Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright was born on this day in 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin.

Wright's earliest influences were his doting mother, who had decided he would be a great builder before he was born, and the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who sought to define for America a wholly American aesthetic and a wholly American way of life; it would be Emerson's exhortations which would subconsciously play through most of what Wright tried to achieve in his work during his enormously productive 92-year life.

He found his passion for architecture early, preparing for it by studying engineering at the University of Wisconsin. After working as a draughtsman and later as chief assistant to Louis Sullivan, he opened his own firm and was immediately successful. His first commission, a dramatic house for W. H. Winslow, launched a period of critical acclaim, and among his earliest champions was Charles R. Ashbee, the well-known Arts-and-Crafts designer.

During this early period he sought in each design to develop a style which was distinctively Midwestern, and soon became the leading interpreter of the architectural movement known as the "Prairie School." For Wright -- stimulated by the writings of Ruskin, the aforementioned Arts-and-Crafts movement and Japanese architecture -- this style developed into "organic architecture," in which buildings were integrated into and inspired by the landscape rather than imposed on it. His credo: "No house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it, so hill and house could live together and each the happier for it." His interiors replaced the traditional compartmentalization of a home with one in which large, open living spaces predominated and interior rooms flowed into external balconies and terraces, and into which nature was invited through the use of expansive windows.

While most of his commissions were for private residences (such as the Kaufmann House, known as "Fallingwater," in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, 1935-48, his masterpiece), he also designed many public buildings, including schools, churches (notably the Unity Temple in Chicago, 1905-08), corporate headquarters (such as the Johnson Wax Building, 1936-39), and hotels (including the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, 1913-22, which survived the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake only to be torn down during civic modernization in 1967), as well as the astonishing geometric exercise that became the Guggenheim Museum (New York City, completed 1960).

In all, Wright designed about 800 buildings, 380 of which were built. His designs were known for their originality, spaciousness even in small structures, and, unfortunately, for their chronically leaky roofs -- but, as one client quipped, "this is what happens when you leave a work of art out in the rain."

Wright's personal life was scandal-ridden, a fact that decreased his popularity for a time: he and his first wife separated soon after their sixth child was born, and Wright lived for a time with a mistress until she was brutally murdered with her children in his home by a deranged servant; he married a second time to a morphine-addicted sculptor before running away at age 58 with 26-year old Olgivanna Hinzenburg, with whom he had a child before taking her as his 3rd and last wife in 1928. His primary home in the Wisconsin countryside, Taliesin, burned during the murder episode, was rebuilt twice and temporarily seized by the bank when Wright's finances were at a low ebb.

When it looked as though his career was over in his 60s, Wright outflanked the International Modernists such as Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier with his own new revolutionary style, and began to extend his evangelical efforts when he built Taliesin West (1937, Scottsdale, Arizona) as a studio and retreat for his student disciples. He had a colossal ego and did not collaborate willingly; for the sake of his architectural vision, clients sometimes found that his designs did not always accommodate their personal objects, or they might bump their heads on his stubbornly low doorways. In fact, Wright had a talent for making even the most progressive thinkers appear to be philistines: when modern abstract artists Willem deKooning, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell publicly denounced his design for the Guggenheim Museum, he ended up making them look like reactionaries after enlisting the aid of Robert Moses (of all people, a man who preferred to build expressways than anything remotely like human-scaled shelter) to make sure the Guggenheim would be completed.

Up until his death on April 9, 1959 in Phoenix, Arizona, Wright collected promising young architects around him in his Taliesin Fellowship -- incidentally leaving them, according to disciple Edgar Tafel, with a shared lack of a solid grounding engineering principles, but exhorting them nonetheless to explore new technologies, to maintain consistency in device, and to use a minimum of "design" to achieve maximum aesthetic effect.

12 Eateries in 12 Months, Part I

Over the past twelve months, we have enjoyed a wide variety of dining experiences – from wine and cheese with Amy and Steven at The Point in Corona del Mar to Ben’s seafood boil on the back deck in Corolla, from champagne and gobelins at Le Bar du Plaza Athénée (near the Seine) to schnitzel and weisswurst in the basement of the Shawnee Presbyterian Church (near the Delaware). Actually, to be perfectly frank, the wife didn’t really "enjoy" that last one so much.

At any rate, along the way, we discovered a few new restaurants, and rediscovered some old favorites. Here’s 12 Eateries, more or less, in 12 Months:

1. Last February, we were hanging out in Philadelphia for my birthday. We will always have a soft spot in our hearts for Davio’s, site of an early romantic evening for us, but on this particular trip we literally stumbled in from the freezing cold at Sotto Varalli. Located in Philly’s theater district, Sotto Varalli is comfortably intimate, with imaginatively prepared seafood and a side dish of live jazz. We shared some fresh shucked oysters and a couple of dirty martinis, and I had the whole fish of the day, roasted with fennel, tomatoes, celery leaves, Yukon potatoes, lemon and extra virgin olive oil. Topping it all off, for dessert – a couple of scoops of the extraordinary gelato made by nearby Capogiro, Philadelphia’s own gelato artisans. Try the Bacio (chocolate-hazelnut) or, for something a little edgier, the Lime Cilantro.
2. We enjoyed a trip to London last May, for a friend’s wedding. The old cliché about London is that British food is terrible. Having lived there for a couple of years earlier in this decade, however, I can tell you that, cuisine-wise, London ain’t your father’s Old London anymore – the city now boasts some of the best restaurants in the world. We didn’t go out of our way to visit the justly-praised Terence Conran establishments, or Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, though. Instead, we chowed down more casually at Wagamama, the now-ubiquitous noodle bar that typifies the trickle-down effect of London’s explosion of cuisine. The Soho and Covent Garden locations were old haunts of mine, but this time the wife and I enjoyed lunch at the Tower Hill spot. Seating is family style, in a modernized echo of the best tradition of British chop houses, on long pine-and-aluminum bench tables, and the atmosphere is always bright, noisy and cheery. My long-standing favorite Wagamama dish is the Yaki Soba – “teppan-fried soba noodles with egg, chicken, shrimps, onions, green and red peppers, beansprouts and spring onions, garnished with black and white sesame seeds, fried shallots and red ginger” – with a bottle of Asahi Super Dry. The wife enjoyed the Seafood Ramen and some fancy fresh juice, while we shared some excellent gyoza. (Watch for two new Wagamama locations, the first in the U.S., opening in Boston later this year.)
3. Osteria Basilico was a cramped but gregarious little gem we found in Notting Hill. Free yourself from all notions of personal space, embrace a spontaneous and lively sense of community with strangers, and you’ll do fine here. We spelunked our way through the narrow passages between the tiny, rustic dining tables to the antipasti buffet for starters, and it was definitely worth the trek: a tasty selection of cheeses, grilled vegetables, cured meats and olives, and insalata pomodoro. The entrees are hearty, pastoral Italian favorites, such as Ossobuco with Saffron Risotto, Homemade Tortelloni filled with spinach and ricotta and topped with tomato and fresh basil, and my choice for the evening, the Char-grilled Lamb Cutlets, with roasted vegetables and pine kernels. Add a couple of bottles of Barolo and a pair of good friends from Yorkshire, and you have yourself a great evening out.
4. Paris offers tasty treats everywhere you look. For the mother of all splurges, however, on the recommendation of my wife's aunt we had to try Lasserre, on Avenue de Franklin Roosevelt, near the Champs-Elysees. With its gilt-trimmed décor and sober decorum, its almost pathologically attentive service, as well as in its classic menu and extraordinary wine cellar, Lasserre is the height of Old World French elegance. Opened in 1937 by Rene Lasserre, who passed away at age 93 only a few weeks before we visited, the restaurant was once an international celebrity haunt whose regulars included Dali, Malraux (who has a pigeon entrée there named in his honor), Audrey Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich; it has, in its old age, become a celebrity in and of itself. It was a drizzly evening in May when we were there, but the staff did us the favor of opening the retractable roof for a moment, giving us a peek at the clouds above Paris and a sense of what it must have been like to dine under the stars, with the stars, once upon a time. The old standbys – the duck a l’orange and so forth – can still be found on the menu, but hidden among them are updated surprises, such as the mouth-watering delicate Macaroni with foie gras and truffles, the Chablis-flavored oysters, and the Lemon-and-Ginger Côte deVeau. The wines are priced comparably to nights in a luxury hotel, but the good news is that the more you drink, the less you’ll worry about the bill when it’s all over.
5. The wife spent more evenings out together in Washington, D.C. during our dating days than anywhere else, so we’ve developed a number of comfortable favorites there, including the Old Ebbitt Grill (the site of our post-wedding day brunch), Johnny’s Half Shell (in its old location in DuPont Circle) and Firefly. On one of our recent returns to D.C., however, we went with some good friends to a place that wasn’t even open when we were Capital regulars – Agraria, at Washington Harbour. Opened by the North Dakota Farmers Union in June “with the intent to promote and enable the American family farmer to capture a greater share of the food dollar,” the Washington Post called this restaurant a “culinary lobbying campaign,” situated on K Street as a constant reminder of the plight of the American family farmer. Don’t let the agricultural collective talk scare you away, though: the restaurant is beautifully appointed with an elegant minimalist design, and its Transcendental American fare is first-rate. We were there less than two months after it opened, a notoriously shaky time in the life of any restaurant, but we were willing to overlook minor gaps in service for the Cabbage Soup (with white beans, carrots and potatoes); the Beef Carpaccio (with arugula, parmesan, black pepper, olive oil and lemon); the grass-fed Rib-Eye Steak; the Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes; and the Scallops in bouillabaisse sauce with baby fennel. Desserts are mighty fine, too, including the Cocoanut Bread Pudding and Chocolate Terrine.
6. In Las Vegas, of all places -- on the fringes of the great ringing and ch-ching-ing of the slots midway at Caesar’s Palace, a few paces away from all the chintzy plaid and glitter on the folks lining up to see Celine Dion in her Colosseum -- there is an unexpectedly refined and stylish eatery that gave us one of our most memorable dining experiences of the year, Bradley Ogden. Ogden, of course, has gained renown as a Bay Area chef-restaurateur, but his Las Vegas location truly seems to have knocked the establishment food critics for a loop; it was the only restaurant outside of New York to be nominated for the coveted James Beard “Best New Restaurant” award in 2003, and it beat ‘em all. The polished stone, glass and dark wooden beams of the sleek interior are evocative of Frank Lloyd Wright’s contemplative, organic Post-Prairie Style, which had the overall effect of spiritually transporting us far from the garish effrontery of the faux Roman motifs inside Caesar’s. The waiters, elegantly attired in gray suits and ties, are true professionals of the sort you rarely find in American restaurants. Our gentleman was extraordinarily well-informed about every facet of the restaurant, and a good listener, too; having quickly identified us as foodies, he gave us a tour of the kitchen at the end of the evening. And speaking of the food … it’s New American cuisine, upscale comfort food, meticulously presented for the eye as well as for the palate. We enjoyed a course of Oysters, unveiled in five imaginative tableaux; Farmer’s Market salad; Wood-fired Pork Loin; and to top it all off, an Apple Cobbler with custardy Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream.

See Part II.

12 Eateries in 12 Months, Part II

See Part I.

7. I grew up on rustic Southern California Mexican food, prepared by little old ladies in stifling kitchens inside little old East-of-East-LA holes-in-the-wall, so I’m always a little amused these days at how gentrified the whole Mexican cuisine scene has become. A happy case in point, though … tucked away near the Back Bay of Newport Beach -- in a strip mall, no less -- is a brightly-decorated and cozy joint called Taco Rosa. It’s really quite unpretentious; even if it claims to purvey “Spanish, French and Southwestern” food, it is mostly imaginative pan-Mexican cuisine, bursting at the seams with fresh ingredients and interesting taste combinations, from Oaxacan Pollo en Mole to Yucatanean Baked Carnitas Pibil to coastal Escabeche (pickled vegetable salad). Although the owners of Taco Rosa go to great lengths to remind people that Mexican cuisine is more than just tacos, burritos and enchiladas, their handling of the standard fare is pretty irresistible. One great favorite that my wife enjoyed is the Burrito Arizona, comprised of lobster, sautéed with spinach, mushrooms, red onions and tomatoes, wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla and topped with chipotle guajillo, tomatillo and tequila lime cream sauces.

8. We’re always a little skeptical of restaurants with great views – as a rule, they don’t have to try as hard in the kitchen if they know the view will keep ‘em coming. Along California’s Highway 1, however, there is a beautiful vista around every bend -- and yet, when we must eat, we must eat. Fortunately, Nepenthe is a wonderful exception to the rule. Situated high atop an 800-foot Big Sur ocean overlook, Nepenthe is built on the site of an impromptu World War II-era picnic that turned into a real estate deal for two Hollywood newlyweds, Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. They grew tired of it, and each other, before much could come of it; so they sold it to the enterprising Fassett family, who hired Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice Rowan Maiden to build them a beautiful romantic retreat, from which they opened their restaurant in 1949. The fare is fresh and unfussy; specialties include the fat Ambrosiaburger and a pair of great salads, the Heirloom Tomato and Mozzarella Salad (with mache, frisee and arugula, dressed with sweet corn and basil vinaigrette) and the Three-Way Salad (a combination of garbanzo-bean salad, cole slaw and tossed greens; though they won’t say it, I suspect that the concept must have been inspired by the predilections of Nepenthe’s famous neighbor, writer Henry Miller). The wife enjoyed a house-cured salmon plate, and we both found Nepenthe’s Basket of Fries to be the perfect snack before hitting the rest of that great winding road.

9. Who goes to Napa Valley for the food? It’s a fair point; but nevertheless, amid the beautiful vineyards, there’s some pretty darn good meals to be had. I had an Ahi Tuna Salad at the Rutherford Grill (a cousin of Gulfstream, one of our Newport Beach favorites) that I’d be happy to nominate for salad of the year. However, the main attraction around these parts is the venerable La Toque, the intimate Country Cal-French restaurant that is attached to the Rancho Caymus Inn in Rutherford. For people who love good wine and love good food, the innovative wine-and-food pairing experience is heavenly: a five course prix-fixe menu (six, if you count the optional cheese course, which we did), with each course accompanied by a wine specially-chosen by in-house sommelier Scott Tracey. Although we love Napa wines, we were also pleasantly surprised to see Tracey going off the reservation, occasionally pairing our courses with a French sauterne or an Austrian Brundlmayer when the spirit moved him. The wife had the Tomato Soup, Marinated Black Cod, Ravioli topped with White Truffle (shaved tableside with much ceremony), Kobe Beef and Chocolate Gateau; while I had the Foie gras, the Cod, Twice-Cooked Pork, Salmon with Polenta Fries and the Apple Galette Tort with Buttermilk Ice Cream. And we both had a really good night’s sleep afterwards.

10. Just after Thanksgiving we gathered the whole clan (22 of us, if I’m counting correctly) for a celebration of my wife's grandfather’s 90^th birthday at Steve and Cookie’s, in Margate, New Jersey, on the bay side of the island. The food is no-nonsense – crab cakes, steak, meatloaf – and we opted for set menu (a choice between filet mignon and salmon), a boatload of wine, and numerous fulsome toasts to the health of the fellow who will no doubt outlive us all. When the wife looks around the place, inevitably she thinks of christenings, showers, friends’ weddings … sometimes a restaurant can be a favorite simply because it has become an extension of your household. In a similar vein, the family has come to rely on Dino’s Sub & Pizza, a few blocks away, as an extra set of kitchen hands. No idea what to have for lunch? Let’s order subs. Lizanne’s coming in from Boston? Let’s order subs. Hangover this morning? Let’s order subs. The wife likes the grilled veggie with provolone, while I usually opt for the cheesesteak with grilled onions, both with lots of hot peppers on the side.


11. We couldn’t find a mediocre meal in Asheville, North Carolina earlier this month. Limone’s, a Mexican-Californian joint on Eagle Street, offered a giant selection of Tequilas, and a tasty entremesa of Goat Cheese Poblano Pepper Empanadas, while the Sunny Point Café seems to be Asheville’s definitive breakfast place, featuring locally-grown goods, a mellow bohemian clientele, a killer Pecan-Encrusted Fried Green Tomato Sandwich and life-affirming plates of Huevos Rancheros. (We were tempted by the Sunny Point Oatmeal Brulle and the Cocoanut Pancakes, but it was just the wrong time of day for a smorgasbord.) One of the other bright spots was a breezy little bistro in Biltmore Village called Fig, which co-owner Treavis Taylor told us stands for “Food is Good.” And it is: a contemporary blend of French, American and Italian tastes, we had Mussels in a Curry Broth, Lemon Risotto with Rock Shrimp, Free-Range Chicken Breast over Lemon-Lime Cous Cous, and Fried Veal Sweetbreads, all accompanied by an excellent wine list and a friendly, informative staff.

12. For my birthday this year, we had dinner with good friends at one of my favorite Pittsburgh area restaurants -- Vivo, a small, romantic BYOB Italian restaurant situated in the unlikeliest of locales, the bland and unassuming North Pittsburgh neighborhood of Bellevue. Once inside, you can easily forget that you’re on a street otherwise populated by an inordinate number of funeral homes and chiropractors; comfy chairs, muted lighting and terracotta-washed walls covered with black-and-white family photos give us the feeling of having a meal in someone’s old Italian rowhouse. The menu is a waitress’ unprinted monologue of seven starters and seven entrees that changes daily, and the overall experience features the appetizer course (we had Fresh Oysters and a splendid Three-Mushroom and Chorizo concoction), then a small plate of pasta, followed by the entrée (among our crew, there was veal, lobster, lamb and beef, each prepared with personality and panache) and the salad course. Side dishes are served with the entrée at room temperature, antipasto style, and on the night we were there, chef/owner Sam DiBattista had outdone himself with the Wheat Berries and the Green Beans. We capped our meal with a dessert of berries and cannoli filling pressed between two vanilla pixelles – which is about as great a birthday present as I can think of.

A Home

I am celebrating my fifth anniversary in my home -- designed by Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice Peter Berndtson around 1960-4 -- by bringing in a bunch of contractors, aided by an architect who understands the work of Peter Berndtson and can help me make choices that preserve Berndtson's vision and intent. This summer I am renovating two of the three decks on the second floor.

Another architect, Albert Walters, once said of Berndtson: "Peter was one of the most totally self-centered people I have ever known . . . [he] embodied the character of Howard Roark [from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead] more than anyone I ever knew." Others have disputed this characterization (Edgar Tafel told me that Berndtson was a "nice man" -- whatever that might mean), but it is clear that in learning his craft at the knee of Wright, Berndtson also learned to emulate something of Wright's elitism and arrogance.

A some-time designer of stage sets, Berndtson joined Wright's Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin in 1938 and became one of Wright's most devoted pupils and disciples, working with the master on his renderings of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. During the 1940s, Berndtson settled in Pittsburgh with his second wife, Taliesin architect and historian Cornelia Brierly, where he became an important designer of Wright-influenced residences -- "organic" structures which were designed with uncompromising discipline to be integrated with the land in their basic lines, their materials and their treatment of natural light. He passed away in 1972.

This excerpt from Miller and Sheon's book Organic Vision: The Architecture of Peter Berndtson, explains a bit about what is special about my particular house:

One house that tested all of the architect's ingenuity was 'Springwater Hills,' the home of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Parkins . . . The Parkinses owned 40 wooded acres surrounding a handsome grassy knoll -- on which stood a typical late Victorian clapboard farmhouse with gable roof. Berndtson first saw the site in 1953. He suggested razing the small farmhouse and starting fresh. At the time the Parkinses felt the expense prohibitive and in any case did not want to start from scratch. Ten years later they began long discussions about adapting the house.

' Peter was amenable to an adaptation,' Parkins said. 'But he told me it would be a most difficult challenge to make his architecture come together with the existing building. We knew what he meant. He looked over the place a few times and then disappeared for about six months. When he finally came out with the plans, the drawings were incredible. We fell in love with his ideas right away. Even if we had been inclined to, after seeing what he intended we probably could not have looked for another architect. You just couldn't deny his work,' the Parkinses said.

'I said I thought Micarta surfaces would be practical in the bedrooms,' Arthur Parkins remembered. 'If you want that you'll need a different architect,' Peter replied.'

'We let him do what he wanted,' Loretta Parkins said, 'because everything he did was beyond our expectations. The house, with three decks on the second floor, four bedrooms and two baths, is like a sculpture. We have made no attempt to overdress it. Just a few flowers. Peter included corner flower boxes on the northwest deck. There was nothing that we didn't let Peter do. He had total freedom and we're not sorry!'

Parkins agreed. 'Peter had a unified design. He nurtured ideas like sculptural entities and he never deviated from his ideals.'

On of their house's most unusual features is a long walkway with a redwood canopy that extends many feet from the front of the house in the direction of a separate garage. The house has a strong Japanese quality with its stark redwood exterior. Except for one area of the original roofline, there is nothing to indicate the house's beginnings. Berndtson enclosed the original structure but refinished the interior as the core of his enlargement. It was a brilliant experiment.

One feature of the house that Miller and Sheon fail to mention, except in passing, is its surroundings -- the thick, green woods; the lush rhododendrons that hug the structure on the east and west sides; and the gentle hiss of the two springs that traverse the land on which it is situated. The land itself was part of the attraction for me, and one of the things that drew me to visit when I first read that this Berndtson house was for sale by the Parkinses. It was an emotional experience for me to wake up in this forest for the first time five years ago after moving in. In the master bedroom, with glass expanses on either side of the built-in platform bed, and narrow windows on either side of the fireplace at the far end of the room, it was easy to be overwhelmed by being enveloped within the forest's colors and sounds. In this most private haven, it was as if there were no sense of time.

Fallingwater Audio

The WDUQ-FM Fallingwater anniversary report, featuring a discussion between author Franklin Toker and Edgar Tafel, the last surviving apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright present at the birth of Fallingwater, is now available at WDUQ's audio site (Quicktime required).

WDUQ-FM to air Fallingwater Story

As an update to my previous posting on the subject (see Edgar Tafel at Fallingwater), I have been informed that WDUQ-FM (90.5 in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas) will air its story on Edgar Tafel at Fallingwater on Thursday morning, September 22, 2005, the 70th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright's first drawing of the house. The story will air during the 6:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. half-hours in the middle of the local cutaway from WDUQ's broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition.

Included in the story are portions of my interview with Franklin Toker, author of Fallingwater Rising, and Toker's discussion with Tafel about Fallingwater's birth.

Edgar Tafel at Fallingwater

I am not a real radio reporter. However, I do have an unhealthy interest in a dizzying array of topics far and wide across the vast plains of topicdom, and I guess I’m vocal enough about these odds and ends that people seem to know this about me. So, it wasn’t a complete surprise when a friend of mine from a local NPR station asked me to “cover” an event taking place at Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated creation known as Fallingwater, located just 50 miles south of my own home outside of Pittsburgh.

September 22 will mark the 70th anniversary of Wright’s original concept drawings of Fallingwater, often described as the single greatest piece of architecture of the 20th century. Thus it is that 93-year old architect and former Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice Edgar Tafel visited Fallingwater last Saturday, to stand on one of his master’s famous balconies in front of a documentary film crew and, as a witness to history, to discuss Wright and Fallingwater with University of Pittsburgh professor Franklin Toker, author of a definitive study of the house, Fallingwater Rising. (Photo of Toker and Tafel at left.) Tafel is, in fact, the last surviving human being to have been present when Wright drew the house.

I am fortunate enough to own a home designed by another of Frank Lloyd Wright’s apprentices, the late Peter Berndtson; my home is featured in another book, Organic Vision: The Architecture of Peter Berndtson, by D. Miller & A. Sheon (The Hexagon Press, 1980). Armed with my enthusiasm for the work of Wright and his Taliesin fellows, after a crash course in sound engineering given to me by my reporter friend, I arrived early at Fallingwater on a rainy Saturday morning, wearing one of my best suits. (I doubt that Edward R. Murrow wore anything else, unless he was in a war zone. Even then . . .) My job, handed to me by an apparently seriously understaffed news department, was to meet with Tafel and Toker, record their conversation, and if possible ask a few questions of my own.

Although Tafel and the film crew were running late, shortly after I arrived I encountered Franklin Toker, a scholar with a twinkle in his eye. We discussed Wright, Fallingwater, Tafel and Berndtson, and he regaled us with tales from his “eighteen years” of research on Fallingwater Rising. Although he is principally a scholar of medieval Italian architecture, Toker was inspired to write about Fallingwater for a number of reasons. First, if you are an architect in Pittsburgh, it is simply expected that you should be able to say something intelligent about Fallingwater. Secondly, Toker points out that while booksellers will claim that dozens of books have been written about Fallingwater, in his own experience he came to believe merely that dozens of books have a picture of Fallingwater on their cover, and that no single work had come close to telling the full Fallingwater story.

Toker’s usual research involves translating medieval Latin texts, so researching Fallingwater was a challenge in that he actually had to sit down and interview people. He noted that it was often the emotional content of an interview, rather than the facts elicited, that was of most value in compiling oral histories – especially where the frail memories of people in their 90s were concerned.

The day's star nonagenarian, courtly Edgar Tafel, seemed anything but frail when he arrived. Sporting a snazzy gold print jacket and a collarless black shirt, he was hobbled a bit by arthritis, but it was also clear that he enjoyed basking in the glow of his master’s creation, and that it gave him a certain energy to be in its presence. As the camera crew readied itself and I concentrated on my sound chores, plugging in to the sound of the obliging film crew, Tafel chatted jauntily with Toker, and even sang a few bars of an old Taliesin song (“we love Mozart . . . we hate Beaux Arts”).

Tafel has been telling the story of Wright first putting pencil to paper for so long, it has an air of being rather rehearsed at this point. But Tafel is part showman, to be sure, so as he tells the tale, he is measuring his audience's reaction. He tells how Wright and his team were ensconced at Taliesin in Wisconsin, when they received a call from E.J. Kaufmann, Wright's anxious client, informing Wright that he and his wife had just landed at Milwaukee and would be arriving soon, wanting to see his preliminary drawings. There were none, of course, at that moment, so Wright sent his assistants scurrying to make Taliesin ready for his visitors, and with pencils flying, a mere couple of hours later Wright had a picture of Fallingwater on his drawing table, waiting for E.J. and Liliane. The design just poured out of him, Tafel recalls. He had not sketched one line prior to Kaufmann's call.

As the discussion took its course, Toker invited me, standing off camera, to shoot a couple of questions at Tafel. I noted that Tafel was part of a select group of architects who had received their early training from Wright, many of whom had gone on to interesting careers, and asked if there was one thing that all of the Wright apprentices seemed to share from their experience with Wright. Tafel’s answer meandered a bit, but by the giddy end it was clear that the one thing that the Wright apprentices all shared was a poor education in engineering – most had to supplement their education in order to be certified, and many, like Wright himself, were never certified as architects. I think I can attest to this, given my own experience with the work of a Wright apprentice. Roofs seem to be a special problem for Wright-style homes. It reminds me of the comments of one of Wright’s clients regarding chronic roof leaks: “That’s what happens when you leave a work of art out in the rain.”

I also asked Tafel what he hoped people would be able to take away from Fallingwater 70 years from now. He paused, then quietly mused, “Who can tell? . . . who can tell?”

With the formal interview completed, Tafel was led off by Fallingwater curators for a board meeting, leaving Toker and I to wrap up some final thoughts on Fallingwater. His answers to my questions were so beautifully rendered, I will await the transcript and bring them to these pages in a later installment.

Luckily, my excitement did not interfere with getting good sound -- the crisp tones of Tafel and Toker, with the gentle hiss and bubble of the famous waterfall underneath. I am hoping to report in a few weeks that some portion of it will be airing locally.