by Robert Alverson

Created on: January 10, 2008

Frank Lloyd Wright is generally considered to have been one of the most preeminent architects of our era. Countless books recount both his stunning body of work as well as his biography; however few dwell on the murders that occurred at his Taliesin home. This is a concise telling of those events, compiled from several sources.

Taliesin was, and is, a beautiful large home, set atop a hill in Wisconsin. The valley that it sits in was settled during the Civil War by the Lloyd Joneses, Wright's maternal family. The building also showcases Wright's Organic Architecture; the house is built into the hill and prominently features local materials, tying the structure and the environment together.

This was Wright's second house, begun in 1909, as he left his Oak Park home and wife behind to have an affair with Mrs. Martha Borthwick Cheney in Europe. They settled in Taliesin in December 1911, along with her two children, John and Martha. The house was a fully functioning studio for Wright, and at the time of the incident a work crew was there in addition to the now Ms. Borthwick and her children.

The staff of the household was a couple from Barbados, Julian and Gertrude Carlton. Gertrude was the cook, and Julian filled a variety of roles, from general handyman to butler. He was both intelligent and well educated, with an apparently affable character; however many in the house viewed him with suspicion. Testimony later described him as hot-headed, recalling incidents where he got into arguments with the tenants. He once decried everyone in the household as "picking on him," which put him continually on the defensive. There are differing reports on what caused his rampage: some claim that he'd been given two weeks notice because Gertrude wanted to return to Chicago, others say that there was a falling out between him and Ms. Borthwick leading to his dismissal. Either way, his wife later stated that he'd been agitated in the days up to the event, and was sleeping with a hatchet next to his bed. Clearly the steady flow of life at Taliesin had just come off the rails.

The incident occurred during lunch on August 15, 1914. The work crew was made up of the foreman Thomas Brunker, David Lindblom the gardener, father and carpenter, William Weston, his son Ernest Weston, draftsmen Herb Fritz and Emil Brodelle. They were seated and served in the house's dining room, which was roughly 25 feet away from the veranda where Ms. Borthwick and her children were eating. After he had served

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