August 27, 2026 • 34 mins
Even if you're not an architecture enthusiast, odds are you've heard of Frank Lloyd Wright. This massively famous architect fundamentally changed the discipline of architecture as we know it. Yet as Ben, Noel and Max learn in the second part of this special two-part series, Frank made a lot of enemies on his way to success. Tune in to learn how one of his employees committed mass murder -- and why J. Edgar Hoover's FBI spent years trying to prove he was a spy or a cult leader.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always, so
much for tuning in. That's our super-duper producer, Mr. Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Huzzah! Huzzah, tiz-yah.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's Mr. Noel Brown. They call me Ben Bolin. Noel,
we're in media rest. We're in the middle of a
really crazy story. And, dude, I just have to say,
not to blow our own horns or hop on our
own sawhorses here, I thought we did a pretty okay
job with the backstory.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, laying the foundation, if you will. Nice.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
For Frank Lloyd Wright. Now, you may have seen the
episode title for our first episode, and you may have thought, wow,
you guys talked a little bit about a scandal. You
talked a little bit about an early life. But where
are the disastrous dark sides of architecture we were promised? Well,
(01:26):
that's this episode.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Noel, what do you say we just dive right in?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, we teased a bit of a fire at the
end of the previous episode. So that's where we will begin.
We have to introduce... A new character, however, in our tale,
a 31-year-old African-American gentleman named Julian Carlton. In 1914, he
came to the compound as Taliesin to work as a chef.
(02:03):
and house servant, I suppose you could call it, over
a summer. And this was a personal connection because Carlton
had been recommended to write by a fellow by the
name of John Vogelson, Jr. Often you get a junior
when you're a swell as well, who was the caterer
for Frank's earlier Midway Gardens project.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, that's strange to me because when we think of
construction projects, you think of a site supervisor, you think
of contractors, you think of people hanging drywall and welders
and other construction professionals, but you don't really think of caterers.
You know what I mean? That feels very fancy. Yeah. Okay,
(02:51):
so this guy's a caterer. Vogelson, he recommends Julian Carlton
because Frank and co. are looking for some kitchen help,
and they're looking for a handyman, basically. On paper, Julian
has a solid rep. He's got great recommendations from, as
he said, Swell Society. And his wife, Gertrude, comes along
(03:16):
with him. They are a pair, right? And Gertrude does
most of the actual cooking. Julian is essentially, he's a
man of, he's a jack of all trades. He's the handyman,
but he does double duty as just a utilitarian, what
do you need kind of guy around the estate.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
A honeydew.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
A honeydew.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
As my mother would say, yes.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
He also, when the family has visitors or they have
big dinners, he will play the role of the waiter
or the server. And things started off well enough, but
Carlton had some demons, you guys.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Sure did.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
And over time, those demons manifested themselves in the form
of pretty severe paranoia. Something about his behavior became increasingly unhinged,
especially how he took up the habit of staying up
super late at night, staring out of a window and
brandishing a butcher's knife. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Red flag behavior, Ben.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
And also, just to be clear, folks, when he's staring
out of the window- There's not stuff going on. We
told you this is a large estate. He's not watching
a parade or anything.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
No, staring off into the middle distance, as it were. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Seven-league, thousand-yard stare. His wife, Gertrude, also notices that her
spouse has begun sleeping with a hatchet in a bag
next to their bedside. And Frank and his mistress, Mama,
they clock this and think, They're getting worried, too, and
they're saying, all right, well, maybe this guy is not
(04:59):
the best fit. So they eventually take out a classified
ad in the local paper looking for a replacement handyman,
replacement cook. On August 15th, 1914, Frank's people fire Carlton,
and they say, this is going to be your last
day with us. And the implication being, of course, that
it'll be his wife's last day on the estate as well,
(05:22):
since they're a married couple, they're a pair. Obviously, folks,
nobody likes to lose a job for any reason, much
less to be fired. And there are plenty of people,
even now in 2026, who file lawsuits or seek retribution
when they feel an employer has treated them unfairly. Carlton
takes this a step further. He's already furious at another
(05:45):
guy who works in the area or works on the estate.
It's a racist draft man named Emil Brodel. Emil had
been treating Carlton like absolute crap and dirt for a
while over the course of, again, this just one summer.
So Carlton, when he learns he's going to get fired,
he says, I'm going to take revenge on.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
That jerk Emil. Burn down the building, my stapler.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
He said, and not just Emil, but I'm going to
take revenge on everybody who works or lives at Towson.
I am going to kill them all.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
That's where the name of the famous Metallica album came from.
Don't fact check. It's podcast true. Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
He planned this assault targeting the time of high noon
when Borthwick, her visiting children, and the studio employees and
personnel would be on opposite sides of the grounds, opposite
sides of the living quarters specifically, waiting for lunch to
be served. Wright, at the time, was away in Chicago
(06:52):
completing that Midway Gardens project we were talking about, which
is the connection where this guy came from. Having just
served soup to the Wright's mistress and her children, Carlton
told his wife to skedaddle.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
He then returned to the.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Porch, wielding that hatchet that he loved so well. I
think it's such an odd detail that it was in
a bag, that he slept with a hatchet in a bag.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Maybe just put it under the pillow. The bag seems superfluous,
but I digress.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, the bag seems strange, right? It's a little unnecessary.
It's kind of a hat on a hat or a
hatchet on a hatchet. So to be clear, we said
this building or this complex is in three primary structures.
The mistress, Mama, Mama, and her visiting children, who are
(07:42):
8 and 11 years old respectively– They are eating on
one side of the compound and the employees slash disciples
are way on the other side of the compound. So
they're divided. And that's what we believe Carlton was waiting for.
After he tells his wife, Gertrude, to get GTFO, he
(08:06):
goes back to the porch. Like you said, he's wielding
this hatchet. He attacks Mama Borthwick and her two children. Again,
these are eight-year-olds. This is an eight-year-old and an 11-year-old.
And Mama is killed by a single blow to the
head from the hatchet. Her son, the 11-year-old John, is
killed while he's still sitting in his chair. This guy's
(08:30):
a literal axe murderer, Ben. Yes, very much so. This
is dark stuff. The eight-year-old is a girl named Martha,
and she manages to get out of the area where
they're eating, but Carlton hunts her down and murders her
in the courtyard, and then he douses the bodies and
the floor with gasoline, and he sets a fire and
(08:52):
proceeds to the other wing of the estate where the
employees are eating.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Talk about adding insult to injury, and literal scorched earth
type stuff. As the workers ate their soup in the
dining room, a 19-year-old draftsman by the name of Herbert
Fritz and his fellow diners noticed something a bit unusual.
And he had this to say about what he noticed.
(09:20):
We heard a swish as though water was thrown through
the screen door. Then we saw some fluid coming under
the door. It looked like dishwater. That makes sense, because
gasoline can have a little bit of a bubbly appearance
at times. Or soapy, right? It has that refracting quality.
(09:40):
It spread out all over the floor, he recalled. This was,
of course, Carlton pouring more gas under the door than
setting it on fire as well.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah. And the reason we have this statement from Herbert
Fritz is because he's one of the few people to
survive the attack. He was able to break a window
and escape. But in escaping, he also broke his arm.
And if you've ever been in a terrifying emergency situation,
you also know that once that adrenaline kicks in, you
(10:12):
don't really feel your injuries until later, right? So he
probably didn't realize immediately that he'd broken his arm. Carlton
does attack that guy who was racist to him earlier.
He wounds him with the hatchet. These wounds will later
lead to Emil Brodel's death. Then he sets upon the
(10:33):
other employees. A couple of them escape. A master carpenter
named Billy Weston, who had helped build Towson, and the
landscape gardener, a guy named David Lindblom. They're both super
terribly burned, grievously wounded. So they, along with Herbert, manage
to escape the estate and they run like a half
(10:56):
mile or so because they're looking for the nearest house
with a telephone. And they contact the authorities. People rush
to the scene. They discover this horrific tableau of the
murdered mistress, her children, two workers, and a 13-year-old boy.
(11:17):
One of the guys who escaped, the gardener, David, also
later dies as a result of his burns.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Right. From there, Carlton, our axe murderer, flees to the
basement where he attempts to take his own life by
swallowing a vial of hydrochloric acid.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
What a way to go. He was, however, unsuccessful somehow
and survived. Can't imagine that was very pleasant, though.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah. All in all, seven people died. He survived his
suicide attempt He was arrested. He was taken into custody.
He was charged. Julian Carlton never gave a motive for
his atrocity, but due to the damage that this acid
wrought upon his throat, he died of starvation and an
(12:07):
inflamed esophagus about seven weeks later.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Painful.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Slow.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Ugh. His wife, Gertrude, was found nearby. She had no
idea what had happened and was just waiting to catch
a train to Chicago with her husband, where she said
they were going to look for new jobs. So this
was Taliesin I.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yes, yeah. And Gertrude was questioned by police and detained. Eventually,
she was released, and she was given a pretty small
amount of money. She went back to Chicago, and we
don't know what else happened to her, but— As you said,
old Frank Lloyd Wright is out of town when this occurs.
(12:50):
He's not in Wisconsin. And he returns to just find
a whirr past words, and he decides to rebuild the
compound when a lot of other people would have just left.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
He moved quickly.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
He named this newly rebuilt structure Taliesin II. It's almost
identical to the first one. It has a few extra
bells and whistles, that fancy stuff we were talking about
that ultimately was not very sustainable or practical. He moves quickly.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
He sure does.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
And around Christmas of that year, we're still in 1914,
Frank also began communicating with a wealthy divorcee named Miriam
Maud Noel, who had reached out after reading about the
fire and the mass murder. Like, I guess, yeah, almost
(13:49):
like a fan, kind of. After meeting her in Chicago,
in his offices there, Frank fell ill. head over heels,
gaga in love with this woman. So by the spring
of the following year, Taliesin II was finished. Maud had
also taken up residence there. And Frank's first wife, Catherine Kitty,
finally granted him that divorce that he wanted in 1922
(14:10):
with a bit of an odd condition, that Frank not
remarry for one year. So in the interests of you know,
getting this thing done.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
He agreed. Uh, but once that clock had run out
on that year, he married his new, um, his new
lady lickety split.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Lickety split, uh, is something we should emphasize because he, wow,
he was just running out the clock. You know what
I mean? And unfortunately this second marriage also went kaput
and pretty quickly because Frank had initially found Noelle's madcap,
(14:48):
somewhat eccentric or erratic personality to be stimulating and charming.
But as the pair lived together, one-on-one, he started thinking
there was something seriously off about his new wife's behavior.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Ah, the honeymoon period.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
You know, it happens to the rest of us, even
when there aren't some pretty serious concerns at play.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Right, right. The honeymoon period in U.S. English is conventionally
referring to that, that those beautiful days early in a relationship,
when you're not dating the actual person, you're dating their
impression of the person they think you will.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Like the most.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Romanticizing it, falling in love with the limerence, I think
is the psychological term, where everything just feels like warm fuzzies,
and then the reality sets in. And in this case,
the reality of Noel's behavior was schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, later scholars would say this wasn't just oddball eccentricity,
but an actual mental condition. And Noel eventually leaves Frank
in the spring of 1924. And that same year, she
leaves him, but she doesn't divorce him yet. And that
same year, Wright will go on to meet someone named
(16:06):
Olga Lazovic-Hindenburg. or Olgivana to her friends. She moves in
with Frank in Taliesin in 1925. And soon after that,
she becomes pregnant. So Frank is back to repairing his
career and his reputation. He again is in an estranged
(16:27):
marriage and has a mistress. And people are saying, you know,
people are talking. Like you said, people can be catty.
And weirdly enough, his reputation is kind of saved by
an earthquake. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 absolutely wrecks
parts of Japan. But the hotel he built earlier, the
(16:49):
Imperial Hotel of Tokyo, survives the earthquake. And people are saying, look, man,
do I think someone should marry him? No. But can
the guy build a building? Absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
I know. I mean, if having buildings survive earthquakes is wrong,
I don't want to be Frank Lloyd Wright.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
There we go. It's worth it.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
I've been waiting to do that for two episodes time.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Please put in the drum riff. So for a while,
Frank did not spend too much time at Taliesin II,
probably because the tragedy was still fresh in his mind,
but also because he was getting a lot of work now.
His frequency of commissions was on the rise, and he
would often live near the construction sites of his newest projects.
(17:40):
It was kind of a nomadic life. By 1922 or so,
he really starts settling in until there is, get this folks,
another fire.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
And you'll recall in part one, we teased the idea
of multiple fires.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So we're getting to fire number two.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
On April 20th, 1925, Frank has just finished dinner in
the detached dining room and he's walking outside because again,
this is a beautiful layout. It's very much integrated with nature.
So he's walking outside and he's going to be heading
back to his bedroom when he sees smoke billowing from
(18:19):
the windows in the doorway. And because it is kind
of late at night, most of his employees have returned
to their houses, to wherever they live off-site. So the
only people there are his driver and one of his
apprentices slash disciples. So because those other folks are there
and because there's not a murderer on the loose, Frank
(18:42):
and these two guys are able to get help immediately
and they're able to contact the town. But the problem is,
There's a storm afoot, and the winds that night are
high and wild, so the fire is spreading quickly. The
living area of Taliesin 2 is destroyed.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yeah, a lot of folks speculate that the fire may
have been caused by a lightning storm, which created an
electrical charge in the telephone lines, which then ignited a
fire by a telephone in Frank's bedroom. So that was
the end of Taliesin 2. Um, once again, Frank, uh,
quickly set to rebuilding and he named this new final
complex and a burst of creativity, as you like to say,
(19:22):
Ben Taliesin three. Ah, yes.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Taliesin three. Uh, this was also not an easy reconstruction because.
You know, your, your house has burned down twice. Now, uh,
Frank is deeply in debt following the, following the obliteration
Taliesin two, he owes debt on the property. But his
divorce from Noel also forces him to sell a lot
(19:49):
of his farm machines. and livestock, which was a side hustle.
And then he also had to sell off a lot
of his prized Japanese art at half value just because
he needed the money. And Taliesin got very close to
being a courthouse foreclosure auction The Bank of Wisconsin foreclosed
(20:11):
on it in 1927. Frank had to move out to California.
At that same year, his divorce is finalized. And in 1928,
he marries Ogeviana. And they were able to save Taliesin III.
This is an interesting story. One of his old clients,
(20:31):
a guy named Darwin Martin, came to Frank. and had
a really interesting pitch, and I can't wait to hear
what we all think of this. He said, I can't
give you all the money, but I got a plan.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
He formed a company called Frank Lloyd Wright Incorporated that
would issue stock on Wright's future earnings. Many of Wright's
former clients and students bought in, purchasing stock in Wright,
and raised $ 70, 000. This is what you might call an IPO,
kind of?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Sort of a self-contained system of stuff. It's not like
it's publicly traded. Yeah, it is kind of like raising,
you know, venture capital or something like that, right? The
company successfully bid on Taliesin for 40 grand and returned
it to Wright's possession.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yep, and so by October of 1928, he was back
at home. Now, we promised you, this Tuesday passed, we
promised you we had to talk a little bit about
the allegations of cultury. So in addition to Taliesin, the structure,
(21:41):
Frank and his third wife, Ogevana, started something called the
Taliesin Fellowship. This was an architectural apprenticeship community that they
founded in 1932. And it produced a lot of iconic designs.
A lot of people who went there went on to
have very storied careers themselves in architecture. But it was
(22:04):
seen as intense, insular, beyond cliquish. It was authoritarian. So
it's not a cult per se, but it's cult-like in practice.
And if it walks like a duck and it quacks
like a duck, you know, how many more duck-like things
do you need, right?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
People were living on the grounds, right?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Under the, you know, control of this one man who
was very magnetic.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Kind of held sway over over these folks living in
his compound i mean it's yeah it's very cult-like especially
when you consider that dude had from the start had
kind of like almost a spiritual quality to his connection
with nature and you know how structures were extensions.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Of nature and all of that stuff so i mean
it does.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Make sense yeah and it also to the spiritual point
When you signed up to study architecture under Frank and
live under his rule, you weren't just studying architecture. You
were also studying what they called spiritual development. And a
lot of that came from his third wife. We'll get
(23:15):
into that in a second. Twenty-three disciples signed up to
live and work there that first year. And overall, in
Wright's lifetime, a total of 625 people would join the fellowship.
But the living conditions were a source of controversy. The
quality of education, a.k.a. what are we actually learning, was
(23:37):
also controversial. And apparently, as he got older and older,
Frank was a very difficult guy to work with. Apprentices
were very– you know, it's kind of like hearing people
who worked in fine dining talking about working under celebrity
chefs who are jerks. because he's traumatized. These people seem,
(24:00):
in some cases, traumatized, but they also say it was
worth it. One guy said, he, meaning Frank, is devoid
of consideration and has a blind spot regarding others' qualities.
Yet I believe that a year in his studio would
be worth any sacrifice.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yeah, so I mean, you know, don't need to say
it again, but we'll say it again, truly began to
resemble a cult leader in his charismatic qualities, his emotional manipulation,
fraudulent behavior, domineering, his ability to attract plenty of acolytes
who were willing to more or less, maybe not sacrifice
(24:37):
like Jonestown, but sacrifice their comfort and their autonomy in
order to win a place at the table.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, and this practice expanded to another construction in Arizona,
Taliesin West.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Ooh, Arizona is a cold city too, man.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
By this point, the fellowship required you as an apprentice
to pay for the privilege of studying, and you would
perform manual labor. You would do farm work. Scientology. Right.
You would build Frank's Designs. So under the influence of Frank, oh,
and we should mention his third wife, Elgivana, she was
(25:19):
a big-time follower of a mystic named G.I. Gurdjieff, G-U-R-D-J-I-E-F-F.
This guy, his teachings or his beliefs heavily influenced what
Elgivana would have members of the fellowship do. So they
blended this guy, Frank's inarguable artistic genius, with, like you said,
(25:44):
total psychological control. So even though they never billed themselves
as a religion or as a cult, a lot of
people did think this was a cult in practice, and
some of those people were the FBI.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, they caught wind of what was going on over
there in Frank's various compounds, and they didn't like it
one bit. They, though, however, as they often do, might
have had a bit of an ulterior motive. If you
can imagine, this is also the time when anti-nationalism was huge.
(26:25):
There's sort of like a witch hunt kind of atmosphere
going on in terms of rooting out un-American activities, right?
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Yeah. Yeah. Very much the halcyon days of Hoover because
Frank is the world's most famous architect at this time.
I mean, at least in the Western world. But he
is also a huge proponent of anti-authoritarianism, anti-nationalism, pacifism. And
when the U.S. gets involved in World War II— The
(26:56):
FBI is starting to look closer and closer at Frank
and what's going on over at Taliesin because they're convinced
that he might be a spy or he might be
an anti-American element, like a fifth column of some sort.
So they've got this huge stack of criminal accusations. They're
(27:18):
getting tips from quote-unquote concerned citizens, a lot of whom
are those– same people from Spring Green, Wisconsin, who already
didn't like him. And they say, okay, we've got enough
circumstantial allegations of suspicious behavior. Now this guy's FBI jacket,
his dossier, is deep. And J. Edgar Hoover kept his
(27:43):
agents bird-dogging Frank Lloyd Wright. They would take anything, you know,
just real or made-up malarkey and just smack it in
the file.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, because it's important to mention that, you know, a
lot of this stuff was true. I mean, they had
pretty good reason to be looking.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
At this guy.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
I mean, there's some suspicious, you know, activities going on
under his watch. But to your point, Ben, that axe
to grind that J. Edgar Hoover often had with folks
that he perceived as being anti-American really fattened up that
file pretty significantly with some imagined stuff as well.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, because anybody could call in anonymously and leave a tip.
There's a great piece for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
by a historian named Jack L.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
High.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Do check it out. He says that Frank Lloyd Wright
first came to the attention of the FBI full-time in
December of 1942 because a federal judge accused Frank of
going to his apprentices and disciples and telling them to
avoid the draft and say, hey, you're studying for me.
(28:56):
You work for me, not the U.S. government, so you
are conscientious objectors. And the judge, a guy named Patrick T. Stone, said, mm-mm-mm,
that doesn't work because you're directly harming the military of
the United States.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Well, that's draft dodging.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
It's illegal, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, and so this judge even sentenced one of Frank's
apprentices to prison Because he didn't report for the draft.
And then we got to the point about wacky tips.
We got one where an informant whose name is not
identified warned the FBI that Frank Lloyd Wright has, quote,
(29:35):
been sounding off in the worst possible fashion and ought
to get his knuckles severely hurt. He's been making speeches
to the effect that we ought to let Japan have
what she wants in Asia, that they're really nice people.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
He did love the Japanese. He did.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
And the Japanese government did horrific things.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Oh, no question about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, and then other people would write letters and they
would say, Frank Lloyd Wright, we're not saying he's a terrorist,
we're not saying he's a spy, but he's way too
friendly toward Japan and Germany, and I think he hates England.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yeah, I think it's entirely possible. Hoover forwarded a lot
of these allegations to the U.S. Assistant Attorney General, Wendell Burge,
in a request to seek prosecution against Wright for sedition.
Burge refused to let the case go further and called
for the FBI to end its investigation of the architect,
(30:34):
just finding, you know, a lot of the stuff packing
out that dossier to be sort of spurless.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, hogwash, right? And so here's the deal, though. Hoover,
in his day, was a lot like a moray eel.
When he bit down, he wasn't going to let go.
He was nothing if not tenacious.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
And slippery.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, so, yes. And he said.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
He basically said.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Look, I'm going to get this guy on something. We're
going to find something. So if he is not guilty
of sedition, Big Hoof reasoned, then we can still charge
him with obstructing the draft. So in 1943, an FBI
field agent does a case report and says 26 members
(31:22):
of Taliesin have petitioned the draft board. in Wisconsin for
conscientious objector status. And Hoover's like, there we go. He
really hit, he had a hate boner for this guy.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Uh, and that's good.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
And one agent, one FBI agent later, uh, interviewed a
member of the draft board because Frank Lloyd Wright had
spoken to some of them. And the draft board member said,
this Frank Lloyd Wright guy, uh, He's too much— he didn't
say it this way, but basically he said he's too
(31:58):
much of a Colonel Kurtz. He is regarded by members
of the Fellowship, quote, as somewhat of an idol, a
tin god, or a master who could do no wrong,
end quote. So, yeah, Noel, Max, I think it's fair
to say Frank did kind of have a cult.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
He sure did.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
And his wife, who we know was kind of the
driving force behind a lot of this— spiritualism stuff right
um arguably made it even weirder after frank's passing in 1959.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Right it became um more mystical arguably and and a
lot of good work came out of talison right you
can learn more about it you can visit talison today
we recommend it um We're going to have to save
the rest of the evolution of Taliesin, perhaps for another day.
But we do want you to know, folks, no charges
(32:53):
against Frank Lloyd Wright ever came out of those wartime investigations.
Yet the FBI, probably guided by Hoover's weird personal hatred
of Frank, they continue to monitor his activities and probably
break a few laws while they were monitoring him. all
(33:14):
the way until his death in 1959 at the age
of 91 years old.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
You know, Ben, this is a wild story and something
that maybe feels like a topic we would typically handle
on Stuff They Don't Want You to Know, our sister pod,
which you all should check out if you haven't. We
do a ton of episodes of that show every day,
including one that ends up on Netflix, two rather, a
week that end up on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
You can watch us there. and listener mail.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Episodes where you can actually be part of the conversation yourself.
But I'm glad that we did this on Ridiculous History, Ben.
This is a bit of a change of pace. It's
a dark story, maybe a little darker than we typically handle,
but certainly has more than its fair share of ridiculousness.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Big, big thanks to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.
Big thanks to A.J. Bahamas, Jacobs, Dr. Rachel, Big Spinach, Lance,
and who else?
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Who else? Oh, geez, Ben.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
You know, Christopher Haciotis and Yves Tchefko here in spirit,
wandering this great wide world of sports.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Jonathan Strickland, the quizster, A.J. Bahamas, Jacobs, the puzzler, who
you already said. We have to thank them in tandem.
It's just the rules.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
And thank you for tuning in, folks. We'll be back
next week.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always, so
much for tuning in. That's our super-duper producer, Mr. Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Huzzah! Huzzah, tiz-yah.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's Mr. Noel Brown. They call me Ben Bolin. Noel,
we're in media rest. We're in the middle of a
really crazy story. And, dude, I just have to say,
not to blow our own horns or hop on our
own sawhorses here, I thought we did a pretty okay
job with the backstory.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, laying the foundation, if you will. Nice.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
For Frank Lloyd Wright. Now, you may have seen the
episode title for our first episode, and you may have thought, wow,
you guys talked a little bit about a scandal. You
talked a little bit about an early life. But where
are the disastrous dark sides of architecture we were promised? Well,
(01:26):
that's this episode.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Noel, what do you say we just dive right in?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, we teased a bit of a fire at the
end of the previous episode. So that's where we will begin.
We have to introduce... A new character, however, in our tale,
a 31-year-old African-American gentleman named Julian Carlton. In 1914, he
came to the compound as Taliesin to work as a chef.
(02:03):
and house servant, I suppose you could call it, over
a summer. And this was a personal connection because Carlton
had been recommended to write by a fellow by the
name of John Vogelson, Jr. Often you get a junior
when you're a swell as well, who was the caterer
for Frank's earlier Midway Gardens project.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, that's strange to me because when we think of
construction projects, you think of a site supervisor, you think
of contractors, you think of people hanging drywall and welders
and other construction professionals, but you don't really think of caterers.
You know what I mean? That feels very fancy. Yeah. Okay,
(02:51):
so this guy's a caterer. Vogelson, he recommends Julian Carlton
because Frank and co. are looking for some kitchen help,
and they're looking for a handyman, basically. On paper, Julian
has a solid rep. He's got great recommendations from, as
he said, Swell Society. And his wife, Gertrude, comes along
(03:16):
with him. They are a pair, right? And Gertrude does
most of the actual cooking. Julian is essentially, he's a
man of, he's a jack of all trades. He's the handyman,
but he does double duty as just a utilitarian, what
do you need kind of guy around the estate.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
A honeydew.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
A honeydew.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
As my mother would say, yes.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
He also, when the family has visitors or they have
big dinners, he will play the role of the waiter
or the server. And things started off well enough, but
Carlton had some demons, you guys.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Sure did.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
And over time, those demons manifested themselves in the form
of pretty severe paranoia. Something about his behavior became increasingly unhinged,
especially how he took up the habit of staying up
super late at night, staring out of a window and
brandishing a butcher's knife. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Red flag behavior, Ben.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
And also, just to be clear, folks, when he's staring
out of the window- There's not stuff going on. We
told you this is a large estate. He's not watching
a parade or anything.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
No, staring off into the middle distance, as it were. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Seven-league, thousand-yard stare. His wife, Gertrude, also notices that her
spouse has begun sleeping with a hatchet in a bag
next to their bedside. And Frank and his mistress, Mama,
they clock this and think, They're getting worried, too, and
they're saying, all right, well, maybe this guy is not
(04:59):
the best fit. So they eventually take out a classified
ad in the local paper looking for a replacement handyman,
replacement cook. On August 15th, 1914, Frank's people fire Carlton,
and they say, this is going to be your last
day with us. And the implication being, of course, that
it'll be his wife's last day on the estate as well,
(05:22):
since they're a married couple, they're a pair. Obviously, folks,
nobody likes to lose a job for any reason, much
less to be fired. And there are plenty of people,
even now in 2026, who file lawsuits or seek retribution
when they feel an employer has treated them unfairly. Carlton
takes this a step further. He's already furious at another
(05:45):
guy who works in the area or works on the estate.
It's a racist draft man named Emil Brodel. Emil had
been treating Carlton like absolute crap and dirt for a
while over the course of, again, this just one summer.
So Carlton, when he learns he's going to get fired,
he says, I'm going to take revenge on.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
That jerk Emil. Burn down the building, my stapler.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
He said, and not just Emil, but I'm going to
take revenge on everybody who works or lives at Towson.
I am going to kill them all.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
That's where the name of the famous Metallica album came from.
Don't fact check. It's podcast true. Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
He planned this assault targeting the time of high noon
when Borthwick, her visiting children, and the studio employees and
personnel would be on opposite sides of the grounds, opposite
sides of the living quarters specifically, waiting for lunch to
be served. Wright, at the time, was away in Chicago
(06:52):
completing that Midway Gardens project we were talking about, which
is the connection where this guy came from. Having just
served soup to the Wright's mistress and her children, Carlton
told his wife to skedaddle.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
He then returned to the.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Porch, wielding that hatchet that he loved so well. I
think it's such an odd detail that it was in
a bag, that he slept with a hatchet in a bag.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Maybe just put it under the pillow. The bag seems superfluous,
but I digress.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, the bag seems strange, right? It's a little unnecessary.
It's kind of a hat on a hat or a
hatchet on a hatchet. So to be clear, we said
this building or this complex is in three primary structures.
The mistress, Mama, Mama, and her visiting children, who are
(07:42):
8 and 11 years old respectively– They are eating on
one side of the compound and the employees slash disciples
are way on the other side of the compound. So
they're divided. And that's what we believe Carlton was waiting for.
After he tells his wife, Gertrude, to get GTFO, he
(08:06):
goes back to the porch. Like you said, he's wielding
this hatchet. He attacks Mama Borthwick and her two children. Again,
these are eight-year-olds. This is an eight-year-old and an 11-year-old.
And Mama is killed by a single blow to the
head from the hatchet. Her son, the 11-year-old John, is
killed while he's still sitting in his chair. This guy's
(08:30):
a literal axe murderer, Ben. Yes, very much so. This
is dark stuff. The eight-year-old is a girl named Martha,
and she manages to get out of the area where
they're eating, but Carlton hunts her down and murders her
in the courtyard, and then he douses the bodies and
the floor with gasoline, and he sets a fire and
(08:52):
proceeds to the other wing of the estate where the
employees are eating.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Talk about adding insult to injury, and literal scorched earth
type stuff. As the workers ate their soup in the
dining room, a 19-year-old draftsman by the name of Herbert
Fritz and his fellow diners noticed something a bit unusual.
And he had this to say about what he noticed.
(09:20):
We heard a swish as though water was thrown through
the screen door. Then we saw some fluid coming under
the door. It looked like dishwater. That makes sense, because
gasoline can have a little bit of a bubbly appearance
at times. Or soapy, right? It has that refracting quality.
(09:40):
It spread out all over the floor, he recalled. This was,
of course, Carlton pouring more gas under the door than
setting it on fire as well.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah. And the reason we have this statement from Herbert
Fritz is because he's one of the few people to
survive the attack. He was able to break a window
and escape. But in escaping, he also broke his arm.
And if you've ever been in a terrifying emergency situation,
you also know that once that adrenaline kicks in, you
(10:12):
don't really feel your injuries until later, right? So he
probably didn't realize immediately that he'd broken his arm. Carlton
does attack that guy who was racist to him earlier.
He wounds him with the hatchet. These wounds will later
lead to Emil Brodel's death. Then he sets upon the
(10:33):
other employees. A couple of them escape. A master carpenter
named Billy Weston, who had helped build Towson, and the
landscape gardener, a guy named David Lindblom. They're both super
terribly burned, grievously wounded. So they, along with Herbert, manage
to escape the estate and they run like a half
(10:56):
mile or so because they're looking for the nearest house
with a telephone. And they contact the authorities. People rush
to the scene. They discover this horrific tableau of the
murdered mistress, her children, two workers, and a 13-year-old boy.
(11:17):
One of the guys who escaped, the gardener, David, also
later dies as a result of his burns.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Right. From there, Carlton, our axe murderer, flees to the
basement where he attempts to take his own life by
swallowing a vial of hydrochloric acid.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
What a way to go. He was, however, unsuccessful somehow
and survived. Can't imagine that was very pleasant, though.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah. All in all, seven people died. He survived his
suicide attempt He was arrested. He was taken into custody.
He was charged. Julian Carlton never gave a motive for
his atrocity, but due to the damage that this acid
wrought upon his throat, he died of starvation and an
(12:07):
inflamed esophagus about seven weeks later.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Painful.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Slow.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Ugh. His wife, Gertrude, was found nearby. She had no
idea what had happened and was just waiting to catch
a train to Chicago with her husband, where she said
they were going to look for new jobs. So this
was Taliesin I.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yes, yeah. And Gertrude was questioned by police and detained. Eventually,
she was released, and she was given a pretty small
amount of money. She went back to Chicago, and we
don't know what else happened to her, but— As you said,
old Frank Lloyd Wright is out of town when this occurs.
(12:50):
He's not in Wisconsin. And he returns to just find
a whirr past words, and he decides to rebuild the
compound when a lot of other people would have just left.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
He moved quickly.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
He named this newly rebuilt structure Taliesin II. It's almost
identical to the first one. It has a few extra
bells and whistles, that fancy stuff we were talking about
that ultimately was not very sustainable or practical. He moves quickly.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
He sure does.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
And around Christmas of that year, we're still in 1914,
Frank also began communicating with a wealthy divorcee named Miriam
Maud Noel, who had reached out after reading about the
fire and the mass murder. Like, I guess, yeah, almost
(13:49):
like a fan, kind of. After meeting her in Chicago,
in his offices there, Frank fell ill. head over heels,
gaga in love with this woman. So by the spring
of the following year, Taliesin II was finished. Maud had
also taken up residence there. And Frank's first wife, Catherine Kitty,
finally granted him that divorce that he wanted in 1922
(14:10):
with a bit of an odd condition, that Frank not
remarry for one year. So in the interests of you know,
getting this thing done.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
He agreed. Uh, but once that clock had run out
on that year, he married his new, um, his new
lady lickety split.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Lickety split, uh, is something we should emphasize because he, wow,
he was just running out the clock. You know what
I mean? And unfortunately this second marriage also went kaput
and pretty quickly because Frank had initially found Noelle's madcap,
(14:48):
somewhat eccentric or erratic personality to be stimulating and charming.
But as the pair lived together, one-on-one, he started thinking
there was something seriously off about his new wife's behavior.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Ah, the honeymoon period.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
You know, it happens to the rest of us, even
when there aren't some pretty serious concerns at play.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Right, right. The honeymoon period in U.S. English is conventionally
referring to that, that those beautiful days early in a relationship,
when you're not dating the actual person, you're dating their
impression of the person they think you will.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Like the most.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Romanticizing it, falling in love with the limerence, I think
is the psychological term, where everything just feels like warm fuzzies,
and then the reality sets in. And in this case,
the reality of Noel's behavior was schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, later scholars would say this wasn't just oddball eccentricity,
but an actual mental condition. And Noel eventually leaves Frank
in the spring of 1924. And that same year, she
leaves him, but she doesn't divorce him yet. And that
same year, Wright will go on to meet someone named
(16:06):
Olga Lazovic-Hindenburg. or Olgivana to her friends. She moves in
with Frank in Taliesin in 1925. And soon after that,
she becomes pregnant. So Frank is back to repairing his
career and his reputation. He again is in an estranged
(16:27):
marriage and has a mistress. And people are saying, you know,
people are talking. Like you said, people can be catty.
And weirdly enough, his reputation is kind of saved by
an earthquake. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 absolutely wrecks
parts of Japan. But the hotel he built earlier, the
(16:49):
Imperial Hotel of Tokyo, survives the earthquake. And people are saying, look, man,
do I think someone should marry him? No. But can
the guy build a building? Absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
I know. I mean, if having buildings survive earthquakes is wrong,
I don't want to be Frank Lloyd Wright.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
There we go. It's worth it.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
I've been waiting to do that for two episodes time.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Please put in the drum riff. So for a while,
Frank did not spend too much time at Taliesin II,
probably because the tragedy was still fresh in his mind,
but also because he was getting a lot of work now.
His frequency of commissions was on the rise, and he
would often live near the construction sites of his newest projects.
(17:40):
It was kind of a nomadic life. By 1922 or so,
he really starts settling in until there is, get this folks,
another fire.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
And you'll recall in part one, we teased the idea
of multiple fires.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So we're getting to fire number two.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
On April 20th, 1925, Frank has just finished dinner in
the detached dining room and he's walking outside because again,
this is a beautiful layout. It's very much integrated with nature.
So he's walking outside and he's going to be heading
back to his bedroom when he sees smoke billowing from
(18:19):
the windows in the doorway. And because it is kind
of late at night, most of his employees have returned
to their houses, to wherever they live off-site. So the
only people there are his driver and one of his
apprentices slash disciples. So because those other folks are there
and because there's not a murderer on the loose, Frank
(18:42):
and these two guys are able to get help immediately
and they're able to contact the town. But the problem is,
There's a storm afoot, and the winds that night are
high and wild, so the fire is spreading quickly. The
living area of Taliesin 2 is destroyed.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yeah, a lot of folks speculate that the fire may
have been caused by a lightning storm, which created an
electrical charge in the telephone lines, which then ignited a
fire by a telephone in Frank's bedroom. So that was
the end of Taliesin 2. Um, once again, Frank, uh,
quickly set to rebuilding and he named this new final
complex and a burst of creativity, as you like to say,
(19:22):
Ben Taliesin three. Ah, yes.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Taliesin three. Uh, this was also not an easy reconstruction because.
You know, your, your house has burned down twice. Now, uh,
Frank is deeply in debt following the, following the obliteration
Taliesin two, he owes debt on the property. But his
divorce from Noel also forces him to sell a lot
(19:49):
of his farm machines. and livestock, which was a side hustle.
And then he also had to sell off a lot
of his prized Japanese art at half value just because
he needed the money. And Taliesin got very close to
being a courthouse foreclosure auction The Bank of Wisconsin foreclosed
(20:11):
on it in 1927. Frank had to move out to California.
At that same year, his divorce is finalized. And in 1928,
he marries Ogeviana. And they were able to save Taliesin III.
This is an interesting story. One of his old clients,
(20:31):
a guy named Darwin Martin, came to Frank. and had
a really interesting pitch, and I can't wait to hear
what we all think of this. He said, I can't
give you all the money, but I got a plan.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
He formed a company called Frank Lloyd Wright Incorporated that
would issue stock on Wright's future earnings. Many of Wright's
former clients and students bought in, purchasing stock in Wright,
and raised $ 70, 000. This is what you might call an IPO,
kind of?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Sort of a self-contained system of stuff. It's not like
it's publicly traded. Yeah, it is kind of like raising,
you know, venture capital or something like that, right? The
company successfully bid on Taliesin for 40 grand and returned
it to Wright's possession.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yep, and so by October of 1928, he was back
at home. Now, we promised you, this Tuesday passed, we
promised you we had to talk a little bit about
the allegations of cultury. So in addition to Taliesin, the structure,
(21:41):
Frank and his third wife, Ogevana, started something called the
Taliesin Fellowship. This was an architectural apprenticeship community that they
founded in 1932. And it produced a lot of iconic designs.
A lot of people who went there went on to
have very storied careers themselves in architecture. But it was
(22:04):
seen as intense, insular, beyond cliquish. It was authoritarian. So
it's not a cult per se, but it's cult-like in practice.
And if it walks like a duck and it quacks
like a duck, you know, how many more duck-like things
do you need, right?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
People were living on the grounds, right?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Under the, you know, control of this one man who
was very magnetic.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Kind of held sway over over these folks living in
his compound i mean it's yeah it's very cult-like especially
when you consider that dude had from the start had
kind of like almost a spiritual quality to his connection
with nature and you know how structures were extensions.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Of nature and all of that stuff so i mean
it does.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Make sense yeah and it also to the spiritual point
When you signed up to study architecture under Frank and
live under his rule, you weren't just studying architecture. You
were also studying what they called spiritual development. And a
lot of that came from his third wife. We'll get
(23:15):
into that in a second. Twenty-three disciples signed up to
live and work there that first year. And overall, in
Wright's lifetime, a total of 625 people would join the fellowship.
But the living conditions were a source of controversy. The
quality of education, a.k.a. what are we actually learning, was
(23:37):
also controversial. And apparently, as he got older and older,
Frank was a very difficult guy to work with. Apprentices
were very– you know, it's kind of like hearing people
who worked in fine dining talking about working under celebrity
chefs who are jerks. because he's traumatized. These people seem,
(24:00):
in some cases, traumatized, but they also say it was
worth it. One guy said, he, meaning Frank, is devoid
of consideration and has a blind spot regarding others' qualities.
Yet I believe that a year in his studio would
be worth any sacrifice.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yeah, so I mean, you know, don't need to say
it again, but we'll say it again, truly began to
resemble a cult leader in his charismatic qualities, his emotional manipulation,
fraudulent behavior, domineering, his ability to attract plenty of acolytes
who were willing to more or less, maybe not sacrifice
(24:37):
like Jonestown, but sacrifice their comfort and their autonomy in
order to win a place at the table.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, and this practice expanded to another construction in Arizona,
Taliesin West.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Ooh, Arizona is a cold city too, man.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
By this point, the fellowship required you as an apprentice
to pay for the privilege of studying, and you would
perform manual labor. You would do farm work. Scientology. Right.
You would build Frank's Designs. So under the influence of Frank, oh,
and we should mention his third wife, Elgivana, she was
(25:19):
a big-time follower of a mystic named G.I. Gurdjieff, G-U-R-D-J-I-E-F-F.
This guy, his teachings or his beliefs heavily influenced what
Elgivana would have members of the fellowship do. So they
blended this guy, Frank's inarguable artistic genius, with, like you said,
(25:44):
total psychological control. So even though they never billed themselves
as a religion or as a cult, a lot of
people did think this was a cult in practice, and
some of those people were the FBI.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, they caught wind of what was going on over
there in Frank's various compounds, and they didn't like it
one bit. They, though, however, as they often do, might
have had a bit of an ulterior motive. If you
can imagine, this is also the time when anti-nationalism was huge.
(26:25):
There's sort of like a witch hunt kind of atmosphere
going on in terms of rooting out un-American activities, right?
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Yeah. Yeah. Very much the halcyon days of Hoover because
Frank is the world's most famous architect at this time.
I mean, at least in the Western world. But he
is also a huge proponent of anti-authoritarianism, anti-nationalism, pacifism. And
when the U.S. gets involved in World War II— The
(26:56):
FBI is starting to look closer and closer at Frank
and what's going on over at Taliesin because they're convinced
that he might be a spy or he might be
an anti-American element, like a fifth column of some sort.
So they've got this huge stack of criminal accusations. They're
(27:18):
getting tips from quote-unquote concerned citizens, a lot of whom
are those– same people from Spring Green, Wisconsin, who already
didn't like him. And they say, okay, we've got enough
circumstantial allegations of suspicious behavior. Now this guy's FBI jacket,
his dossier, is deep. And J. Edgar Hoover kept his
(27:43):
agents bird-dogging Frank Lloyd Wright. They would take anything, you know,
just real or made-up malarkey and just smack it in
the file.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, because it's important to mention that, you know, a
lot of this stuff was true. I mean, they had
pretty good reason to be looking.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
At this guy.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
I mean, there's some suspicious, you know, activities going on
under his watch. But to your point, Ben, that axe
to grind that J. Edgar Hoover often had with folks
that he perceived as being anti-American really fattened up that
file pretty significantly with some imagined stuff as well.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, because anybody could call in anonymously and leave a tip.
There's a great piece for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
by a historian named Jack L.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
High.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Do check it out. He says that Frank Lloyd Wright
first came to the attention of the FBI full-time in
December of 1942 because a federal judge accused Frank of
going to his apprentices and disciples and telling them to
avoid the draft and say, hey, you're studying for me.
(28:56):
You work for me, not the U.S. government, so you
are conscientious objectors. And the judge, a guy named Patrick T. Stone, said, mm-mm-mm,
that doesn't work because you're directly harming the military of
the United States.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Well, that's draft dodging.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
It's illegal, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, and so this judge even sentenced one of Frank's
apprentices to prison Because he didn't report for the draft.
And then we got to the point about wacky tips.
We got one where an informant whose name is not
identified warned the FBI that Frank Lloyd Wright has, quote,
(29:35):
been sounding off in the worst possible fashion and ought
to get his knuckles severely hurt. He's been making speeches
to the effect that we ought to let Japan have
what she wants in Asia, that they're really nice people.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
He did love the Japanese. He did.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
And the Japanese government did horrific things.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Oh, no question about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, and then other people would write letters and they
would say, Frank Lloyd Wright, we're not saying he's a terrorist,
we're not saying he's a spy, but he's way too
friendly toward Japan and Germany, and I think he hates England.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yeah, I think it's entirely possible. Hoover forwarded a lot
of these allegations to the U.S. Assistant Attorney General, Wendell Burge,
in a request to seek prosecution against Wright for sedition.
Burge refused to let the case go further and called
for the FBI to end its investigation of the architect,
(30:34):
just finding, you know, a lot of the stuff packing
out that dossier to be sort of spurless.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, hogwash, right? And so here's the deal, though. Hoover,
in his day, was a lot like a moray eel.
When he bit down, he wasn't going to let go.
He was nothing if not tenacious.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
And slippery.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, so, yes. And he said.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
He basically said.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Look, I'm going to get this guy on something. We're
going to find something. So if he is not guilty
of sedition, Big Hoof reasoned, then we can still charge
him with obstructing the draft. So in 1943, an FBI
field agent does a case report and says 26 members
(31:22):
of Taliesin have petitioned the draft board. in Wisconsin for
conscientious objector status. And Hoover's like, there we go. He
really hit, he had a hate boner for this guy.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Uh, and that's good.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
And one agent, one FBI agent later, uh, interviewed a
member of the draft board because Frank Lloyd Wright had
spoken to some of them. And the draft board member said,
this Frank Lloyd Wright guy, uh, He's too much— he didn't
say it this way, but basically he said he's too
(31:58):
much of a Colonel Kurtz. He is regarded by members
of the Fellowship, quote, as somewhat of an idol, a
tin god, or a master who could do no wrong,
end quote. So, yeah, Noel, Max, I think it's fair
to say Frank did kind of have a cult.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
He sure did.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
And his wife, who we know was kind of the
driving force behind a lot of this— spiritualism stuff right
um arguably made it even weirder after frank's passing in 1959.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Right it became um more mystical arguably and and a
lot of good work came out of talison right you
can learn more about it you can visit talison today
we recommend it um We're going to have to save
the rest of the evolution of Taliesin, perhaps for another day.
But we do want you to know, folks, no charges
(32:53):
against Frank Lloyd Wright ever came out of those wartime investigations.
Yet the FBI, probably guided by Hoover's weird personal hatred
of Frank, they continue to monitor his activities and probably
break a few laws while they were monitoring him. all
(33:14):
the way until his death in 1959 at the age
of 91 years old.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
You know, Ben, this is a wild story and something
that maybe feels like a topic we would typically handle
on Stuff They Don't Want You to Know, our sister pod,
which you all should check out if you haven't. We
do a ton of episodes of that show every day,
including one that ends up on Netflix, two rather, a
week that end up on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
You can watch us there. and listener mail.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Episodes where you can actually be part of the conversation yourself.
But I'm glad that we did this on Ridiculous History, Ben.
This is a bit of a change of pace. It's
a dark story, maybe a little darker than we typically handle,
but certainly has more than its fair share of ridiculousness.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Big, big thanks to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.
Big thanks to A.J. Bahamas, Jacobs, Dr. Rachel, Big Spinach, Lance,
and who else?
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Who else? Oh, geez, Ben.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
You know, Christopher Haciotis and Yves Tchefko here in spirit,
wandering this great wide world of sports.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Jonathan Strickland, the quizster, A.J. Bahamas, Jacobs, the puzzler, who
you already said. We have to thank them in tandem.
It's just the rules.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
And thank you for tuning in, folks. We'll be back
next week.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.