1952 film footage at Taliesin

[JChoate]

Here’s some vintage exterior film footage from 1952 at Taliesin. Looks to be late autumn. No sign of Mr Wright, but he was quite busy in that particular era, shaking buildings out of his sleeve in the crowning decade.
I recommend watching this video with the sound off and the playback speed at 25 or 50% so you have time to scrutinize the details.

https://youtu.be/JIUnsw76SPI

[SDR]

Beautiful colors. Do they ring true for those who have been there in the fall ?

A reminder that color photography is (or was) not an exact science, is given in the delightful changes of tone that take place within some of the pan shots; during the late sequence in the Hillside drafting room the hue shifts between red and green repeatedly . . . somehow echoing Wright's interest in Orientalia, while reminding one of the red Lincoln, the rust of dry oak leaves, and the dark green of the conifers all around, spied through the red sash of Taliesin. All is of a harmonious piece . . .

S

[SDR]

Curtis Besinger reports hearing about the Hillside Theater fire in April of 1952, while most of the Fellowship was still in Arizona. If this film was shot in autumn of that year, the new theater might have been largely complete. A view of the front of the complex, panning leftward past the former school gymnasium/Taliesin Theater, seems to show the new foyer structure being roofed, with bundles of shingles evident. But the boxed-in stair to the projection booth has not yet appeared. One wonders if Mr Wright had contemplated a ladder, rather than a carbuncle (which turned out quite nicely, I think), to access that balcony ?

S

[Rood]

The brief segment between 9:26 and 9:30 shows the original 2-story residential wing at Hillside ... prior to the fire. After the fire what was left of the second story was demolished.

[SDR]

Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, writing in Monograph 8, describes the transformation of the building after the 1952 fire. One oddity is the statement that the gymnasium roof was originally the same height as that of the living room "at the other end of the wing"; a 1910 photo of the building shows this not to be the case. In any event, the reconstruction did lower the height of the intervening element as well as that of the theater roof.





https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... sin_08.jpg

[JChoate]

Also, at the 5:19 mark, ever so briefly we get a glimpse of the roof of the garden room at the main house where there appears to be lumber stacked on the roof for some construction project..