FROM TENTS TO TUXEDOS
Pittsburghers on the rise and fall of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin school
For nearly 90 years, Taliesin fellows studying architecture with Frank Lloyd Wright lived in spartan dormitories or remodeled chicken coops with bunks.
From May through October, Wright and his apprentices stayed at Taliesin, an 800-acre farm in Spring Green, Wis. In autumn, they drove in a caravan to Scottsdale, Ariz., camping in canvas sheep-herder’s tents in the desert at Taliesin West to escape harsh Wisconsin winters.
Despite this rustic lifestyle, on Saturday night, male apprentices dressed in tuxedos while women wore evening gowns to a formal dinner. In 2006, Daniel Dillow, a
Pittsburgh architect and Taliesin fellow, recalls donning his tuxedo during his first week there.
“You’re surrounded by people of influence in their various fields, and you learn how to entertain people who are smarter than you,” said Mr. Dillow, a project manager for VEBH Architects in Mt. Lebanon.
On Tuesday, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation announced that the apprenticeship program Wright founded in 1932 will close this spring. The news did not surprise Mr. Dillow. He was one of 30 apprentices paying $30,000 annually for his education. Since he earned his master’s degree in 2011, annual tuition has risen to $47,300.
During his five years at Taliesin, apprentices awakened at 6 a.m., ate breakfast, then worked construction until 3 p.m. Classes started in the late afternoon and ran to 10 p.m., with a break for dinner. After 10 p.m., he did homework. It was “boots on the ground and dirty fingernails.”
“You work in the garden. You serve guests. You maintain the buildings,” he said, adding that he did everything from “taking out the trash to rebuilding walls.”
Mr. Dillow likened the school to a close friend who you know is dying. The 34-year-old Mount Washington resident hopes the board of the Taliesin School, which is separate from the foundation, will find an innovative way to revive the apprenticeship.
Solving problems, he said, is what Taliesin fellows do daily. He and his fellow students held bake sales for two months before raising $10,000 to buy a laser cutter in the days before crowd funding became prevalent.
Last July, Taliesin and Taliesin West were among eight Frank Lloyd Wright buildings that UNESCO designated as World Heritage sites. Fallingwater, the Western Pennsylvania home Wright balanced atop a waterfall in Fayette County, also became a World Heritage site, a designation that typically sparks a major increase in the number of foreign tourists.
Taliesin and Taliesin West remain open for tours, events, K-12 education programs and live performances, according to a statement from Stuart Graff, president and chief executive officer of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. But students no longer will enroll in an accredited program that grants bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture. The school was formally accredited in the early 1980s.
All Taliesin fellows are required to participate in theatrical performances, an experience Mr. Dillow said taught him how to speak to a crowd of strangers, read that crowd and communicate effectively.
Mr. Dillow, who was home schooled in Dallas, said the Taliesin fellowship “absolutely built my confidence. Very few schools combine that technical proficiency with the chance to step back and look at that project as an artist. It’s a hard balance to strike.”
‘Eau de chicken’
In 2011, Mr. Dillow came to Pittsburgh to work for Jerry Morosco, an architect and Taliesin Fellow who chaired the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation board from 2005 through 2008. His three-man firm, Gerald Lee Morosco Architects, is in East Liberty.
Mr. Morosco, 60, of the South Side, was 21 when he joined the Taliesin fellowship in 1981.
“You had to be motivated,” Mr. Morosco said. “You’re living in a tent but you have to wear a tux.”
In Wisconsin, “I lived in what had been a chicken coop,” he said, adding that when the weather got warm, he could smell “eau de chicken.”
The Taliesin fellowship was born during the Great Depression, Mr. Morosco said.
“In 1932, Frank Lloyd Wright was destitute. They were cutting up draperies to make dresses,” he said, adding that Olgivanna Wright persuaded her husband to write his autobiography and start an architecture school. After Wright died in 1959, Mrs. Wright kept her husband’s legacy alive. She died in 1985.
Unlike other Wright sites, Taliesin and Taliesin West are not house museums, Mr. Morosco said.
“People actually live there. They are living, functioning spaces and when visitors go there they see that there’s life in the buildings. There’s people cooking in the kitchens at Taliesin. That’s where I learned to cook,” Mr. Morosco said.
Val M. Cox read a magazine article about Taliesin in the 1960s. Now a 67-year-old
South Side painter and sculptor, he became a Taliesin fellow in 1972 and remained for 12 years.
“I became one of the first people who left residency at Taliesin but still stayed associated with Taliesin,” Mr. Cox said, adding that he worked with architects on projects.
“I had decided that I needed to return to painting and sculpture full time. It was just such an exciting community. I would go there almost every weekend for their Saturday night feast.
Mrs. Wright was my mentor. She always welcomed me.”
Mr. Cox, who is from Waco, Texas, helped Mrs. Wright with her autobiography.
Life at Taliesin, he added, “was very stimulating because you were pushed to your limits to do things you had not done before. We worked together. We ate together. You built some substance within yourself.”
Mr. Cox was not interested in becoming an architect or doing construction but he recalled working with Arnold Roy, an architect at Taliesin West.
“He would give me a 2 by 4 and say, “Cut this into 2 feet 5 inches or 4 feet 1½ inches. I would get close but not exact. Bit by bit, I learned how to be exact in my work,” he said.
That experience informs his work because he uses wood to build forms called armatures and stretches canvases over them so that the canvas has a shape.
“That’s a very exacting thing to do,” Mr. Cox said.