Taliesin: The Fire, the Murders, and the Man Who Rebuilt

Frank Lloyd Wright was in Chicago on August fifteenth, nineteen fourteen, when the telegram arrived. Seven people were dead at Taliesin, his home and studio in the Wisconsin River valley at Spring Green, Wisconsin. Among them was Mamah Borthwick, the woman he had left his wife and family for three years earlier. The scandal of their relationship had followed him across the country. He had brought her to Taliesin openly, which was, for nineteen eleven, a public act of defiance that made national headlines.

Julian Carlton, a servant Wright had hired, set fire to the living quarters during the midday meal and then stood at the only exit with a hatchet. Carlton was born in Alabama; later claims that he came from Barbados have not held up under research. He killed seven people: Mamah Borthwick, her two children from her prior marriage, John and Martha, and four workers who had been eating lunch. Carlton also severely burned others who escaped. He then swallowed muriatic acid and spent months dying in jail before his death on October seventh, nineteen fourteen.

Historians have never fully resolved what drove Carlton to the killings. He left no written account. What the record holds is the date, the number of dead, the method, and the geography: a farmstead on a limestone ridge above the Wisconsin River that Wright had called, in Welsh, the shining brow.

Wright rebuilt. The original Taliesin burned again in nineteen twenty-five when an electrical fault started a fire. He rebuilt again. It burned a third time, partially. He rebuilt again. By the time of his death in nineteen fifty-nine, Taliesin had become the center of an architectural school and fellowship that had produced dozens of significant American architects.

The official tour of the estate includes the farmhouse, the drafting studio, and the grounds where Wright is buried. The events of August fifteenth, nineteen fourteen, are noted. They are not the focus.