December 10, 2020 • 42 mins
Everyone knows who Frank Lloyd Wright is, but did you know there was a grisly massacre at his home in 1914?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's here. Uh and
this is Stuff you should Know. Um, the long awaited
(00:23):
Frank Lloyd Wright edition sort of yeah, kind of. I mean,
you know, it's not a full biography, but it is
definitely covers some of his very dark period of his life.
Oh yeah, one of the darker periods that any artiste
could have. And make no mistake, Frank Lloyd Wright wasn't artiste.
(00:44):
He was an artiste of architecture. Yeah. Have you ever
how many houses of his? Have you seen? Our buildings?
I've seen a bunch. Um. I've been to Holly Hawk
in Los Angeles, have been to uh Youth Sony and
I can't remember which one in Wa Washington by the
one of the I can't remember what other historic house
(01:05):
it's by. They moved it. Um. I've been to there's
a Usonian in Alabama. Chuck in Florence, Alabama, which is
really neat. Been to Falling Water, Um, been to Talius
in West I think that's it. Yeah. I've been to
a handful of myself. I've been to one in Tulsa
and a couple in l A. Of course, the Googgenheim.
I think we've both been there, and I have not.
(01:26):
I have not. Really. Yeah, all the times you've been
to New York and all the museums that you never
stepped footing the Guggenheim, It's true. I've never been in
the Googenheims. Sadly enough, I saw a movie where there's
a shootout in the Googgenheim. I highly recommend going to
the Guggenheim. It's great. Okay, I thought it was George
Costanza bit designed the googen him, not franklind Right. M
(01:49):
that's right. He always wanted to be an architect. That's right.
He's had. My favorite line for that episode is when
he talks about the redesign plans at the Guggenheim and
they go really, he goes, yeah, really didn't even take
that long. That's right. Yeah, he's saying that he was
the one who redesigned it, like it's impressive that it
was just a really quick job. Yeah, that's a classic. Um.
(02:14):
But we're not talking about the Googgenheim to day, Chuck,
We're not even talking about Hollyhock House. We're talking about
specifically tally Essen, which is widely regarded as um Frank
Lloyd writes genuine bona fide masterpiece, like his greatest work ever. Um.
I think it was it said that it's his um
(02:35):
autobiography written in wood and stone, that it's just him
and not just him in a specific time and place.
But for like decades were the work, his earliest work
to his latest work all showed up and appeared over
time at tally Essen. Yeah, I mean there's a lot there. Um.
It was his home at times, it was his studio
(02:58):
of school. Um, an eight hundred acre estate. This was
family land, it was it was his favorite hill in
Wisconsin and the river valley there where his Welsh grandparents
originally homesteaded, and so it was very personal to him.
So he did things like make the roof so it
doesn't leak water into the offices below like some of
(03:23):
his other properties. Exactly. Yeah, he wasn't oneing to just
move his desk, right. So, UM, this this particular house
and it was a and it still is. It's a huge,
enormous house. I think it's twenty one square feet. Um,
it's a classic example of what's called the Prairie style,
which is a style of architecture considered to be the
(03:46):
first genuine American style of architecture UM that Frank Lloyd
Right founded back in they think the eighteen nineties, maybe
the late eighteen nineties, and it has it takes its
inspiration from the surrounding environment. It's been to blend in
with the environment, work with the environment, rather than to
dominate it. So there's a lot of horizontal lines, a
(04:06):
lot of natural materials, a lot of woodworking, and um
tally Esen is very much in that style. UM. I
think it has five and twenty four windows, which is
a lot of windows, and um it also has no gutters.
There's a lot of cannilivered roofs which kind of overhang
pretty far. Um, so there wasn't necessarily need for gutters.
(04:28):
But I read that franklod Right specifically didn't want gutters
because he wanted icicles to form on the eaves of
the roof so he could look out of those five
windows in the Wisconsin winter and see all the icicles hanging.
Do you like the prairie homes? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do.
My problem with Frankloyd Rice work is that it's so
(04:51):
dated an old timey that it almost like it almost
makes me um a combination of scared and nauseous. You
know what I'm talking about. Have you ever looked at
a wicker wheelchair from like the turn of the last century,
You just kind of get the creeps from it for
(05:12):
some reason? Okay, you get that same. I mean this.
You know, he did the bulk of his work a
hundred years ago, you know, somewhere in that range. But
it was also like it was also very technologically um advanced,
and like he was just doing some really interesting stuff.
So the way that a very dated, once technologically advanced
(05:35):
piece of work can kind of call that weird feeling
out of you. But at the same time, I'm like
in genuine awe of this stuff you did. Like Falling
Water is one of my favorite houses in the entire world.
I mean, it's just amazing. What about you? I like them,
all right, They're they're fine, um some of them. And
you know, I have some here in the neighborhood that
(05:56):
pop up every now and then. Some newer builds are
in the prairie style, and I like them more than
some other kinds and less than some other kinds. Let's
just say that you you like craftsmen, Well, sure, I
live in a craftsman That's that's my favorite. But I
like craftsman too. I think they're good. I appreach. I mean,
I love a highly slick modern home. I don't want
(06:19):
to live in one, but I love them. I would
not want to live in one. Either those are hit
or miss with me, Like, some of them are just
too just god awful. Some of them are just when
they hit the nail on the head, you're like, wow,
that's one of the best houses anyone's ever designed and built.
But they miss. It's almost like documentaries and horror movies.
There's a lot of them, but only very very few,
(06:40):
like are truly great. That's my that's my impression of
modern homes. Yeah, i'man. We're in architecture though, as a
as a couple, Emily nine, we watch a couple of
you might hear me, great, well that's two. It's a triad. Well,
I guess they're uni in there, and I guess, but uh,
we we have a couple of shows that we love
to watch that are this one called Grand Designs on
(07:03):
Netflix that I highly come in. Uh and oh man,
what's the other one? There's this cup not a married couple,
but a pair that travels the world. The British architecture
bake off. No, that's not it. I can't remember what
it's called. But Grand Designs is really good. I mean,
and they follow these, you know, sort of impossibly built
(07:23):
houses designed and built by these incredible lunatic dreamers who
are obsessed with sort of a thing. It seems to
be the common thread as these obsessives, and it leads
to something beautiful and great, you know, usually for sure. Yeah, so, um,
what are the things about Frank Lloyd Wright is that
he is including during his lifetime he's considered one of
(07:45):
the greatest architects ever lived, certainly the most popular, popularly
well known, maybe, I guess you'd put it like anybody
who's ever heard of any kind of architecture, even vaguely,
is probably familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright agreed. So when
he when he um put all of himself into Tallys
(08:06):
and he was building a home for himself, and I
think it was completed in nineteen eleven, and like it's
worth pointing out, he was returning to his childhood home
to the valley where his his clan like settled, Like
if you if you look around spring Green, Wisconsin, everybody's
got the name Lloyd in there somewhere, like his maternal
(08:27):
ancestors settled the area. And he was literally building on
this hill, his favorite hill when he was a child,
like you were saying, but he was doing this in
the midst of one of the biggest scandals like any
architect's ever gone through. Yeah, so uh, as you'll see
through this show. And if you know anything about the man,
Frank Lloyd Wright had a bit of a wandering eye
(08:48):
and a bit of a philandering habit, and he had
a an extramarital affair with a woman name m A
m a h Mama, mama four huh. I don't know,
I've I've been testing it out too, I said, Mama, Mama,
sure bourth Wick and she was, um, you know. They
(09:10):
met in nineteen oh three, right, was in his mid
thirties at the time. He was already really famous as
an architect, and he was commissioned to design a house
for her and her husband, Edwin Cheney, and they were
it was going to be built there in Wisconsin pretty
close to Chicago, where Frank Lloyd Right was at the time.
She was pregnant in her mid thirties at the time
(09:32):
with her second child, and got really involved in in
sort of working with Frank Lloyd Right very closely, and
that sort of you know, the the classic story. At first,
it starts out platonic. One thing leads to another, and
before you know it, they're bumping uglies. That's right, smashing,
as the younger kids say, from what I just heard
(09:53):
that for the first time the other day, I didn't
know that was a thing. So it's a thing though.
Um So, frankloud Right by this time had six kids
of his own, and he had made a name for
himself like around Chicago building homes, designing homes for um
the well to do, especially in the Oak Park neighborhood.
Apparently just between nineteen hundred and nineteen he designed fifty
(10:18):
prairie houses. So he'd made a name for himself. But
apparently by the time I think nineteen o eight was
when he no. Nineteen o seven when they started their affair.
By the time nineteen o seven rolled around, he was
getting kind of tired of doing the same thing. It's
kind of like he was cursed like this. This school
of architecture that he developed was so popular that he
(10:41):
that's all anybody wanted, and he had gotten bored with
it by that time. So he seems to have been
unfulfilled professionally and kind of took it out on his family.
And about the worst way you could possibly take things
out on your family, short of cutting them up with
the machete. Yeah. By nineteen o eight, it was a
(11:02):
pretty much well known open secret in Chicago and that
high society in Chicago that this affair was going on,
and he was sort of looked down on from his
friends and his neighbors and his peers, different colleagues. His
poor wife, Kitty was a long suffering because she kind
of stood by a side anyway. Uh. And he'd realized
(11:25):
that he really wanted to leave his family, and he
did so. He said, I did not know what I wanted.
I wanted to go away, and he did in September
of nineteen o nine. Uh, Frank left with her, went
to Europe, left his wife and his six kids behind. Uh.
And here's one of the more selfish quotes I've ever
(11:45):
seen from a husband and father. Uh. And this was
in his autobiography. So when family life in Oak Park
in that spring of nineteen o nine conspired against the
freedom to which I had come to feel every soul entitled,
I had no choice. Would I keep my self respect
but to go out of voluntary exile. So he really
(12:08):
felt um and you know, those were his words in
his autobiography. So he wasn't he had no illusions about himself,
but he very much felt that. You know what, Um,
Frank Lloyd right, and I'm a man, and I deserve
this by my right. Yeah, So those are two key points.
He's a man, so he deserved it. But more than anything,
he was a legend in his own mind, which was
(12:30):
sustained and verified by the public at large. But he
was Frank Lloyd right, So more than anybody, he deserved
that to to go do whatever he wanted, and you know,
whatever the consequences were for other people emotionally, to hell
with that. Um. One other thing that I think is
worth pointing out is that he had money problems basically
(12:50):
his entire life, despite the fact that I mean, this
man designed the Google him. He designed some of the
most iconic UM buildings and houses in the United States
and he had money just coming in by the truckload,
but he would spend it as fast as he could
get it and then some. So at this point in
time when he was um, when he left his family,
(13:11):
he apparently left them in financial straits as well. There
there was there's a biographer named um Paul hendricks and, uh,
Paul Hendrickson, I'm sorry, and he points out that there
was a nine grocery bill that was laying on the
kitchen counter when when Frank Lloyd Wright walked out on
his family, which I mean, at least pay the grocery bill,
(13:34):
so the family that you're leaving an alert can eat,
you know. Yeah. So his his mistress left her two
kids with her husband. Uh, she went on a train
to New York City, met Frank at the Plaza Hotel.
They had a few days there of I guess smashing,
and then went to Europe and uh, you know, he
(13:55):
was famous the world over, so it's not like he
could lay low, very famous face, very a dresser of
fine clothing and those hats, so he didn't exactly blend
in anywhere he went. So he was found out in Berlin. Uh,
Chicago Tribune had a headline that said, leave families, semi colon,
nice little switch there, Elope to Europe and this whole time,
(14:18):
poor kitty, She says, it appears like any other ordinary,
mundane affair with the trappings of what is low and vulgar.
But there's nothing of that sort about Frank. Right, He
is honest and sincere I know him, my heart is
with him now. I feel certain that he will come back.
And that's that's one of the saddest parts about all
this is she was sort of like, he's just flandering
a bit and he'll come back to us. Yeah, it
(14:40):
is sad, but also, you know whatever his kids were
thinking too, like, well, I guess dad didn't love us
enough to stick around. Um another I think kind of
telling clue about Frank, Lloyd writes, enormous arrogance. Was he
called um his and um uh, what are we going
to call her, chuck mama, I'm calling her mamma his
(15:05):
and mamma's um flight to Europe to after a banding
their their families. He called it a spiritual hegaraga, and
I had not seen that word before. And it turns
out hegira or hegora h g g i r a
is what um Mohammed's exodus from persecution in Mecca was called,
(15:27):
and he left Mecca to go to Medina where he
founded Islam. And to Frank Lloyd, right, this is what
he and his mistress were doing when they abandoned their
families and fled to Europe. Yeah, he thought a lot
of himself. He was an s ob man, plain and simple.
I don't like he's a classic example of like having
to compartmentalize the genius of the work and just to
(15:49):
complete horrible nous of the person. You know, But it
can be done. It can be done. I I disagree
with anybody who who says, you know, there's certain exceptions,
I'm sure, But anybody who says, well, this person held
some pretty pretty terrible views, so we shouldn't pay any
attention to their work from that point on, I disagree
(16:10):
with that. I think that there are tons of exceptions
to that rule. Although there are tons of exceptions to
the exception to that rule too. If that's not confusing enough, well,
I think it's a personal decision. If someone wants to
never gaze upon falling waters again, then that's their choice totally.
It's not like I'm gonna you know, grab them by
their hair and like making them look but I would
(16:32):
disagree with them and in in a lot of cases, yeah,
like Manson's music fantastic, just beautiful, stuck, really good stuff.
So uh, Frank Boyd Wright Um returns to Chicago nineteen ten. Uh,
Mimall stayed behind. She stayed there in Europe for another
(16:53):
year because she was getting a divorce from Dwin Cheney. Uh.
And so she stayed there wrapping that up for Rank
moved back with Kitty. He had no intention of staying. Uh.
And I think it was pretty clear to Kitty at
this point because she said Mr Wright. I wonder if
he made her caller in that Mr Wright reached here
Saturday evening October eight and he has brought many beautiful things,
(17:16):
everything but his heart, I guess, And that he has
left in Germany, but he came back a bit of
a pariah. Oh, just to Tad, they were. They were
pariah's before. There was a woman who grew up living
next door to Mamma and her children, and she Um,
years later, in her diary, recounted a time when her
mom refused to give Frank Lloyd right cream when he
(17:38):
came over next door from next door to borrow some
and said that they were sinners and she wasn't going
to help them out at all. Um. So when they
left for Europe, made headline news for leaving their families.
And then he returns moves back in with his family
just long enough to plan his next home for him
and mamma um like. Yeah. The people in his social
(18:01):
orbit did not take very kindly to that. Professionals, neighbors, friends,
gossip colonists, basically everybody in the Midwest who had anything
to do with anything like we're rejected him in mamma yeah,
and to boot when he gets back because he needed
seed money for uh for his new home. He had
(18:22):
a benefactor named Darwin Martin, and he said, hey, listen,
I want to build this great cottage, uh, and this
affair is long over and this is going to be
a cottage for my mom, and I promise it's not
going to be our little smash shack, and so give
me twenty dollars to get this project going. He got it.
He moved into the home with his mistress and I
(18:46):
think by Christmas nineteen eleven they were officially living together
there in Green Spring. Yeah, he said thanks chump, thanks
for the money. And because just trashing Frank Lloyd Wright
as a person is a lot of fun, I want
to add this detail too, um Darwin Barton, his benefactor,
over the course of Frank Lood Wright's career, lent Frank
(19:08):
Lood right grand total and when the stock market crashed
in Darwin Martin lost everything like he was flatbrook was
went from an extraordinary, extraordinarily wealthy man to just flat
broke for the rest of his life. Frank Lloyd Wright
never repaid any of that money, but he made sure
(19:30):
that when his autobiography came out that Darwin Martin got
a free copy. Oh that's nice. Yeah, he really, he
really pulled that out at the last minute, didn't he.
All Right, So let's take a break and we'll come
back and talk about things taking a turn for the
worst a few years later in August of laws stuff
(20:00):
you should know, okay, Chuck. So let's just go ahead
and get in the way back Well I don't want
to see this. We'll just talk about it. We'll leave
the way back machine out of this one, okay. So
on on Saturday, August fifteen, around lunchtime, actually exactly at
(20:26):
lunch time. Um, Mama Borthwick. Uh, Frank Lloyd writes, Mistress,
longtime mistress, Um was sitting down for lunch on a
terrace at tally es In with her two kids. Uh.
To his great credit, Edwin Cheney, her ex husband by
this time, was not interested in keeping Mamma from seeing
her children as punishment, so they went to visit Um
(20:49):
pretty frequently. Uh. And this was a time when they
were visiting. So the three of them were sitting down
to lunch. John I think he was ten, and her
daughter Martha, who was eight, and Mama, Mama, We're sitting
down to lunch on the terrace. Okay, just put that
in your your pin, put that p in your hat
and smoke it. So that wow, really mixing metaphors. So, uh,
(21:12):
they're out on the terraces. Inside in the dining room
there are five of Franklin Dwright's employees, h Emil Burdell,
Thomas Brunker, David Lyndblom, Herbert Fritz, and William Weston and
then Weston's son Ernst. So they were all sitting down
to eat. Um. I think put a pin and maybe
both of these scenes and we'll tell you a little
(21:33):
bit about the handyman of the property named Julian Carlton,
who in the weeks and months leading up to this
date had been acting really weird. Uh. He was aggressive,
he was getting in arguments with other people. Um, he
was acting very strangely. He started sleeping with a hatchet
and a sack beside his bed. He was married, and
(21:55):
his wife, you know, verified this stuff. Um. He was
talking about killing people. And there was rumor that he
was being let go, and that there was that he
and his wife were already had a basically a trained
book to Chicago to look for other jobs. So this
is sort of the mindset of what's going on with
Julian Carlton at the time of this lunch, right. Um,
(22:17):
so Uh, Julian was actually so he was a handyman,
but at this point he he also helped out, helped
his wife Gertrude when she was cooking. He would serve.
So he served lunch to Mamma, and then he served
lunch to the five employees in the dining room. And
then as they were they started to eat, he approached
Um William Weston, the foreman of the whole jam William
(22:38):
Weston was a pretty important guy around tally Essen and
asked if he could go get some gasoline out of
the shed. I guess because he was going to clean
some rugs with it with gasoline. It was with gasolene y, then,
sure that's some old timey rug clinging if I've ever
heard of it. But UM, so so western. Sure, sure
of course, go ahead, and um things went really things
(23:01):
went downhill really quickly from from that moment on. Yeah,
so I appreciate you leaving this part to me. Um
Carlton comes back, Oh, I'll fill in. Don't worry. He's
got the gasoline and he also has an ax. And
the sequence is a little bit unclear. I've seen both
ways of which happened first. But he slaughtered uh Mama
(23:22):
Borthwick Borthwick and her kids on the porch and then
poured gasoline under the dining room doors and uh trapped
them in the room and set the dining room and
therefore the house on fire with everyone trapped inside. It
gets even worse than that, though. Um. After he had
slaughtered Mama and her kids with the axe and um
(23:44):
set the house on fire, he went around two window,
a dining room window where the people who are in
trapped in the dining room that had just been set
on fire. We're jumping to safety from and as they
jumped to safety, he ran after him and killed them
with the axe. He would finish them off there. Sometimes
they were on fire and he would hit them in
(24:05):
the head with the axe and killed them. And there
were nine people who were dining that day, and he
managed to kill seven of the nine. Um three people
survived the initial assault, the fire, and then the picking
off of the axe. The first guy who got away
was named Herb Fritz. He was a draftsman, a younger guy.
(24:26):
I think he's still a teenager who went on to
become an architect, I believe. But he he was the
first one to jump through the window, and so he
was able to get pretty far away from Julian Carlton
before Carlton noticed that people were jumping through the window
and came around to pick him off with the axe.
That's right, William Weston got out of the window. Carlton
(24:47):
hit him with the axe, thought he was dead, but
he wasn't dead. In the meantime, Fritz, like you said,
he didn't even Carlton didn't know he was gone. So
he actually managed to get to the neighbors and contact authorities,
which in a up being you know, ended up sort
of saving a lot of the house because they helped
put it out. And the other guy who managed to
at least get out the window was David Lindblom. Uh.
(25:09):
He escaped with Fritz, So Fritz and Limblom. Like when
they ran into that house, it was like a half
a mile away, which was really significant that Limblom was
able to do it, because he was burned so badly
that he died from his burns, and yet one of
the last things he did on Earth was to run
a half a mile to to get help at the house,
the nearest house with a phone. Yeah, so, uh, you know,
(25:30):
people get there, they put out the fire. Um hours later,
Uh they Carlton was discovered in the basement of the
house in an asbestos lined boiler room. Uh. He went
down there to to die in the fire, but also
doubled up by drinking a bottle of hydrochloric acid to
make sure he did the job. And neither one of
(25:52):
them work. He actually survived both of those things. I
actually saw that he was in the furnace because he
was trying to survive the fire, and he didn't drink
the acid until he knew he was discovered. Oh see,
I saw the opposite that he went down to the
furnace because he wanted to die in the home. Huh. Yeah,
the reason the furnace made sense to me, or that
(26:13):
he was trying to survive in the furnaces that if
he couldn't escape from the house, that would be the
safest place because it was the middle of August and
the furnace wasn't on, so it would have conceivably protected him,
or else they would have turned into that that bronze
bowl torture thing, you know, the bronze bowl that you
put a human being in then light a fire under
the bull the bowl. Remember that sounds like a pretty
(26:34):
horrible way to die either way. Yes, it should be
restated that Julian Carlton drank what he thought was a
lethal dose of hydrochloric acid, Like that's how he chose
to try to end his life. Yeah, so there was
never any motive really rooted out. Um Uh. Clearly, looking
back now, he suffered from some kind of mental illness.
(26:56):
I don't think you can just all chalk it up
to a grudge over being fired because of his behavior
of their previous weeks and months. Um. And you know,
it's just one of those things. It was a time
where they weren't diagnosing things like that. So he clearly
had some form of mental illness, I think. And uh,
they never conclusively determined a motive. But like I said,
(27:17):
his wife Um testified that said, you know, we were
headed to Chicago, we were going to get work Um
and he ended up dying. Uh. But he couldn't eat
basically because he had torn up his stomach, lining in
his throat so badly with that hydrochloric acid. He died
seven weeks later in jail from starvation. Yeah. And another
interpretation I saw is that he Um had purposefully starved
(27:40):
himself because the acid didn't work. That it wasn't just
that he couldn't eat, but that he wouldn't eat, and
that he he died from self imposed starvation. Either. One's
pretty pretty terrible stuff. Just a brutal, brutal crime. Yeah,
And I mean, I agree with you. I think he
clearly Um was mentally ill, not just from the act
that he carried out, but also the the fact that
(28:00):
he'd been ranting and sleeping with an ax for weeks
leading up to it. But I think his perceived treatment
or outright treatment around tally Essen coupled with the idea
that they had been dismissed and that was going to
be their last day. Um, is I guess what drove
him over the edge. Yeah, so Frank you mentioned where
(28:20):
You've noticed we haven't mentioned him. He was in Chicago
at the time. He was working, uh, kind of finalizing
everything on the construction of Midway Gardens there in Chicago,
working with his son, John Lloyd Wright, who is his
second oldest and in the autobiography of John Wright called
my father who was on earth, uh said he remembered
(28:41):
an unnatural silence when the phone call came in, except
for his father's labored breathing, and then he came back
in the room and said, he said, what's happened? Dad?
And his father said, John, a taxi tali Essen is
on fire, right, And if you're not too big on
Frank Lloyd, right, you, um, you might be well, what
about the people who were murdered in his defense? He
(29:03):
apparently hadn't learned about that yet, and he learned that
there were some gruesome grizzly murders of a lot of
people he cared about, Um, but from reporters who were
shouting questions to him as he was going to the
train station to take the train from Chicago over to
uh Spring Green. Yeah. So Chicago newspaper headline reads the
end of lawless loves Um, you know, sort of a
(29:28):
sort of a sensational and cold way to treat these murders,
I think, Um, but they had been you know, they
had been all over their affair for years now. And
then chuck one other thing about Julian Carlton. Have you
ever been on that site find a grave dot com? Yeah, okay,
so I was on fine grave dot com. Part of
part of the purpose, for those who don't know, is
like to kind of memorialize, like leave a tribute or
(29:50):
something to to the person, the dead person. Um. And
sometimes it's very sweet, but other times it's very awkward.
And this was an awkward case because there was like
a little icon clearly shows up on every page on
Finding Grave, but it said, what's one thing you'll always
remember when you think of Julian? I'm like, probably the
(30:10):
ax murder slash arson killing of seven people always remember
he could really get a stain out of a rug
right with gasoline. Yeah, very very good at that. You
want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a break
and we'll talk a little bit about Frank's later years.
Right after this stuff you should know, h stuff you
(30:42):
should know. So this murder really uh and of course
the fire really really took a toll on Frank Lloyd right,
Um for the next you know, twenty years, he really
(31:04):
struggled with his work. Um, he struggled for uh, for
his freedom from the press obviously, I mean, he was
always in the press, but this it was worse now
than ever. And he did not suffer long. Romantically though,
he took up very quickly, uh with a woman named
maud Miriam Hicks Noel. She went by Miriam, and she
(31:28):
was an artist. She was a morphine addict. Um, she
was a fan girl. She they had a terrible, terrible,
abusive relationship. It seems like kind of both ways, like
a bit of a Sid Nancy type thing, going from
everything I could read. There were terrible people on both sides. Yeah.
(31:48):
So they he met when she was very young. She
said he hadn't been with me ten minutes before. He
said your mine. And they had a tenure courtship that
was very very dysfunctional, very mis bull And when he
got divorced in nineteen twenty two from Kitty, uh, he
decided at some point to marry I think about a
year later, to marry Miriam with that old mistake, thinking
(32:12):
things would be different once they get married. And that's
not at all how it went. They ended up splitting
up I think six months later, something like that. Um.
He said that to oppose her now in the slightest
degree meant violence. That's how how bad the relationship had become. Um.
So it was. I get the impression from this. Uh
(32:32):
this biographer Paul Hendrickson. The book he wrote, by the way,
is called Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright. UM.
And it's like six hundred pages. I believe, um. But
he he does not paint a very flattering picture of
Miriam at all. No, no, not at all. Um. And
like I said, they were not good for each other.
(32:53):
It seems like uh Nino, after his divorce from Miriam,
he gets married a third time, him to uh old Ivanna.
Her name was Olga Lazovic Hinzenburg. She was married, She
was a dancer. They met at a ballet where she
was performing, and they actually had another kid. Frank had
(33:15):
a seventh child with her, um, a little girl in
n And Miriam comes back there and kind of tries
to wreck their marriage too. Yeah. She like when they
had their baby, she showed up at the hospital and
made a scene, which is a pretty nasty move. Um.
She refused to give him a divorce. She like would
talk to the papers about him. Um. She she uh
(33:40):
teamed up with Olga's ex husband or soon to be
ex husband. Um. She she definitely worked against him, but
I guess eventually either got bored or was bought off,
or just kind of went away, because from what I
can tell, Olga and Frank managed to carve out a
happy married life for themselves. Um. From the nineteen twenties, Yeah,
(34:03):
ninety four when they got married onward. I guess by
the time once Miriam left the picture, they were able
to kind of settle in until Frank's death in nineteen
fifty nine. Yeah, and Miriam actually got him arrested at
one point under the Man Act m A n N.
Which was a law federal law that prohibits transport of
women and children across state lines for the purposes of
(34:25):
debauchery or prostitution. And I'm not really sure how that happened. Um,
it did not stick, obviously. He spent a couple of
nights in jail and then his the charges were dropped,
but he went into a long dry spell work wise.
Um did not get hired a ton over a certain
period of time, and then from the thirties to fifty
(34:47):
nine when he died, he did some of his best work,
maybe perhaps of his career. Absolutely, Um. He it was
during that time he did tali Us in West, which,
like I said, you mean and I went to we
went out to s Dotsdale, Um, and uh visited with
our friends Blair and Aaron out there, who are Scottsdale peeps.
And we went to tally Esen and it was just Chuck, dude,
(35:11):
have you been to that one? Haven't been to Taliessen West? Now.
It's it's really really cool, just the little just so
many details about it and there's a lot of fountains,
which is really refreshing in the desert. Um. It's just
a really great, neat little place for sure, and a
little I used that in the absolute wrong way. It's a.
It's pretty big, it's a it's a very it's a
(35:32):
charming place for sure. Yeah. And of course he did
the Google him after that. Um. Yeah, so it was
very productive period of his life. Um. Maybe should we
do more in Frank Loord Right in the future as
this it No, no, we'll we'll do the in true
stuff you should know style and just chip away at
(35:52):
different parts about his life and then do a full
biography on him years down the road. Sounds good. I
thought of another place I went a Frank Lord Ripe.
There's a Florida Southern College or university I'm sorry, is
um Frankloyd Right Design campus. It's amazing. You have to
check that out too. You should check it out. There's
like this really great covered walkway that you walk around everywhere,
(36:14):
and it's just it's it's really neat. You just feel
immersed in Frankloyd Right. It's not just you know, one
building or one house, it's a whole whole campus. I
love it. If you want to know more about franklod
Right and just go out after the pandemic ends and
start visiting some of his houses. And since I said
after the pandemic ends, uh, let's optimistically go on too.
(36:35):
Listener mail. No, no, sir, no listener mail today. I
think today we should take a little bit of an
opportunity to talk for a few minutes about our book.
Everyone's been really patient while we've plugged the pre sale
of this book. I think by the time this comes out,
the book will be out. Is that right? Uh? Afterbably? Yeah,
(37:00):
Jerry can make it so, I think it is. But
if not, it's it's just before And uh, I finally
got the books delivered to my house in hardcover edition
and I got to hold it in my hand as
have you, and dude, it's great. I'm really I'm really
proud of the work that we did, along with Flat
Iron or co writer Nils, who's just an amazing dude. Yes,
(37:23):
our in our illustrator Carle Monardo, who did just an
amazing job throughout the book of bringing like just passages
that you didn't even think of just suddenly kind of
came to life through our illustrations. Yeah, I mean, there's
an illustration of Momo, there's an illustration of my daughter.
They're nice little easter eggs in there. Uh. You know,
we haven't talked a lot about the contents of the book.
(37:44):
There are, um, we had a lot of fun with
the with the notes at the bottom, the footnotes. It's
really became kind of a fun part of the book.
We mentioned I don't even have a lost count how
many podcasts we mentioned, but we've notaate those in the end. Yeah,
and there were plenty that we we missed, Like I
(38:04):
did another like I shouldn't have done this, but I
did another like um like fine tooth comb, like just
scrape through of every word in the book. Of course
you did um to see you know what what podcasts
we needed to link to. And I was like, oh man,
I found like fifty of these so far. And I
emailed and was like, is it too late to add
footnotes or podcast footnotes? And nearly kiss that time has
(38:27):
come so edition, Yeah, yeah, exactly can we get these reprinted?
But I have the number here. Actually we have listed
in the book. We are referenced in the book. We
have two d seventy four references to other podcasts. But
here's a few of the chapters. We did. One on
Murphy Beds, one on back masking, one on aging um,
(38:51):
one on donuts. That's a great chapter. I love that chapter,
what else, Kama Kaze, Demolition, Derby's it's like stuff you
should know in book form. Is definitely And as we've said,
like none of these are just like an entire podcast.
It's more like, you know, we took maybe the history
of something or you know, one just one aspect of
one of the things and kind of dove into it
(39:14):
and flesh it out like that. So hopefully we'll be
able to turn these into full size, like podcast episodes
one day. That's kind of our intent. But even if
we don't, I think the book like really covers them
in an enjoyable way. Totally. Jack Caborcian, that was a
good one too, Keeping up with the Joneses. That's one
of my favorite ones. Yeah. Yeah, there's like twenty seven
(39:34):
just amazing chapters in there. Each one is better than
the last, and then astoundingly it starts back over and
somehow chapter one is better than chapter twenty seven. But
you know, if you haven't bought it yet, I highly
encourage you to. It makes a great gift. Um, even
if the person doesn't even know who we are. It's
it's in the great tradition, I think of the great
(39:55):
bathroom readers. You can pick it up at any point
in the book and read any chapter and it's and
it's just a lot of fun. My daughter even likes
it because the pictures and she loves looking at the
back and going, there's you and Josh. I know, it's
very cute. It is cute. So one other thing I
want to say is like, we really appreciate you guys
who have already pre ordered the book or who will
(40:16):
buy the book, who bought the audio book, Um, that's
available to um. But if you can't, if you're like
I just don't have the money right now, or I
don't feel like spending the money, I just like the podcast,
that's fine too. Like we're not mad at you, UM,
but we appreciate the people who have supported us by
buying the book. UM. So thank you very much to
everybody who has or will buy our book, because that's
(40:37):
that's very kind of you and it means a lot
to us. And you can look forward to a kid's
version coming soon. Yes, right, yeah, eventually we're taking the
same twenty seven chapters and kidifying it but without being patronizing.
So that'll swear books right now. We're taking the swear
words out the chapter I'm ascal didn't make the cut
(40:58):
in the kid's book. And um, I think, I mean,
I think this book is appropriate for kids as young
as like probably twelve years old. It's not like it's
it's not like it's dirty or anything. It's um it
might just be a little advanced for younger kids, but
we're gonna we're gonna make sure that the younger kids
have their version too. Yes, it will make every twelve
year old who reads our our the adult book really
(41:19):
want mescal. So anyway, thanks to everyone who's bought. It's
called Stuff you Should Know, an incomplete compendium of mostly
interesting things. You can get it wherever books are sold.
Of course, we encourage you to buy from independent bookstores
if you can, to try and keep them in business. Yep,
for sure. Um I guess that's it. Huh, that's it. Okay, Well,
thanks everybody for hearing us out about our book spiel
(41:41):
and if you bought the book or the audiobook, thank you.
If you can't get we love you anyway. Um so
don't worry about it. And if you want to get
in touch with us, you can send us an email
to Stuff Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff You
should know. It is a production i art Radio. For
more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
(42:03):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M hm hm
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's here. Uh and
this is Stuff you should Know. Um, the long awaited
(00:23):
Frank Lloyd Wright edition sort of yeah, kind of. I mean,
you know, it's not a full biography, but it is
definitely covers some of his very dark period of his life.
Oh yeah, one of the darker periods that any artiste
could have. And make no mistake, Frank Lloyd Wright wasn't artiste.
(00:44):
He was an artiste of architecture. Yeah. Have you ever
how many houses of his? Have you seen? Our buildings?
I've seen a bunch. Um. I've been to Holly Hawk
in Los Angeles, have been to uh Youth Sony and
I can't remember which one in Wa Washington by the
one of the I can't remember what other historic house
(01:05):
it's by. They moved it. Um. I've been to there's
a Usonian in Alabama. Chuck in Florence, Alabama, which is
really neat. Been to Falling Water, Um, been to Talius
in West I think that's it. Yeah. I've been to
a handful of myself. I've been to one in Tulsa
and a couple in l A. Of course, the Googgenheim.
I think we've both been there, and I have not.
(01:26):
I have not. Really. Yeah, all the times you've been
to New York and all the museums that you never
stepped footing the Guggenheim, It's true. I've never been in
the Googenheims. Sadly enough, I saw a movie where there's
a shootout in the Googgenheim. I highly recommend going to
the Guggenheim. It's great. Okay, I thought it was George
Costanza bit designed the googen him, not franklind Right. M
(01:49):
that's right. He always wanted to be an architect. That's right.
He's had. My favorite line for that episode is when
he talks about the redesign plans at the Guggenheim and
they go really, he goes, yeah, really didn't even take
that long. That's right. Yeah, he's saying that he was
the one who redesigned it, like it's impressive that it
was just a really quick job. Yeah, that's a classic. Um.
(02:14):
But we're not talking about the Googgenheim to day, Chuck,
We're not even talking about Hollyhock House. We're talking about
specifically tally Essen, which is widely regarded as um Frank
Lloyd writes genuine bona fide masterpiece, like his greatest work ever. Um.
I think it was it said that it's his um
(02:35):
autobiography written in wood and stone, that it's just him
and not just him in a specific time and place.
But for like decades were the work, his earliest work
to his latest work all showed up and appeared over
time at tally Essen. Yeah, I mean there's a lot there. Um.
It was his home at times, it was his studio
(02:58):
of school. Um, an eight hundred acre estate. This was
family land, it was it was his favorite hill in
Wisconsin and the river valley there where his Welsh grandparents
originally homesteaded, and so it was very personal to him.
So he did things like make the roof so it
doesn't leak water into the offices below like some of
(03:23):
his other properties. Exactly. Yeah, he wasn't oneing to just
move his desk, right. So, UM, this this particular house
and it was a and it still is. It's a huge,
enormous house. I think it's twenty one square feet. Um,
it's a classic example of what's called the Prairie style,
which is a style of architecture considered to be the
(03:46):
first genuine American style of architecture UM that Frank Lloyd
Right founded back in they think the eighteen nineties, maybe
the late eighteen nineties, and it has it takes its
inspiration from the surrounding environment. It's been to blend in
with the environment, work with the environment, rather than to
dominate it. So there's a lot of horizontal lines, a
(04:06):
lot of natural materials, a lot of woodworking, and um
tally Esen is very much in that style. UM. I
think it has five and twenty four windows, which is
a lot of windows, and um it also has no gutters.
There's a lot of cannilivered roofs which kind of overhang
pretty far. Um, so there wasn't necessarily need for gutters.
(04:28):
But I read that franklod Right specifically didn't want gutters
because he wanted icicles to form on the eaves of
the roof so he could look out of those five
windows in the Wisconsin winter and see all the icicles hanging.
Do you like the prairie homes? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do.
My problem with Frankloyd Rice work is that it's so
(04:51):
dated an old timey that it almost like it almost
makes me um a combination of scared and nauseous. You
know what I'm talking about. Have you ever looked at
a wicker wheelchair from like the turn of the last century,
You just kind of get the creeps from it for
(05:12):
some reason? Okay, you get that same. I mean this.
You know, he did the bulk of his work a
hundred years ago, you know, somewhere in that range. But
it was also like it was also very technologically um advanced,
and like he was just doing some really interesting stuff.
So the way that a very dated, once technologically advanced
(05:35):
piece of work can kind of call that weird feeling
out of you. But at the same time, I'm like
in genuine awe of this stuff you did. Like Falling
Water is one of my favorite houses in the entire world.
I mean, it's just amazing. What about you? I like them,
all right, They're they're fine, um some of them. And
you know, I have some here in the neighborhood that
(05:56):
pop up every now and then. Some newer builds are
in the prairie style, and I like them more than
some other kinds and less than some other kinds. Let's
just say that you you like craftsmen, Well, sure, I
live in a craftsman That's that's my favorite. But I
like craftsman too. I think they're good. I appreach. I mean,
I love a highly slick modern home. I don't want
(06:19):
to live in one, but I love them. I would
not want to live in one. Either those are hit
or miss with me, Like, some of them are just
too just god awful. Some of them are just when
they hit the nail on the head, you're like, wow,
that's one of the best houses anyone's ever designed and built.
But they miss. It's almost like documentaries and horror movies.
There's a lot of them, but only very very few,
(06:40):
like are truly great. That's my that's my impression of
modern homes. Yeah, i'man. We're in architecture though, as a
as a couple, Emily nine, we watch a couple of
you might hear me, great, well that's two. It's a triad. Well,
I guess they're uni in there, and I guess, but uh,
we we have a couple of shows that we love
to watch that are this one called Grand Designs on
(07:03):
Netflix that I highly come in. Uh and oh man,
what's the other one? There's this cup not a married couple,
but a pair that travels the world. The British architecture
bake off. No, that's not it. I can't remember what
it's called. But Grand Designs is really good. I mean,
and they follow these, you know, sort of impossibly built
(07:23):
houses designed and built by these incredible lunatic dreamers who
are obsessed with sort of a thing. It seems to
be the common thread as these obsessives, and it leads
to something beautiful and great, you know, usually for sure. Yeah, so, um,
what are the things about Frank Lloyd Wright is that
he is including during his lifetime he's considered one of
(07:45):
the greatest architects ever lived, certainly the most popular, popularly
well known, maybe, I guess you'd put it like anybody
who's ever heard of any kind of architecture, even vaguely,
is probably familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright agreed. So when
he when he um put all of himself into Tallys
(08:06):
and he was building a home for himself, and I
think it was completed in nineteen eleven, and like it's
worth pointing out, he was returning to his childhood home
to the valley where his his clan like settled, Like
if you if you look around spring Green, Wisconsin, everybody's
got the name Lloyd in there somewhere, like his maternal
(08:27):
ancestors settled the area. And he was literally building on
this hill, his favorite hill when he was a child,
like you were saying, but he was doing this in
the midst of one of the biggest scandals like any
architect's ever gone through. Yeah, so uh, as you'll see
through this show. And if you know anything about the man,
Frank Lloyd Wright had a bit of a wandering eye
(08:48):
and a bit of a philandering habit, and he had
a an extramarital affair with a woman name m A
m a h Mama, mama four huh. I don't know,
I've I've been testing it out too, I said, Mama, Mama,
sure bourth Wick and she was, um, you know. They
(09:10):
met in nineteen oh three, right, was in his mid
thirties at the time. He was already really famous as
an architect, and he was commissioned to design a house
for her and her husband, Edwin Cheney, and they were
it was going to be built there in Wisconsin pretty
close to Chicago, where Frank Lloyd Right was at the time.
She was pregnant in her mid thirties at the time
(09:32):
with her second child, and got really involved in in
sort of working with Frank Lloyd Right very closely, and
that sort of you know, the the classic story. At first,
it starts out platonic. One thing leads to another, and
before you know it, they're bumping uglies. That's right, smashing,
as the younger kids say, from what I just heard
(09:53):
that for the first time the other day, I didn't
know that was a thing. So it's a thing though.
Um So, frankloud Right by this time had six kids
of his own, and he had made a name for
himself like around Chicago building homes, designing homes for um
the well to do, especially in the Oak Park neighborhood.
Apparently just between nineteen hundred and nineteen he designed fifty
(10:18):
prairie houses. So he'd made a name for himself. But
apparently by the time I think nineteen o eight was
when he no. Nineteen o seven when they started their affair.
By the time nineteen o seven rolled around, he was
getting kind of tired of doing the same thing. It's
kind of like he was cursed like this. This school
of architecture that he developed was so popular that he
(10:41):
that's all anybody wanted, and he had gotten bored with
it by that time. So he seems to have been
unfulfilled professionally and kind of took it out on his family.
And about the worst way you could possibly take things
out on your family, short of cutting them up with
the machete. Yeah. By nineteen o eight, it was a
(11:02):
pretty much well known open secret in Chicago and that
high society in Chicago that this affair was going on,
and he was sort of looked down on from his
friends and his neighbors and his peers, different colleagues. His
poor wife, Kitty was a long suffering because she kind
of stood by a side anyway. Uh. And he'd realized
(11:25):
that he really wanted to leave his family, and he
did so. He said, I did not know what I wanted.
I wanted to go away, and he did in September
of nineteen o nine. Uh, Frank left with her, went
to Europe, left his wife and his six kids behind. Uh.
And here's one of the more selfish quotes I've ever
(11:45):
seen from a husband and father. Uh. And this was
in his autobiography. So when family life in Oak Park
in that spring of nineteen o nine conspired against the
freedom to which I had come to feel every soul entitled,
I had no choice. Would I keep my self respect
but to go out of voluntary exile. So he really
(12:08):
felt um and you know, those were his words in
his autobiography. So he wasn't he had no illusions about himself,
but he very much felt that. You know what, Um,
Frank Lloyd right, and I'm a man, and I deserve
this by my right. Yeah, So those are two key points.
He's a man, so he deserved it. But more than anything,
he was a legend in his own mind, which was
(12:30):
sustained and verified by the public at large. But he
was Frank Lloyd right, So more than anybody, he deserved
that to to go do whatever he wanted, and you know,
whatever the consequences were for other people emotionally, to hell
with that. Um. One other thing that I think is
worth pointing out is that he had money problems basically
(12:50):
his entire life, despite the fact that I mean, this
man designed the Google him. He designed some of the
most iconic UM buildings and houses in the United States
and he had money just coming in by the truckload,
but he would spend it as fast as he could
get it and then some. So at this point in
time when he was um, when he left his family,
(13:11):
he apparently left them in financial straits as well. There
there was there's a biographer named um Paul hendricks and, uh,
Paul Hendrickson, I'm sorry, and he points out that there
was a nine grocery bill that was laying on the
kitchen counter when when Frank Lloyd Wright walked out on
his family, which I mean, at least pay the grocery bill,
(13:34):
so the family that you're leaving an alert can eat,
you know. Yeah. So his his mistress left her two
kids with her husband. Uh, she went on a train
to New York City, met Frank at the Plaza Hotel.
They had a few days there of I guess smashing,
and then went to Europe and uh, you know, he
(13:55):
was famous the world over, so it's not like he
could lay low, very famous face, very a dresser of
fine clothing and those hats, so he didn't exactly blend
in anywhere he went. So he was found out in Berlin. Uh,
Chicago Tribune had a headline that said, leave families, semi colon,
nice little switch there, Elope to Europe and this whole time,
(14:18):
poor kitty, She says, it appears like any other ordinary,
mundane affair with the trappings of what is low and vulgar.
But there's nothing of that sort about Frank. Right, He
is honest and sincere I know him, my heart is
with him now. I feel certain that he will come back.
And that's that's one of the saddest parts about all
this is she was sort of like, he's just flandering
a bit and he'll come back to us. Yeah, it
(14:40):
is sad, but also, you know whatever his kids were
thinking too, like, well, I guess dad didn't love us
enough to stick around. Um another I think kind of
telling clue about Frank, Lloyd writes, enormous arrogance. Was he
called um his and um uh, what are we going
to call her, chuck mama, I'm calling her mamma his
(15:05):
and mamma's um flight to Europe to after a banding
their their families. He called it a spiritual hegaraga, and
I had not seen that word before. And it turns
out hegira or hegora h g g i r a
is what um Mohammed's exodus from persecution in Mecca was called,
(15:27):
and he left Mecca to go to Medina where he
founded Islam. And to Frank Lloyd, right, this is what
he and his mistress were doing when they abandoned their
families and fled to Europe. Yeah, he thought a lot
of himself. He was an s ob man, plain and simple.
I don't like he's a classic example of like having
to compartmentalize the genius of the work and just to
(15:49):
complete horrible nous of the person. You know, But it
can be done. It can be done. I I disagree
with anybody who who says, you know, there's certain exceptions,
I'm sure, But anybody who says, well, this person held
some pretty pretty terrible views, so we shouldn't pay any
attention to their work from that point on, I disagree
(16:10):
with that. I think that there are tons of exceptions
to that rule. Although there are tons of exceptions to
the exception to that rule too. If that's not confusing enough, well,
I think it's a personal decision. If someone wants to
never gaze upon falling waters again, then that's their choice totally.
It's not like I'm gonna you know, grab them by
their hair and like making them look but I would
(16:32):
disagree with them and in in a lot of cases, yeah,
like Manson's music fantastic, just beautiful, stuck, really good stuff.
So uh, Frank Boyd Wright Um returns to Chicago nineteen ten. Uh,
Mimall stayed behind. She stayed there in Europe for another
(16:53):
year because she was getting a divorce from Dwin Cheney. Uh.
And so she stayed there wrapping that up for Rank
moved back with Kitty. He had no intention of staying. Uh.
And I think it was pretty clear to Kitty at
this point because she said Mr Wright. I wonder if
he made her caller in that Mr Wright reached here
Saturday evening October eight and he has brought many beautiful things,
(17:16):
everything but his heart, I guess, And that he has
left in Germany, but he came back a bit of
a pariah. Oh, just to Tad, they were. They were
pariah's before. There was a woman who grew up living
next door to Mamma and her children, and she Um,
years later, in her diary, recounted a time when her
mom refused to give Frank Lloyd right cream when he
(17:38):
came over next door from next door to borrow some
and said that they were sinners and she wasn't going
to help them out at all. Um. So when they
left for Europe, made headline news for leaving their families.
And then he returns moves back in with his family
just long enough to plan his next home for him
and mamma um like. Yeah. The people in his social
(18:01):
orbit did not take very kindly to that. Professionals, neighbors, friends,
gossip colonists, basically everybody in the Midwest who had anything
to do with anything like we're rejected him in mamma yeah,
and to boot when he gets back because he needed
seed money for uh for his new home. He had
(18:22):
a benefactor named Darwin Martin, and he said, hey, listen,
I want to build this great cottage, uh, and this
affair is long over and this is going to be
a cottage for my mom, and I promise it's not
going to be our little smash shack, and so give
me twenty dollars to get this project going. He got it.
He moved into the home with his mistress and I
(18:46):
think by Christmas nineteen eleven they were officially living together
there in Green Spring. Yeah, he said thanks chump, thanks
for the money. And because just trashing Frank Lloyd Wright
as a person is a lot of fun, I want
to add this detail too, um Darwin Barton, his benefactor,
over the course of Frank Lood Wright's career, lent Frank
(19:08):
Lood right grand total and when the stock market crashed
in Darwin Martin lost everything like he was flatbrook was
went from an extraordinary, extraordinarily wealthy man to just flat
broke for the rest of his life. Frank Lloyd Wright
never repaid any of that money, but he made sure
(19:30):
that when his autobiography came out that Darwin Martin got
a free copy. Oh that's nice. Yeah, he really, he
really pulled that out at the last minute, didn't he.
All Right, So let's take a break and we'll come
back and talk about things taking a turn for the
worst a few years later in August of laws stuff
(20:00):
you should know, okay, Chuck. So let's just go ahead
and get in the way back Well I don't want
to see this. We'll just talk about it. We'll leave
the way back machine out of this one, okay. So
on on Saturday, August fifteen, around lunchtime, actually exactly at
(20:26):
lunch time. Um, Mama Borthwick. Uh, Frank Lloyd writes, Mistress,
longtime mistress, Um was sitting down for lunch on a
terrace at tally es In with her two kids. Uh.
To his great credit, Edwin Cheney, her ex husband by
this time, was not interested in keeping Mamma from seeing
her children as punishment, so they went to visit Um
(20:49):
pretty frequently. Uh. And this was a time when they
were visiting. So the three of them were sitting down
to lunch. John I think he was ten, and her
daughter Martha, who was eight, and Mama, Mama, We're sitting
down to lunch on the terrace. Okay, just put that
in your your pin, put that p in your hat
and smoke it. So that wow, really mixing metaphors. So, uh,
(21:12):
they're out on the terraces. Inside in the dining room
there are five of Franklin Dwright's employees, h Emil Burdell,
Thomas Brunker, David Lyndblom, Herbert Fritz, and William Weston and
then Weston's son Ernst. So they were all sitting down
to eat. Um. I think put a pin and maybe
both of these scenes and we'll tell you a little
(21:33):
bit about the handyman of the property named Julian Carlton,
who in the weeks and months leading up to this
date had been acting really weird. Uh. He was aggressive,
he was getting in arguments with other people. Um, he
was acting very strangely. He started sleeping with a hatchet
and a sack beside his bed. He was married, and
(21:55):
his wife, you know, verified this stuff. Um. He was
talking about killing people. And there was rumor that he
was being let go, and that there was that he
and his wife were already had a basically a trained
book to Chicago to look for other jobs. So this
is sort of the mindset of what's going on with
Julian Carlton at the time of this lunch, right. Um,
(22:17):
so Uh, Julian was actually so he was a handyman,
but at this point he he also helped out, helped
his wife Gertrude when she was cooking. He would serve.
So he served lunch to Mamma, and then he served
lunch to the five employees in the dining room. And
then as they were they started to eat, he approached
Um William Weston, the foreman of the whole jam William
(22:38):
Weston was a pretty important guy around tally Essen and
asked if he could go get some gasoline out of
the shed. I guess because he was going to clean
some rugs with it with gasoline. It was with gasolene y, then,
sure that's some old timey rug clinging if I've ever
heard of it. But UM, so so western. Sure, sure
of course, go ahead, and um things went really things
(23:01):
went downhill really quickly from from that moment on. Yeah,
so I appreciate you leaving this part to me. Um
Carlton comes back, Oh, I'll fill in. Don't worry. He's
got the gasoline and he also has an ax. And
the sequence is a little bit unclear. I've seen both
ways of which happened first. But he slaughtered uh Mama
(23:22):
Borthwick Borthwick and her kids on the porch and then
poured gasoline under the dining room doors and uh trapped
them in the room and set the dining room and
therefore the house on fire with everyone trapped inside. It
gets even worse than that, though. Um. After he had
slaughtered Mama and her kids with the axe and um
(23:44):
set the house on fire, he went around two window,
a dining room window where the people who are in
trapped in the dining room that had just been set
on fire. We're jumping to safety from and as they
jumped to safety, he ran after him and killed them
with the axe. He would finish them off there. Sometimes
they were on fire and he would hit them in
(24:05):
the head with the axe and killed them. And there
were nine people who were dining that day, and he
managed to kill seven of the nine. Um three people
survived the initial assault, the fire, and then the picking
off of the axe. The first guy who got away
was named Herb Fritz. He was a draftsman, a younger guy.
(24:26):
I think he's still a teenager who went on to
become an architect, I believe. But he he was the
first one to jump through the window, and so he
was able to get pretty far away from Julian Carlton
before Carlton noticed that people were jumping through the window
and came around to pick him off with the axe.
That's right, William Weston got out of the window. Carlton
(24:47):
hit him with the axe, thought he was dead, but
he wasn't dead. In the meantime, Fritz, like you said,
he didn't even Carlton didn't know he was gone. So
he actually managed to get to the neighbors and contact authorities,
which in a up being you know, ended up sort
of saving a lot of the house because they helped
put it out. And the other guy who managed to
at least get out the window was David Lindblom. Uh.
(25:09):
He escaped with Fritz, So Fritz and Limblom. Like when
they ran into that house, it was like a half
a mile away, which was really significant that Limblom was
able to do it, because he was burned so badly
that he died from his burns, and yet one of
the last things he did on Earth was to run
a half a mile to to get help at the house,
the nearest house with a phone. Yeah, so, uh, you know,
(25:30):
people get there, they put out the fire. Um hours later,
Uh they Carlton was discovered in the basement of the
house in an asbestos lined boiler room. Uh. He went
down there to to die in the fire, but also
doubled up by drinking a bottle of hydrochloric acid to
make sure he did the job. And neither one of
(25:52):
them work. He actually survived both of those things. I
actually saw that he was in the furnace because he
was trying to survive the fire, and he didn't drink
the acid until he knew he was discovered. Oh see,
I saw the opposite that he went down to the
furnace because he wanted to die in the home. Huh. Yeah,
the reason the furnace made sense to me, or that
(26:13):
he was trying to survive in the furnaces that if
he couldn't escape from the house, that would be the
safest place because it was the middle of August and
the furnace wasn't on, so it would have conceivably protected him,
or else they would have turned into that that bronze
bowl torture thing, you know, the bronze bowl that you
put a human being in then light a fire under
the bull the bowl. Remember that sounds like a pretty
(26:34):
horrible way to die either way. Yes, it should be
restated that Julian Carlton drank what he thought was a
lethal dose of hydrochloric acid, Like that's how he chose
to try to end his life. Yeah, so there was
never any motive really rooted out. Um Uh. Clearly, looking
back now, he suffered from some kind of mental illness.
(26:56):
I don't think you can just all chalk it up
to a grudge over being fired because of his behavior
of their previous weeks and months. Um. And you know,
it's just one of those things. It was a time
where they weren't diagnosing things like that. So he clearly
had some form of mental illness, I think. And uh,
they never conclusively determined a motive. But like I said,
(27:17):
his wife Um testified that said, you know, we were
headed to Chicago, we were going to get work Um
and he ended up dying. Uh. But he couldn't eat
basically because he had torn up his stomach, lining in
his throat so badly with that hydrochloric acid. He died
seven weeks later in jail from starvation. Yeah. And another
interpretation I saw is that he Um had purposefully starved
(27:40):
himself because the acid didn't work. That it wasn't just
that he couldn't eat, but that he wouldn't eat, and
that he he died from self imposed starvation. Either. One's
pretty pretty terrible stuff. Just a brutal, brutal crime. Yeah,
And I mean, I agree with you. I think he
clearly Um was mentally ill, not just from the act
that he carried out, but also the the fact that
(28:00):
he'd been ranting and sleeping with an ax for weeks
leading up to it. But I think his perceived treatment
or outright treatment around tally Essen coupled with the idea
that they had been dismissed and that was going to
be their last day. Um, is I guess what drove
him over the edge. Yeah, so Frank you mentioned where
(28:20):
You've noticed we haven't mentioned him. He was in Chicago
at the time. He was working, uh, kind of finalizing
everything on the construction of Midway Gardens there in Chicago,
working with his son, John Lloyd Wright, who is his
second oldest and in the autobiography of John Wright called
my father who was on earth, uh said he remembered
(28:41):
an unnatural silence when the phone call came in, except
for his father's labored breathing, and then he came back
in the room and said, he said, what's happened? Dad?
And his father said, John, a taxi tali Essen is
on fire, right, And if you're not too big on
Frank Lloyd, right, you, um, you might be well, what
about the people who were murdered in his defense? He
(29:03):
apparently hadn't learned about that yet, and he learned that
there were some gruesome grizzly murders of a lot of
people he cared about, Um, but from reporters who were
shouting questions to him as he was going to the
train station to take the train from Chicago over to
uh Spring Green. Yeah. So Chicago newspaper headline reads the
end of lawless loves Um, you know, sort of a
(29:28):
sort of a sensational and cold way to treat these murders,
I think, Um, but they had been you know, they
had been all over their affair for years now. And
then chuck one other thing about Julian Carlton. Have you
ever been on that site find a grave dot com? Yeah, okay,
so I was on fine grave dot com. Part of
part of the purpose, for those who don't know, is
like to kind of memorialize, like leave a tribute or
(29:50):
something to to the person, the dead person. Um. And
sometimes it's very sweet, but other times it's very awkward.
And this was an awkward case because there was like
a little icon clearly shows up on every page on
Finding Grave, but it said, what's one thing you'll always
remember when you think of Julian? I'm like, probably the
(30:10):
ax murder slash arson killing of seven people always remember
he could really get a stain out of a rug
right with gasoline. Yeah, very very good at that. You
want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a break
and we'll talk a little bit about Frank's later years.
Right after this stuff you should know, h stuff you
(30:42):
should know. So this murder really uh and of course
the fire really really took a toll on Frank Lloyd right,
Um for the next you know, twenty years, he really
(31:04):
struggled with his work. Um, he struggled for uh, for
his freedom from the press obviously, I mean, he was
always in the press, but this it was worse now
than ever. And he did not suffer long. Romantically though,
he took up very quickly, uh with a woman named
maud Miriam Hicks Noel. She went by Miriam, and she
(31:28):
was an artist. She was a morphine addict. Um, she
was a fan girl. She they had a terrible, terrible,
abusive relationship. It seems like kind of both ways, like
a bit of a Sid Nancy type thing, going from
everything I could read. There were terrible people on both sides. Yeah.
(31:48):
So they he met when she was very young. She
said he hadn't been with me ten minutes before. He
said your mine. And they had a tenure courtship that
was very very dysfunctional, very mis bull And when he
got divorced in nineteen twenty two from Kitty, uh, he
decided at some point to marry I think about a
year later, to marry Miriam with that old mistake, thinking
(32:12):
things would be different once they get married. And that's
not at all how it went. They ended up splitting
up I think six months later, something like that. Um.
He said that to oppose her now in the slightest
degree meant violence. That's how how bad the relationship had become. Um.
So it was. I get the impression from this. Uh
(32:32):
this biographer Paul Hendrickson. The book he wrote, by the way,
is called Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright. UM.
And it's like six hundred pages. I believe, um. But
he he does not paint a very flattering picture of
Miriam at all. No, no, not at all. Um. And
like I said, they were not good for each other.
(32:53):
It seems like uh Nino, after his divorce from Miriam,
he gets married a third time, him to uh old Ivanna.
Her name was Olga Lazovic Hinzenburg. She was married, She
was a dancer. They met at a ballet where she
was performing, and they actually had another kid. Frank had
(33:15):
a seventh child with her, um, a little girl in
n And Miriam comes back there and kind of tries
to wreck their marriage too. Yeah. She like when they
had their baby, she showed up at the hospital and
made a scene, which is a pretty nasty move. Um.
She refused to give him a divorce. She like would
talk to the papers about him. Um. She she uh
(33:40):
teamed up with Olga's ex husband or soon to be
ex husband. Um. She she definitely worked against him, but
I guess eventually either got bored or was bought off,
or just kind of went away, because from what I
can tell, Olga and Frank managed to carve out a
happy married life for themselves. Um. From the nineteen twenties, Yeah,
(34:03):
ninety four when they got married onward. I guess by
the time once Miriam left the picture, they were able
to kind of settle in until Frank's death in nineteen
fifty nine. Yeah, and Miriam actually got him arrested at
one point under the Man Act m A n N.
Which was a law federal law that prohibits transport of
women and children across state lines for the purposes of
(34:25):
debauchery or prostitution. And I'm not really sure how that happened. Um,
it did not stick, obviously. He spent a couple of
nights in jail and then his the charges were dropped,
but he went into a long dry spell work wise.
Um did not get hired a ton over a certain
period of time, and then from the thirties to fifty
(34:47):
nine when he died, he did some of his best work,
maybe perhaps of his career. Absolutely, Um. He it was
during that time he did tali Us in West, which,
like I said, you mean and I went to we
went out to s Dotsdale, Um, and uh visited with
our friends Blair and Aaron out there, who are Scottsdale peeps.
And we went to tally Esen and it was just Chuck, dude,
(35:11):
have you been to that one? Haven't been to Taliessen West? Now.
It's it's really really cool, just the little just so
many details about it and there's a lot of fountains,
which is really refreshing in the desert. Um. It's just
a really great, neat little place for sure, and a
little I used that in the absolute wrong way. It's a.
It's pretty big, it's a it's a very it's a
(35:32):
charming place for sure. Yeah. And of course he did
the Google him after that. Um. Yeah, so it was
very productive period of his life. Um. Maybe should we
do more in Frank Loord Right in the future as
this it No, no, we'll we'll do the in true
stuff you should know style and just chip away at
(35:52):
different parts about his life and then do a full
biography on him years down the road. Sounds good. I
thought of another place I went a Frank Lord Ripe.
There's a Florida Southern College or university I'm sorry, is
um Frankloyd Right Design campus. It's amazing. You have to
check that out too. You should check it out. There's
like this really great covered walkway that you walk around everywhere,
(36:14):
and it's just it's it's really neat. You just feel
immersed in Frankloyd Right. It's not just you know, one
building or one house, it's a whole whole campus. I
love it. If you want to know more about franklod
Right and just go out after the pandemic ends and
start visiting some of his houses. And since I said
after the pandemic ends, uh, let's optimistically go on too.
(36:35):
Listener mail. No, no, sir, no listener mail today. I
think today we should take a little bit of an
opportunity to talk for a few minutes about our book.
Everyone's been really patient while we've plugged the pre sale
of this book. I think by the time this comes out,
the book will be out. Is that right? Uh? Afterbably? Yeah,
(37:00):
Jerry can make it so, I think it is. But
if not, it's it's just before And uh, I finally
got the books delivered to my house in hardcover edition
and I got to hold it in my hand as
have you, and dude, it's great. I'm really I'm really
proud of the work that we did, along with Flat
Iron or co writer Nils, who's just an amazing dude. Yes,
(37:23):
our in our illustrator Carle Monardo, who did just an
amazing job throughout the book of bringing like just passages
that you didn't even think of just suddenly kind of
came to life through our illustrations. Yeah, I mean, there's
an illustration of Momo, there's an illustration of my daughter.
They're nice little easter eggs in there. Uh. You know,
we haven't talked a lot about the contents of the book.
(37:44):
There are, um, we had a lot of fun with
the with the notes at the bottom, the footnotes. It's
really became kind of a fun part of the book.
We mentioned I don't even have a lost count how
many podcasts we mentioned, but we've notaate those in the end. Yeah,
and there were plenty that we we missed, Like I
(38:04):
did another like I shouldn't have done this, but I
did another like um like fine tooth comb, like just
scrape through of every word in the book. Of course
you did um to see you know what what podcasts
we needed to link to. And I was like, oh man,
I found like fifty of these so far. And I
emailed and was like, is it too late to add
footnotes or podcast footnotes? And nearly kiss that time has
(38:27):
come so edition, Yeah, yeah, exactly can we get these reprinted?
But I have the number here. Actually we have listed
in the book. We are referenced in the book. We
have two d seventy four references to other podcasts. But
here's a few of the chapters. We did. One on
Murphy Beds, one on back masking, one on aging um,
(38:51):
one on donuts. That's a great chapter. I love that chapter,
what else, Kama Kaze, Demolition, Derby's it's like stuff you
should know in book form. Is definitely And as we've said,
like none of these are just like an entire podcast.
It's more like, you know, we took maybe the history
of something or you know, one just one aspect of
one of the things and kind of dove into it
(39:14):
and flesh it out like that. So hopefully we'll be
able to turn these into full size, like podcast episodes
one day. That's kind of our intent. But even if
we don't, I think the book like really covers them
in an enjoyable way. Totally. Jack Caborcian, that was a
good one too, Keeping up with the Joneses. That's one
of my favorite ones. Yeah. Yeah, there's like twenty seven
(39:34):
just amazing chapters in there. Each one is better than
the last, and then astoundingly it starts back over and
somehow chapter one is better than chapter twenty seven. But
you know, if you haven't bought it yet, I highly
encourage you to. It makes a great gift. Um, even
if the person doesn't even know who we are. It's
it's in the great tradition, I think of the great
(39:55):
bathroom readers. You can pick it up at any point
in the book and read any chapter and it's and
it's just a lot of fun. My daughter even likes
it because the pictures and she loves looking at the
back and going, there's you and Josh. I know, it's
very cute. It is cute. So one other thing I
want to say is like, we really appreciate you guys
who have already pre ordered the book or who will
(40:16):
buy the book, who bought the audio book, Um, that's
available to um. But if you can't, if you're like
I just don't have the money right now, or I
don't feel like spending the money, I just like the podcast,
that's fine too. Like we're not mad at you, UM,
but we appreciate the people who have supported us by
buying the book. UM. So thank you very much to
everybody who has or will buy our book, because that's
(40:37):
that's very kind of you and it means a lot
to us. And you can look forward to a kid's
version coming soon. Yes, right, yeah, eventually we're taking the
same twenty seven chapters and kidifying it but without being patronizing.
So that'll swear books right now. We're taking the swear
words out the chapter I'm ascal didn't make the cut
(40:58):
in the kid's book. And um, I think, I mean,
I think this book is appropriate for kids as young
as like probably twelve years old. It's not like it's
it's not like it's dirty or anything. It's um it
might just be a little advanced for younger kids, but
we're gonna we're gonna make sure that the younger kids
have their version too. Yes, it will make every twelve
year old who reads our our the adult book really
(41:19):
want mescal. So anyway, thanks to everyone who's bought. It's
called Stuff you Should Know, an incomplete compendium of mostly
interesting things. You can get it wherever books are sold.
Of course, we encourage you to buy from independent bookstores
if you can, to try and keep them in business. Yep,
for sure. Um I guess that's it. Huh, that's it. Okay, Well,
thanks everybody for hearing us out about our book spiel
(41:41):
and if you bought the book or the audiobook, thank you.
If you can't get we love you anyway. Um so
don't worry about it. And if you want to get
in touch with us, you can send us an email
to Stuff Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff You
should know. It is a production i art Radio. For
more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
(42:03):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M hm hm
Stuff You Should Know News
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Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
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