Wisconsin’s Taliesin: Home of Prairie Architecture

In this installment of ‘Larger Than Life: Architecture Through the Ages,’ Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and center of his architectural ideas.

Taliesin sits on a hill. The residential wing and garden court are in keeping with Wright’s theories of organic architecture. He maintained that buildings should be designed to fit into their surroundings rather than stand out from them. The home’s rooflines follow the lines of the hills; its light plaster walls complement the flat stretches of sand in the Lower Wisconsin River below; the weathered, silver-gray roof shingles are a similar hue of oak branches; and, the limestone, quarried less than a mile, mimics the nearby stone outcroppings. Also evident are the cantilever roofs and wide windows. Courtesy of Taliesin Preservation

Taliesin, the quintessentially Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home on 800 acres in Spring Green, Wisconsin, has had many lives, beginning with its 1911 construction, rebuilds (due to fire) in 1914 and 1925, and restorations. At 37,000 square feet, the fact that the home was designed by Wright is evident in its varied levels and in the number of windows: 500-plus.

A Welsh word that means “shining brow,” “Taliesin” was chosen by Wright (1867–1959) as the name of the dwelling where he would live and work for nearly 50 years. It is a structure that expresses his prairie-style organic architecture, featuring local materials, in this case yellow limestone and Lower Wisconsin River sand.