

He was afraid they were going to send him out. There was another theory. That because in Wright's autobiography he said he had a series of disagreements with the quote unquote, union boys when he was working on the Midway Gardens in Chicago so that it was a Chicago mob hit, that they paid Julian Carlton to do that, to set the place on fire. And there's a former guide from Tally Essen who did a blog post, a guy named Kieran Murphy. He thinks that the story, that the guy starts on fire, locks all the doors, and then as the people are racing out, julian Carlton takes the hatchet and as the newspaper said, cleft the woman's head in, says there's not really that much evidence that he did lock all the doors. He starts a fire and then just goes crazy and starts that. It was less calculated than what people were saying. This idea, he locked all the door, sets it on fire.

Mike Huberty [00:43:49]:

The one open door, as they're coming out, he butchers them. It's more about him kind of going nuts is his theory is that the guy just cracked, starts the place on fire, and then just starts chasing people down. And because he's bigger than a ten year old and a woman and everything like that, because he kills two kids, one is one of the workers there. One of his kids gets killed, and the worker survives. When people were interviewing him about it, he just didn't his son died, didn't want to talk about it. The whole narrative of what Carlton did is basically created by the press at the time. And so that's why some people think it was less of a calculated killing, and that's more created by the press to give some of these ideas. Carlton disapproved was very moral, or Carlton's.

Jeff Finup [00:44:36]:

Afraid it was a way to kind of cast a negative light on, right, and say, well, if it wasn't for you, Philandering, in your little love cottage, none of this would have happened. So it was kind of moralistic, right?

Mike Huberty [00:44:47]:

And they do that. And so a lot of what ends up being the story of Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest tragedy, his girlfriend, her two kids, and four more people are killed there, which sounds like it's a guy that just snaps, lose his job. He's paranoid. Maybe he hears the voices or whatever. They just say. Now they give it some kind of narrative, some kind of backstory, kind of like Rob Zombie did the Michael Myers in the you know, like, he killed people because his mom was mean to him or whatever. And that's what this Kieran Murphy, who used to work there in his blog, he kind of goes into. And he says, you know, a lot of the details that we get there are from secondhand newspapers and things like that.

Mike Huberty [00:45:26]:

The last surviving witnesses didn't really want to talk about it because they were.

Jeff Finup [00:45:29]:

So they were traumatized. They didn't want to relive it. Especially, he said the workman lost his child there. He probably just wants to put it behind.

Mike Huberty [00:45:37]:

Then Frank Lloyd's Wright is devastated when he hears about it. And this is from John Lloyd Wright's book called My Father, frank Lloyd Wright. Suddenly, all was quiet in the room. A strange, unnatural silence. His breathing alone was audible. Then a groan. I turned to him. Startled, he clung to the table for support, his face ashen.

Jeff Finup [00:45:56]:

John was there when his father received.

Mike Huberty [00:45:58]:

The phone call about what happened. So this is obviously and then the media just feeds on it, like everything.

Jeff Finup [00:46:04]:

These days, which is probably amplified by a hundred.

Mike Huberty [00:46:07]:

Right, because now what was just a scandal turns into an epic tragedy with a true crime element. And then the true crime element is never solved because the guy can't speak because he drank myriadic acid trying to kill himself.

Jeff Finup [00:46:19]:

Yeah. And I suppose Chicago being a major media market at the time, and then Madison Papers probably had a field day with it as well.

Mike Huberty [00:46:26]:

Absolutely. Like, how do you know? You sell papers talking about celebrities. Now we got something we can talk about. Think about the OJ trial. They talked about that for years.

Jeff Finup [00:46:33]:

Yeah, they still do.

Mike Huberty [00:46:34]:

Right?

Jeff Finup [00:46:34]:

And that also dovetails into the more supernatural element was Carlton, who just kind of lost it in Snap. They talk about him up all night with a butcher knife. Was he possessed by something? And that kind of asked the question. Did Wright's insistence on building this house and naming it Taliesin set about a series of unfortunate events that appeased the bloodlust of these old gods we talked about. Did Carlton unwittingly take part in a Celtic sacrifice, as if he was possessed by a supernatural force? Was he possessed by ISIS, who was known to prefer his victims dismembered? There are only a few known ancient depictions of this Celtic god ISIS. In each one, he is wielding a hatchet or handax. What about the third god, Chutatus, who liked his victims drowned? Did he not get his pound flesh? Wright had damned a small stream on the property to create a pond to resemble that Japanese water garden that he loved so much. It would have been a fitting tribute, Carlton, to have drowned himself in that pond.

Jeff Finup [00:47:28]:

But alas, he died of starvation about a week later. Ironically, while the murders were taking place, wright was finishing up the Midway Gardens project in Chicago. Within that garden, they featured these ornately sculpted water sprites. It kind of ties in the water, earth, fire elements right to the story.

Mike Huberty [00:47:44]:

He's adding a mystical element to his work.

Jeff Finup [00:47:47]:

And it's interesting. Although the fire consumed much of the living quarters, it spared his studio there. He rebuilt it. But in 1923, another fire consumed most of the cottage. This time, the culprit was said to be the faulting wiring. No mention of Tyrannus in that story, though.

Mike Huberty [00:48:03]:

He didn't come back for the it was just come back for seconds.

Jeff Finup [00:48:05]:

It was just the wiring. No old gods. After the second fire, Wright would build again, this time his third iteration. And the one that you see today that you can visit in Spring Green.

Mike Huberty [00:48:14]:

Where you might be able to see the ghost.

Jeff Finup [00:48:16]:

Yes, they say that Tanya Deri is haunted by the ghost of Mamma. After the tragedy at Taliesin and the death of Mama, wright's life really hit an inflection point. That makes me ask the question did Wright engage in some type of ritual, or was he subjected to unconscious forces that both he and the surrounding terrain summoned, maybe unwittingly? Was it something the Unitarian Celtic sect of the family brought over with them from the Old World and now manifesting in the New World? Kind of an invasion of these old gods, right. The consequences of Mama's death, they reverberated over the next two decades of his life. In the preceding years, Wright spent a lot of time in Japan, including designing and overseeing the Imperial Hotel Commission in Tokyo. And he was fond of the Japanese art and culture and even wrote a monograph titled The Japanese Print and Interpretation. His time in the east informed much of his works going forward, but maybe it wasn't Japanese, but rather the Chinese belief that captured Wright. Did concepts like the Chinese Taoist feng shui influence his work? Anyone entering one of Wright's homes or buildings will immediately recognize the function of light and space and flow that goes along with his design.

Jeff Finup [00:49:35]:

Was Wright attempting to direct energies? It was a bit of a stretch to attribute this to somebody with a materialist worldview, but was Wright truly a materialist? The Taoist principle of feng shui mirrored his personal philosophy of having your living design balanced with nature, and you see that as a theme through Wright's work, the early days of the Prairie School, where he maybe unconsciously or consciously was figuring out how to flow these quote unquote energies through his works. What do we make of the modern claim that Wright was just a secular materialist? Now it's hard to see him as a devotee of capital A atheism. He was born to a Baptist minister and raised amongst the Unitarians. It was likely he adopted some form of belief in a grand architecture and a higher power. Mike, can you speak at all about the Unitarians?

Mike Huberty [00:50:20]:

The Unitarians, it's like a deconstruction of Christianity. They believe in divinity of Jesus, but they don't necessarily believe that Jesus is actually God. That goes along a lot, though, with the philosophy that's going on in the late 18 hundreds. Once you get Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species, people start doubting the official Christian story, and they start looking for different kinds of spirituality. The Origin of Species is printed in 1859, not long after you've got the spiritualist movement that gets kicked in. You just have these alternate spiritualities that start showing up that say, like, okay, well, we've had faith for thousands of years, and now we want to look for something more scientific. It's also the industrialization. It's just that era.

Mike Huberty [00:51:10]:

The world is changing from an agrarian society to an industrial, urban society. And Frank Lloyd writes, I mean, he's part of that movement. We talked about Sullivan and his mentor is the man, the father of the skyscraper and these gigantic urban centers. Jobs start changing. Instead of being a farmer, now you work in a factory.

Jeff Finup [00:51:30]:

Yeah. And some would say Wright's work was almost reactionary to that industrialist movement and then looking more towards the prairie, looking for a new family, living on a new frontier and building these sprawling places rather than the vertical Sullivan skyscrapers. It said at one point, Wright's polymath Baptist preacher father that later turned Unitarian, which I mean, that's kind of in doubt. He just got a job as a Unitarian preacher. He knew that was an in with Lloyd Jones's.

Mike Huberty [00:51:58]:

Right. He wasn't necessarily the true believer, but.

Jeff Finup [00:52:00]:

It said he stopped preaching, he studied Sanskrit and then chanted the mantras and hymns of the Vedic texts to help him understand the divinity present in the cosmos and in the inner self. Together, transcendentalist texts which promoted seeking inspiration from an inner light were frequently read in Wright's household as a kid or probably in his teenage years. Seeing Wright's philosophy and the expression of it in his organic work, it's apparent that transcendentalists like Emerson, Thoreau, maybe Walt Whitman may have had some impression on a young right, that naturalist transcendentalist movement, right?

Mike Huberty [00:52:34]:

And that Transcendentalist and Emerson and Thoreau and the idea of the oversoul and everybody's connected that's right into a kind of alternate spirituality than traditional religion. And that connection of, like you said, the human, the scientific and nature, the all natural. And Frank Lloyd Wright even later in his life had said, as far as he's like, ah, religion, the only religion.

Jeff Finup [00:52:57]:

I ascribe to is nature. And I don't know where that quote came from. I've seen it on cute little twelve x twelve postcards or whatever online.

Mike Huberty [00:53:07]:

Right.

Jeff Finup [00:53:07]:

But I'm not sure where it's from. But I think that is kind of an attempt to paint him in this light of, oh, he was naturalist, but he was very much materialist. Sure. And I think his upbringing and some of his later stuff that we're going to get into really casts some of that in doubt. He was well known member of the 14 Society, which was a loosely affiliated social club assembled to promote the ideas and works of the recently departed Charles Hoy Ford. Some of the highest profile members were levelhead figures like Buckminster Fuller, supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, h menken, frank Lloyd Wright and the godfather of cryptozoology Ivan T. Sanderson. Club was formed and a newsletter was produced and issued.

Jeff Finup [00:53:47]:

The newsletter's format followed much of Fort's works, where it displayed the damned data, as Fort coined it, along with stories of inexplicable, strange and enigmatic. Even if you get those today, like The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort, it's still great reading. A lot of the old. Newspaper accounts, whether embellished or not, are still kind of make you scratch your head. And it's great entertainment. Right.

Mike Huberty [00:54:08]:

I mean, Charles Fort, he just sat there in the New York Public Library, went through all these things and collected all these stories into one. He's like, here are these unexplainable phenomena, instead of and this is when we talk about the changing of the guard, the changing of how people thought about the world in the late 19th century, in the Victorian times, instead of just saying, well, this is what God did, blah, blah, blah, god reigned frogs on this town. One time he's saying, what could have caused that? Let's have some kind of scientific inquiry.

Jeff Finup [00:54:35]:

And I think that was more Charles Port's angle was to look at. Well, look at the data that you're leaving out. And how does this fit in? Can we dismiss this out of hand? That's why he called it damn data, because it was, well, we're just going to set this over here, scientific logic be damned.

Mike Huberty [00:54:50]:

Right. It's like J. Allen Hyneck said, there were a few cases in Project Blue Book that he's, like, he had no explanation for.

Jeff Finup [00:54:56]:

Exactly.

Mike Huberty [00:54:57]:

Kind of put them there. And that's his own damn data.

Jeff Finup [00:54:59]:

Yeah. And that's the most interesting thing to look, and that's what we really aspire to look at. It seemed like Wright may also have been acquaintances of August Derlet. Now, he was the man responsible for propagating the works of H. P. Lovecraft after the author's death. He was also the progenitor of the Cthulhu mythos. It said that durli's resonance.

Jeff Finup [00:55:17]:

Named Place of Hawks, it was reminiscent of many farmhouses built around its era. And in the location of that Wisconsin River valley, there's this kind of apocryphal tale of Frank coming to visit August and describing his house or the Place of Hawks as a barn. I can't find anything that says that they were acquainted, but it seems like they traveled in the same circles. Both residents know Salt County or nearby Richland County, depending on where exactly who was living at the time. It's likely that they probably ran into each other. Sure.

Mike Huberty [00:55:47]:

And August Drill obviously also was a professor at the University of Wisconsin, as well as the literary editor for the Capitol Times newspaper. If they were having some kind of journalistic event or sent somebody to interview Frank Litwright, all these kind of things, there's no question they could have known each other or known of each other.

Jeff Finup [00:56:03]:

Yeah. And both kind of in the arts and literary scene seems evident. That right. Trafficked in these circles of writers, authors, artists, and literary critics that held otherworldly views. Early as 1898, wright used a curious symbol as his logo or brand. It was a central cross and a circle inscribed within a square joined at the cardinal directions. It kind of looked like a Celtic cross or even a Templar's cross. This mark is related to the fundamental Gothic master diagram or circle of orientation.

Jeff Finup [00:56:49]:

Whenever these Gothic architects set about building their structures, they did so with shadow casting. And that was the first act in creation for these ancient Gothic builders to orienting the building plan in respect to the sun's path, kind of an archaeoastronomy element to the Gothic architecture. Of all of the classical architecture styles, frank Lloyd Wright really gravitated to the Gothic style.

Mike Huberty [00:57:14]:

So when you say shadow casting, that's the idea that they put something up. So when they see the sun, they see where the light's coming through, and.

Jeff Finup [00:57:22]:

The shadow shows the path of the sun at the specific days and times and maybe even through archaeoastronomy, that a lot of it was aligned with either the solstice or the equinoxes. Right.

Mike Huberty [00:57:32]:

Like, they talk about stonehenge and stuff like that. If things line up between the stones exactly right. At the solstice, so that's how they determined those kind of things.

Jeff Finup [00:57:41]:

Yeah. The logic of using the circle of orientation inscribed within a red square suggests that Wright's initial logo meant divine creation. Theosophy's Founder helena Blavatsky. Madame Blavatsky described the hidden meaning of the mystical diagram as the philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite directions, the horizontal and the perpendicular, the height and the breadth. This forms the magical as well as the scientific quaternary, which it is inscribed within the perfect square. He encapsulated this kind of sacred solar cross within the square, and that made four separate quadrants. Before we can continue, can you tell us a little about Madame Blavatsky?

Mike Huberty [00:58:18]:

Well, we were just talking about there when you talk about the union of science, you think about the 19th century. People start saying we have to look at things scientifically, blah, blah, instead of through the lens of faith. But then how do they reconcile that with the spirituality that they naturally feel? Madame Blavatsky, she basically madame Blavatsky is the one that started a philosophy called Theosophy, which is the idea that you can join science and spirituality in a way that makes sense. And she really is the one that introduced a lot of these Eastern spirituality ideas from India. We're talking about Frank Lorette's father reading the Vedic text in this house, and she is one of the people who started popularizing that. And she's like a really a spiritual guru. She's born in 1831 to, like, a Russian Noble family. And when you hear about her life, it's only an aristocrat that can live this kind of life.

Mike Huberty [00:59:07]:

This is from a journal article in Literature and Aesthetics from June 2011 by a PhD student, Johanna Petchi, at the University of Sydney. And she's, writing Blavatsky, exercised her storytelling powers, masterily fashioning for herself, a formidable aura of mystery and intrigue. There are famous accounts that in her early life Blavatsky rode bareback in a circus, toured Serbia as a concert pianist, opened an ink factory in Odessa, traded as an importer of ostrich feathers in Paris, worked as an interior decorator to the Empress Eugenie fought with Garibaldi's army in Italy where she was wounded by saber, blows and bullets and was shipwrecked off the Greek coast. Her lovers may have included a German baron, a Polish prince, and the Hungarian opera singer Agardi Metrovitch. Blavatsky claimed that she rescued Metrovich from assassins when she found him dying in an alley in either Cairo or Constantinople, depending on which story you prefer that she tells. It's difficult to know which stories she herself promulgated and which were invented by her followers, though she certainly made no attempt to dispel them. She apparently traveled for a decade, from 1848 to destinations including Egypt, France, South America, Mexico, India, and Tibet. She claimed to have lived Tibet for more than seven years, seven years traditionally being considered the period of apprenticeship for Esoteric initiation, where she studied with the quote unquote Himalayan masters in their mountain homes and was chosen to reach the highest level of initiation.

Mike Huberty [01:00:32]:

It was during her travels that Blavatsky's attributed with cultivating her skills in levitation, clairvoyance, out of body projection, telepathy. Claire audience clairvoyance is seeing the future. Claire audience is hearing it. And materialization producing physical objects from the ether. Now, part of Theosophy also that Madame Blavatsky taught is that there were these secret masters through history buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, like these wise people, like the Unitarians, though not necessarily God, but still divine messengers. And the idea is that by going through and learning and doing these rituals and things of Theosophy, you would get in touch with these divine masters. She believed that it wasn't some kind of mystical thing. It was science and mysticism were connected and that we could perfect that.

Mike Huberty [01:01:20]:

In her book The Secret Doctrine in 1888, she writes, the exercise of magical power is the exercise of natural powers, but superior to the ordinary functions of nature. A miracle is not a violation of the laws of nature, except for ignorant people. Magic is but a science. The profound knowledge of the occult forces in nature and of the laws governing the visible or the invisible world, spiritualism in the hands of an adept, becomes magic, for he has learned it in the art of blending together the laws of the universe without breaking any of them and thereby violating nature. So that's the idea. This is what she was taught, this hidden knowledge, the secret doctrine that she would a lot of it is her just bringing back traditional Eastern Eastern mysticism.

Jeff Finup [01:01:59]:

Into a new world that hasn't been exposed to it, taking science and spirituality and kind of melding them together, mixing.

Mike Huberty [01:02:05]:

It together like she Madame Blavatsky. She is the person that brought us the new age. Frank Lloyd Wright has a connection to Theosophy through his friend, the Baroness Hillarybe. She's an artist in New York City. She's a Theosophist, a follower of Madame Blavatsky, who died in 1891. But, you know, her disciples continued this still a theosophy organization today. And Rebe is the best friend of Solomon Guggenheim. Basically, he has her curate his art collection.

Mike Huberty [01:02:48]:

Like he's just buying art. He buys a lot of her art and then he has her curate the collection. And he's really into her and she's really into Theosophy and she's friends with Frank Lloyd Wright from like the art scene and everything. She influences Frank to use seven in his work. Levatsky herself writes about the number seven in a magazine called Theosophist. In 1880, the number seven was considered sacred not only by all the cultured nations antiquity in the east, but was held in the greatest reverence even by the later nations of the west. The astronomical origin of this number is established beyond any doubt. Man, feeling himself time out of mind, dependent upon the heavenly powers ever and everywhere, made Earth subject to heaven.

Mike Huberty [01:03:29]:

The largest and brightest of the Luminaries thus became in his sight the most important and highest of powers. Such were the planets which the whole antiquity numbered as seven. Now we only have eight because of poor Pluto, but back then they can only see seven. In course of time, these were transformed into seven deities. The Egyptians had seven original gods. The phoenician had seven kibiris. The Persians had seven sacred horses of Mithra, the Paracas seven angels opposed by seven demons, etc. Madame Vavatsky is also the one introducing this sacred number of seven.

Mike Huberty [01:04:00]:

And then the Baroness Hilary Bay is reading about this and she's telling Frank all about it. He gets involved in Theosophy because other people in the art scene are into it and they start influencing him.

Jeff Finup [01:04:12]:

Getting back to that Solar Cross and Frank Lloyd Wright's initial logo, he had used that Solar Cross encompassed within a red square. Wright eventually settled on just a red square as his signature logo. Now, with today's eyes, a red square logo may seem appropriate for an architect, especially when considered in respect to architectural modernism, but to write red together with the square bore a specific and special significance to him. It was the shape and color of creation. For his red. Wright chose his color as Navajo red. Although the hue changed slightly over the years, it was always that red. In 1950, he had a ceramicist bake up 25 tiles inscribed with his initials.

Jeff Finup [01:04:57]:

In his later works, like the Guggenheim, these tiles with his initials were installed as a final stamp of approval.

Mike Huberty [01:05:04]:

But also in the Guggenheim he uses seven. It's a seven tiered spiral structure, and it's the idea that it's a spiritual pathway that's interesting.

Jeff Finup [01:05:12]:

Using the spiral also the number seven, the spiral is almost in ascension.

Mike Huberty [01:05:17]:

Yeah. So if we're saying that Frank Lloyd Wright is materialist, he's using an awful lot of occult symbolism in his work and not necessarily occult in the way that he's worshipping the devil or something.

Jeff Finup [01:05:27]:

No, occult isn't hidden or esoteric would be lesser known or only known by certain people hidden knowledge, and he's putting.

Mike Huberty [01:05:35]:

It in there with some kind of symbolism. So it represents something. The red represents creation. The seven is a holy kind of sacred number kind of thing.

Jeff Finup [01:05:44]:

And he's adding within the spiral, it's really significant. According to Physiologist Clement tamarazov the color red is invincible. It is the color not only of blood, it is the color of creation. It is the only life giving color in nature, filling the sprouting plants with life and giving warmth to everything in creation. He clearly is, in the know, some spiritual knowledge or some other worldly knowledge. He's at least playing it out in a dramatic fashion. Whether or not it had power or not, it did to him.

Mike Huberty [01:06:14]:

Well, this is interesting because we talk like the conspiracy theorists today will be like, okay, there's all these symbolism and Beyonce's songs or something like that of the Illuminati. Okay? But Frank Lloyd Wright is actually putting symbolism on purpose into the works, not necessarily for any negative kind of thing, but almost as part of a good luck thing or a ritual thing or a way to infuse the building with more than just physical attributes, but with spiritual attributes as well.

Jeff Finup [01:06:44]:

Yeah, and definitely in that design. We talked about the feng shui and how that kind of played into it. And now you hear about the spiraling, the many works with the Unitarian temples that kind of come into play here in the Shalom synagogue, as well as Wright's career was budding at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, the world was changing. And with advent of electrified lighting, motorized transport, it's easy to see how this would affect the people's beliefs. The existence of electricity of itself or man's ability to harness it for their purposes, instilled a deeper belief in the existence of alternative worlds. By seeing this electrification, seeing you tap into this source of power, in energy, it made other people think that invisible forces or force fields verified the plausibility of the American spiritualist beliefs, which were budding around this time. Sure. The other invisible energies and forces, they could conceivably dwell within a spirit or otherworldly realm.

Mike Huberty [01:07:41]:

And speaking of spiritualism, Madame Blavatsky, when she moved to New York in the 1870s, she was doing seances, traditional spiritualist kind of things. While she was she'd have a seance, and then she would hold forth and talk about her theosophical, the underpinnings and the philosophy behind it. It's right when, after the Civil War, spiritualism takes off in a huge way.

Jeff Finup [01:08:04]:

Which would make sense after such tragedy that affected so many lives and families.

Mike Huberty [01:08:08]:

With all the deaths, the two big spiritualist movements in the United States. One happens after the Civil War. Frank Lloyd Wright's, a boy. One happens after World War I. It really takes off then.

Jeff Finup [01:08:22]:

Wright even entertained this spiritualism in one of his architectural plants. The Susan Lawrence Dana house was one of Wright's earlier houses. It was the only project he designed that incorporated an existing structure. Normally, he was a ground up kind of guy. Dana was a widow whose husband and father had died within months of each other in the year 1900. Dana was a spiritualist, ostensibly in communication with her dead family through a medium. The functions of the house included a gallery that would accommodate her art collection and the collection of its owners. At the heart of the house, Wright retained the existing two story Victorian structure.

Jeff Finup [01:08:58]:

Within the parlor, the spirit of her late father could dwell in the only non remodeled room. The room was filled with furniture and memorabilia from the man's life. He built kind of a sanctum for the deceased within this new structure. Seems like most designers today they're going to simply take an existing structure. They're going to haphazardly slap an addition on the back or the side, but right. Artfully and Masterfully Incorporated. He almost nestled the old structure within the new edition. It was a masterful blend of old and new to birth, a new structure, an alchemical thing in itself.

Jeff Finup [01:09:31]:

The inner sanctum. The center of the house was still that two story Victorian that was unremodeled for her late father, which is kind of a romantic notion in itself. Like that's, dad's. Den.

Mike Huberty [01:09:42]:

Right. We talk about materialism, this idea that humans are just meat or whatever, like we're talking about the corpses in Science Hall, that it's just meat, that the spirit doesn't matter, that everything's just a chemical in the brain and all these kind of things. Franklin writes often considered a materialist because this is kind of when the movement takes off. Then he's designing a place where the father's spirit can reside. That doesn't sound like a real materialist hardcore.

Jeff Finup [01:10:09]:

And this was one of his earlier works. So maybe he won't be able to say, I can't take on this project because you're a kooky bat and we're not going to undertake this nonsense. But he did, and he built one. The house still stands today, and it's quite the architectural accomplishment of how he seamlessly built the old structure into the new. Wright himself. He may not have been a member of the Theosophical Society, but he lived and worked with an esoteric milieu that helped to reshape his Theosophic inspired architectural theory, which in turn guided his design process to produce significant projects that, for their time, could be described as designs that had never been seen before. Coming up next time on the Wisconsin Legends Podcast, the conclusion of the Frank Lloyd Wright saga. How does Wright move on? After his loss of Mama and his home in Taliesa, wright finds himself in Tokyo.

Jeff Finup [01:11:19]:

But as soon as things start to get better, they all fall apart. What legal troubles lead to Wright's incarceration in Minnesota and a mysterious character emerges from the east? Will his presence bring about fortune or ill luck? For Wright? Which places are said to be inhabited by Frank Lloyd Wright's ghost. And which of Frank Lloyd Wright's properties are said to be cursed? Find out in the conclusion of the Wisconsin Legends Podcast series on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Wisconsin Legends Podcast is presented by American ghostwalks, hosted by Mike Cuberty and Jeff Benham. Recorded at Sunspot Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Edited by Jeff Benham, audio engineer Mike Kubernetes, music by Sunspot and various artists. Find out more about the show, including show notes@wisconsinedlegendspodcast.com. Follow the guys at American ghostwalks and Badgerland Legends on Instagram and Facebook.

Jeff Finup [01:12:17]:

We'll see you next time.