Architecture of tragedy: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin murders.
A horror of almost unfathomable proportions occurred at the house Wright designed as a peaceful retreat from the world.
One hundred and eleven years ago today, on August 15, 1914, something terrible happened in a very unique house in southern Wisconsin. The house and the estate on which it stood was called Taliesin, and it was the retreat of legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed it and several other nearby buildings. Wright built it for his romantic partner, Mamah Borthwick, so the two of them could live there peacefully away from the gossip and scandal that surrounded them. Their relationship was a lightning rod of controversy at the time, for each of them was already married to someone else when they began seeing one another. By 1914 Borthwick had divorced her husband but Wright was still married. Sadly, the peace the couple found at Taliesin was short-lived.
A few days before August 15, Julian Carlton, a chef and manservant at Taliesin, was notified that he was being fired, and the 15th would be his last day. An Afro-Caribbean who said he was from Barbados, Carlton was insulted with racial slurs by Emil Brodelle, a draftsman who worked for Wright and lived on the property. Carlton decided to get revenge. He told his wife to pack a suitcase and wait for him and that they were going to Chicago to look for a new job. Waiting until noon when most activity at Taliesin stopped for lunch, Carlton took an axe and came onto the porch just off the living room of the main house. Mamah Borthwick was there with her two kids, John, age 12, and Martha, age 9. Carlton killed Borthwick with a blow to the face, then turned around and hacked John to death. Martha ran away but the crazed killer chased her, finishing her off in the courtyard outside the house. Carlton dragged her body back to the house, poured gasoline around the place and set it on fire.
