Selects: The Tailesin Massacre

Everyone knows who Frank Lloyd Wright is, but did you know there was a grisly massacre at his home in 1914? Find out all about it in this classic episode. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:16Speaker 02

  It's a massacre that happened at the, perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest work, Taliesin in Wisconsin. And I picked this one because, geez, by this time, I will have long done this in real time, but I am going and have went to the Green Bay Packers, the Atlanta Falcons, at Lambeau Field, playing the Green Bay Packers. And I knew this game was on the calendar, and I went with my good friend, Adam Pranica, of the Greatest Generation, and my good friend from high school, Robert Chahade. And we all met up in Green Bay with Adam's uncle, Uncle Pete Pranica, by the way, who is the voice of the Memphis Grizzlies. So I can say this with confidence, even though it hasn't happened yet. I know I had a great time talking to Uncle Pete because I've long wanted to meet him,

• 2:01Speaker 02

  and I'm a big fan of the NBA. My mom's from Memphis, and so I know we had a lot to talk about. It's kind of weird, because I know this is all true, but it hasn't happened yet. But on my list, I don't know if I made it or not. I guess time will tell. I wanted to go see Tailesin. I know we're playing golf at Whispering Pines, and I know that went well. I don't know how I shot yet, but I know that Whispering Pines is lovely, and it had to be great unless it was pouring down rain. But who cares? Play in the rain. But like I said, maybe I'll follow up and let you know if I actually made it out to Tailesin. I'm not sure if the calendar had enough space, but at the very least, I was well-prepared with my knowledge of the Tailesin massacre, and you will be too if you listen right now.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:55Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W., Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's here, and this is Stuff You Should Know, the long-awaited Frank Lloyd Wright edition.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Sort of.

• 3:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, kind of.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, it's not a full biography, but it has definitely covered some of his very dark period of his life.

• 3:20Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. One of the darker periods that any artiste could have. And make no mistake, Frank Lloyd Wright wasn't artiste. He was an artiste of architecture.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Have you ever, how many houses of his have you seen or buildings?

• 3:35Josh Clark?

  I've seen a bunch. I've been to Hollyhock in Los Angeles. I've been to a Usonian, I can't remember which one, in Washington by the, one of the, I can't remember what other historic house it's by. They moved it. I've been to, there's a Usonian in Alabama, Chuck, in Florence, Alabama, which is really neat. Been to Fallingwater. Been to Tailesin West. I think that's it.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. I've been to a handful myself. I've been to one in Tulsa and a couple in LA. Of course, the Guggenheim. I think we've both been there, unless you haven't.

• 4:10Josh Clark?

  I have not. I have not.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 4:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  All the times you've been to New York and all the museums, you never have stepped foot in the Guggenheim?

• 4:17Josh Clark?

  It's true. I have never been in the Guggenheim, sadly enough. I saw a movie where there's a shootout in the Guggenheim.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  I highly recommend going to the Guggenheim. It's great.

• 4:27Josh Clark?

  Okay. I thought it was George Costanza that designed the Guggenheim, not Frank Lloyd Wright.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Hmm, that's right. He always wanted to be an architect.

• 4:35Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  He's, my favorite line for that episode is when he talks about the redesigned plans of the Guggenheim, and they go, really? He goes, yeah, it really didn't even take that long.

• 4:47Josh Clark?

  That's right. Yeah. He's saying that he was the one who redesigned it.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Like, it's impressive that it was just a really quick job.

• 4:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's a classic. But we're not talking about the Guggenheim today, Chuck. We're not even talking about Hollyhock House. We're talking about specifically Tailesin, which is widely regarded as Frank Lloyd Wright's genuine bona fide masterpiece, like his greatest work ever. I think it was, it said that it's his 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 where the work, his earliest work to his latest work, all showed up and appeared over time at Tailesin.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there. It was his home at times. It was his studio, a school, and 800-acre estate. This was family land. It was, it was his favorite hill in Wisconsin, in the River Valley there, where his Welsh grandparents originally homesteaded.

• 5:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  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 his other properties.

• 6:08Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Yeah. He wasn't one to just move his desk, right?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:13Josh Clark?

  So this, this particular house, and it was, and it still is, it's a huge, enormous house. I think it's 21,000 square feet. It's a classic example of what's called the Prairie style, which is a style of architecture considered to be the first genuine American style of architecture that Frank Lloyd Wright founded back in, I think, the 1890s, maybe the late 1890s. And it has, it takes its inspiration from the surrounding environment. It's meant to blend in with the environment, work with the environment rather than to dominate it. So there's a lot of horizontal lines, a lot of natural materials, a lot of woodworking, and Tailesin is very much in that style.

• 6:57Josh Clark?

  I think it has 524 windows, which is a lot of windows. And it also has no gutters. There's a lot of cantilevered roofs, which kind of overhang pretty far, so there wasn't necessarily a need for gutters. But I read that Frank Lloyd Wright specifically didn't want gutters because he wanted icicles to form on the eaves of the roof so he could look out of those 524 windows in the Wisconsin winter and see all the icicles hanging.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Do you like the Prairie homes, that style?

• 7:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah, I, yeah, I do. My problem with Frank Lloyd Wright's work is that it's so dated and old-timey that it almost like, it almost makes me a combination of scared and nauseous. You know what I'm talking about?

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 7:48Josh Clark?

  Have you ever looked at a Wicker wheelchair from like the turn of the last century?

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:54Josh Clark?

  You just kind of get the creeps from it for some reason?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Okay, you get that same, I mean, this, you know, he did the bulk of his work 100 years ago, you know, somewhere in that range.

• 8:04Josh Clark?

  But it was also like, it was also very technologically advanced and like, he was just doing some really interesting stuff. So the way that a very dated, once technologically advanced piece of work can kind of cull that weird feeling out of you. But at the same time, I'm like in genuine awe of the stuff he did. Like Fallingwater is one of my favorite houses in the entire world.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Sure. I mean, it's gorgeous.

• 8:31Josh Clark?

  Amazing. What about you? Do you like the Prairie style?

• 8:34Speaker 02

  I like them all right. They're, they're fine. Some of them, and you know, I have some here in the neighborhood that 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.

• 8:49Josh Clark?

  You, you like Craftsman?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Well, sure. I live in a Craftsman. That's, that's my favorite, but.

• 8:56Josh Clark?

  I like Craftsman, too. I think they're good.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  I, I mean, I love a highly slick, modern home. I don't want to live in one, but I love them.

• 9:05Josh Clark?

  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 like are truly great. That's my, that's my impression of modern homes.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm into, we're into architecture, though, as a, as a couple, Emily and I. We watch a couple of-

• 9:33Josh Clark?

  I thought you meant you and me.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Great, well, us two. It's a triad. Well, I guess throw you and me in there, and I guess we'd be a foursome. But we have a couple of shows that we love to watch that are, there's one called Grand Designs on Netflix that I highly recommend. And, oh, man, what's the other one? There's this couple, not a married couple, but a pair that travels the world.

• 9:55Josh Clark?

  The Great British Architecture Bake Off?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  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 houses designed and built by these incredible lunatic dreamers who are obsessed with sort of a thing. It seems to be the common thread is these obsessives, and it leads to something beautiful and great, you know, usually.

• 10:21Josh Clark?

  For sure, yeah. So one of the things about Frank Lloyd Wright is that he is, including during his lifetime, he's considered one of the greatest architects to ever live, certainly the most popular, popularly-

• 10:35Josh Clark?

  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.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 10:46Josh Clark?

  So when he, when he put all of himself into Tailesin, he was building a home for himself. And I think it was completed in 1911. 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 ancestors settled that 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.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So 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 and a bit of a philandering habit. And he had a, an extramarital affair with a woman named M A M A H. Mama?

• 11:43Josh Clark?

  Mama?

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Borthwick. Huh?

• 11:44Josh Clark?

  I don't know. I've, I've been testing it out, too. I said Mama.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Mama?

• 11:49Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Borthwick. And she was, you know, they met in 1903. Wright was in his mid 30s 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 Chaney. And they were, it was going to be built there in Wisconsin, pretty close to Chicago, where Frank Lloyd Wright was at the time. She was pregnant in her mid 30s at the time with her second child. And got really involved in, in sort of working with Frank Lloyd Wright 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.

• 12:32Josh Clark?

  That's right. Smashing, as the younger kids say, from what I understand.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just heard that for the first time the other day. Didn't know that was a thing.

• 12:39Josh Clark?

  So it's a thing now. So Frank Lloyd Wright, 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 the, the well-to-do, especially in the Oak Park neighborhood. Apparently, just between 1900 and 1910, he designed 50 prairie houses. So he'd made a name for himself. But apparently, by the time, I think, 1908 was when he, no, 1907, when they started their affair. By the time 1907 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

• 13:22Josh Clark?

  was so popular that he, that 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 in about the worst way you could possibly take things out on your family short of cutting them up with a machete.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. By 1908, it was a pretty much well-known, open secret in Chicago and of 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 long-suffering because she kind of stood by his side anyway. And he'd realized 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 1909, Frank left with her, went to Europe, left his wife and

• 14:24Speaker 02

  his six kids behind. And here's one of the more selfish quotes I've ever seen from a husband and father. And this was in his autobiography. "So when family life in Oak Park in that spring of 1909 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 felt, 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? I'm Frank Lloyd Wright, and I'm a man, and I deserve this by my right.

• 15:06Josh Clark?

  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 sustained and verified by the public at large. But he was Frank Lloyd Wright. 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. One other thing that I think is worth pointing out is that he had money problems basically his entire life, despite the fact that, I mean, this man designed the Guggenheim. He designed some of the most iconic buildings and, 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

• 15:48Josh Clark?

  get it, and then some. So at this point in time, when he was, when he left his family, he apparently left them in financial straits as well. There was, there's a biographer named Paul Hendricks. And Paul Hendrickson, I'm sorry. And he points out that there was a $900 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, so the family that you're leaving in a lurch can eat, you know?

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. So his, his mistress left her two kids with her husband. 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, you know, he was famous the world over. So it's not like he could lay low. Very famous face, very famous dresser of fine clothing and those hats. So he didn't exactly blend in anywhere he went. So he was found out in Berlin. Chicago Tribune had a headline that said, "Leave families, semicolon, nice little switch there, elope to Europe." And this whole time, poor Kitty, she says, "It appears like any other ordinary mundane

• 17:06Speaker 02

  affair with the trappings of what is low and vulgar. But there's nothing of that sort about Frank Wright. 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 philandering a bit, and he'll come back to us.

• 17:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it 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. Another, I think, kind of telling clue about Frank Lloyd Wright's enormous arrogance was he called his and, what are we going to call her, Chuck?

• 17:46Josh Clark?

  Mama? I'm calling her Mama.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 17:49Josh Clark?

  His and Mama's flight to Europe to, after abandoning their, their families, he called it a spiritual hegira, or hegira. And I had not seen that word before. And it turns out hegira, or hegira, H E G I R A, is what Muhammad's exodus from persecution in Mecca was called. And he left Mecca to go to Medina, where he founded Islam. And to Frank Lloyd Wright, this is what he and his mistress were doing when they abandoned their families and fled to Europe.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. He, he thought a lot of himself.

• 18:23Josh Clark?

  He was an SOB 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 the complete horribleness of the person, you know?

• 18:36Speaker 02

  I know. I know.

• 18:37Josh Clark?

  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 with that. I think that there are tons of exceptions to that rule, although there are tons of exceptions to the exceptions to that rule, too, if that's not confusing enough.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's a personal decision. If someone wants to never gaze upon falling waters again, then that's their choice.

• 19:09Josh Clark?

  Totally. It's not like I'm going to, you know, grab them by the, their hair and like, making them look. But I would disagree with them in, in a lot of cases.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, like Manson's music. Fantastic.

• 19:21Josh Clark?

  Just beautiful stuff.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Really good stuff.

• 19:24Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  So Frank Lloyd Wright returns to Chicago in 1910. Memaw stayed behind.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  She stayed there in Europe for another year because she was getting a divorce from Edwin Chaney. And so she stayed there wrapping that up. Frank moved back with Kitty. He had no intention of staying. And I think it was pretty clear to Kitty at this point because she said, Mr. Wright, I wonder if he made her call her that. Mr. Wright reached here Saturday evening, October 8, and he has brought many beautiful things, everything but his heart, I guess. And that he has left in Germany. But he came back a bit of a pariah.

• 20:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, just a tad. They were, they were pariahs before. There was a woman who grew up living next door to Mamaw and her children. And she, years later in her diary recounted a time when her mom refused to give Frank Lloyd Wright cream when he 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. 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 Mamaw. Like, yeah, the people in his social orbit

• 20:46Josh Clark?

  did not take very kindly to that. Professionals, neighbors, friends, gossip columnists, basically everybody in the Midwest who had anything to do with anything, like were rejected him and Mamaw.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And to boot, when he gets back, because he needed seed money for, for his new home, he had a benefactor named Darwin Martin. And he said, Hey, listen, I want to build this great cottage. 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 $25,000 to get this project going. He got it. He moved into the home with his mistress. And I think by Christmas 1911, they were officially living together there in Greenspring.

• 21:36Josh Clark?

  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. Darwin Barton, his benefactor, over the course of Frank Lloyd Wright's career, lent Frank Lloyd Wright 75 grand total. And when the stock market crashed in 1929, Darwin Barton lost everything. Like, he was flat broke, went from extraordinarily, 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 that when his autobiography came out, that Darwin Barton got a free copy.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  Oh, that's nice.

• 22:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He really, he really pulled that out at the last minute, didn't he?

• 22:24Speaker 02

  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 1914.

• 22:47Josh Clark?

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• 25:50Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck. So let's just go ahead and get in the Wayback. Well, I don't want to see this. We'll just talk about it. We'll leave the Wayback machine out of this one, okay? So on Saturday, August 15, 1914, around lunchtime, actually exactly at lunchtime, Mamaw Borthwick, Frank Lloyd Wright's mistress, longtime mistress, was sitting down for lunch on a terrace at Tailesin with her two kids. To his great credit, Edwin Chaney, her ex-husband by this time, was not interested in keeping Mamaw from seeing her children as punishment. So they went to visit pretty frequently. And this was a time when they were visiting. So the three of them were sitting down to lunch. John, I think he was 10, and her daughter

• 26:35Josh Clark?

  Martha, who was eight. And Mama, Mamaw, were sitting down to lunch on the terrace. Okay? Just put that in your, your pen. Put that pen in your hat and smoke it.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Wow. Really mixing metaphors. So they're out on the terrace. Inside in the dining room, there are five of Frank Lloyd Wright's employees, Emil Brudel, Thomas Brunker, David Lindblum, Herbert Fritz, and William Weston, and then Weston's son Ernst. So they were all sitting down to eat. I think, put a pin in maybe both of these scenes. And we'll tell you a little 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. He was aggressive. He was getting in arguments with other people. He was acting very strangely.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  He started sleeping with a hatchet and a sack beside his bed. He was married and his wife, you know, verified this stuff. 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 train booked 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.

• 27:54Josh Clark?

  Right. So Julian was actually, so he was the 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 Mamaw, and then he served lunch to the five employees in the dining room. And then as they were, they started to eat, he approached William Weston, the foreman of the whole jam. William Weston was a pretty important guy around Tailesin, 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.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  With gasoline?

• 28:27Josh Clark?

  With gasoline, yes.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Guess that was a thing back then.

• 28:29Josh Clark?

  Sure. That's some old timey rug cleaning, if I've ever heard of it. But um, so, so Weston said, sure, sure, of course, go ahead. And things went really, things went downhill really quickly from, from that moment on.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So appreciate you leaving this part to me. Carlton comes back.

• 28:47Josh Clark?

  Oh, I'll fill in. Don't worry.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  He's got the gasoline. And he also has an axe. And the, the sequence is a little bit unclear. I've seen both ways of which happened first. But he slaughtered

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Mama Borthwick and her kids on the porch, and then poured gasoline under the dining room doors and trapped them in the room and set the dining room and therefore the house on fire with everyone trapped inside.

• 29:15Josh Clark?

  It gets even worse than that, though. After he had slaughtered mama and her kids with the axe and set the house on fire, he went around to a window, a dining room window, where the people who were trapped in the dining room that had just been set on fire were jumping to safety from. And as they jumped to safety, he ran after them and killed them with the axe. He would finish them off. Sometimes they were on fire and he would hit them in 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. Three people survived the initial assault, the fire and then the picking off with the axe.

• 29:59Josh Clark?

  The first guy who got away was named Herb Fritz. He was a draftsman, a younger guy, I think he's still a teenager, who went on to become an architect, I believe. But 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 them off with the axe.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  That's right. William Weston got out of the window. Carlton 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 even know he was gone. So he actually managed to get to the neighbors and contact authorities, which ended 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. He escaped with Fritz.

• 30:49Josh Clark?

  So Fritz and Lindblom, like when they ran to that house, it was like a half a mile away, which is really significant that Lindblom 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 get help at the house, the nearest house with a phone.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, people get there, they put out the fire. Hours later, Carlton was discovered in the basement of the house in an asbestos-lined boiler room. He went down there 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 them worked. He actually survived both of those things.

• 31:34Josh Clark?

  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.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Oh, see, I saw the opposite, that he went down to the furnace because he wanted to die in the home.

• 31:48Josh Clark?

  Huh, yeah. The reason the furnace made sense to me or that he was trying to survive in the furnace is 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 it would have turned into that bronze bowl torture thing. You know, the bronze bowl that you put a human being in and light a fire under the bowl?

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 32:11Josh Clark?

  Sounds like a pretty 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.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there was never any motive really rooted out. Clearly, looking back now, he suffered from some kind of mental illness. I don't think you can just all chalk it up to a grudge over being fired because of his behavior over the previous weeks and months. 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 they never conclusively determined a motive. But like I said, his wife testified that said, you know, we were headed to Chicago. We were going to get work. And he ended up dying. But he couldn't eat, basically, because he had torn up his stomach lining and his throat so badly with that hydrochloric acid.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  He died seven weeks later in jail from starvation.

• 33:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Another interpretation I saw is that he had purposefully starved 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 died from self-imposed starvation. Either one's pretty terrible stuff.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Just a brutal, brutal crime.

• 33:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I mean, I agree with you. I think he clearly was mentally ill, not just from the act that he carried out, but also the fact that he'd been ranting and sleeping with an axe for weeks leading up to it. But I think his perceived treatment or outright treatment around taliesin, coupled with the idea that they had been dismissed and that was going to be their last day, is, I guess, what drove him over the edge.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Frank, you mentioned, or you've noticed we haven't mentioned him. He was in Chicago at the time. He was working, 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, said he remembered 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. Tailesin is on fire."

• 34:32Josh Clark?

  Right. And if you're not too big on Frank Lloyd Wright, you might be like, well, what about the people who were murdered? In his defense, he apparently hadn't learned about that yet. And he learned that there were some gruesome, grisly murders of a lot of people he cared about from reporters who were shouting questions to him as he was going to the train station to take the train from Chicago over to Spring Green.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Chicago newspaper headline reads "The End of Lawless Loves." You know, sort of a sensational and cold way to treat these murders, I think. But they had been, you know, they had been all over their affair for years now.

• 35:14Josh Clark?

  And then Chuck, one other thing about Julian Carlton. Have you ever been on that site, findagrave.com?

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 35:21Josh Clark?

  Okay, so I was on findagrave.com. Part of the purpose, for those who don't know, is like to kind of memorialize, like leave a tribute or something to the person, the dead person. 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 that clearly shows up on every page on Find a Grave. But it said, "What's one thing you'll always remember when you think of Julian?" I'm like, probably the axe murder slash arson, the killing of seven people? That's what I'll always remember.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  He could really get a stain out of a rug.

• 35:58Josh Clark?

  Right, with gasoline.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, very, very good at that.

• 36:01Josh Clark?

  You want to take a break?

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit about Frank's later years, right after this.

• 36:23Josh Clark?

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• 36:46Josh Clark?

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• 37:01Speaker 02

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• 37:26Speaker 02

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• 37:40Josh Clark?

  Well, with Base44, describe that in your own words. You don't need to know coding or programming. Then you just keep editing and refining it until it works exactly the way you want. Your build comes headache-free with built-in login, data storage, backend, and hosting. So what's the app you wish existed?

• 37:57Speaker 02

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• 38:08Josh Clark?

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• 38:26Speaker 02

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• 38:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, plus, everything at Quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen so you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com where you can get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK as well. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was Stuff You Should Know. It's the best way to support the show.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  So this murder really, and of course, the fire really, really took a toll on Frank Lloyd Wright. For the next, you know, 20 years, he really struggled with his work. He struggled for, 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 with a woman named Maude Miriam Hicks Noel. She went by Miriam. And she was an artist. She was a morphine addict. She was a fangirl. She, they had a terrible, terrible abusive relationship.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  It seems like kind of both ways, like a bit of a Sid and Nancy type thing going from everything I could read.

• 40:16Josh Clark?

  There were terrible people on both sides.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they, he met when she was very young. She said, he hadn't been with me 10 minutes before he said, you're mine. And they had a 10 year courtship that was very, very dysfunctional, very miserable. And when he got divorced in 1922 from Kitty, he decided at some point to marry, I think about a year later, to marry Miriam with that old mistake, thinking things would be different once they get married.

• 40:47Josh Clark?

  And that's not at all how it went. They ended up splitting up, I think, six months later, something like that. He said that to oppose her now in the slightest degree meant violence. That's how, how bad the, the relationship had become. So it was a, I get the impression from this, this biographer, Paul Hendrickson. The book he wrote, by the way, is called Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright. And it's like 600 pages, I believe. But he, he does not paint a very flattering picture of Miriam at all.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  No, no, not at all. And like I said, they, they were not good for each other, it seems like. In 1924, after his divorce from Miriam, he gets married a third time to Olga Vanna. Her name was Olga Lazovich Hensenberg. She was married. She was a dancer. They met at a ballet where she was performing. And they actually had another kid. Frank had a seventh child with her, a little girl in 1925. And Miriam comes back, though, and kind of tries to wreck their marriage, too.

• 41:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, she, like, when they had their baby, she showed up at the hospital and made a scene, which is a pretty nasty move. She refused to give him a divorce. She like would talk to the papers about him. She, she teamed up with Olga's ex-husband or soon to be ex-husband. 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 from the 1920s, yeah, 1924, when they got married onward.

• 42:38Josh Clark?

  I guess by the, once Miriam left the picture, they were able to kind of settle in until Frank's death in 1959.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Miriam actually got him arrested at one point under the Mann 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 debauchery or prostitution.

• 42:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  And I'm not really sure how that happened. 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. Did not get hired a ton over a certain period of time. And then from the 30s to 59, when he died, he did some of his best work, maybe perhaps of his career.

• 43:26Josh Clark?

  Absolutely. He, it was during that time he did Tailesin West, which, like I said, you, me and I went to, we went out to Scottsdale and visited with our friends Blair and Aaron out there, who are Scottsdale peeps. And we went to Tailesin and it was just, Chuck, dude, have you been to that one?

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Haven't been to Tailesin West, no.

• 43:46Josh Clark?

  It's, it's really, really cool. Just the, the little, just so many details about it. And there's a lot of fountains, which is really refreshing in the desert. It's just a really great, neat little place, for sure. And a little, I use that in the absolute wrong way. It's, it's pretty big, but it's a very, it's a charming place, for sure.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and of course, he did the Guggenheim after that.

• 44:10Josh Clark?

  Falling Water was in there.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was a very productive period of his life. Maybe, should we do more on Frank Lloyd Wright in the future or is this it?

• 44:20Josh Clark?

  No, no, we'll, we'll do the, in true Stuff You Should Know style and just chip away at different parts about his life and then do a full biography on him years down the road.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  All right, that sounds good.

• 44:30Josh Clark?

  I thought of another place I went, a Frank Lloyd Wright place. There's a Florida Southern College, or university, I'm sorry, is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed campus. It's amazing.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Have to check that out, too.

• 44:42Josh Clark?

  You should check it out. There's like this really great covered walkway that you walk around everywhere. And it's just, it's, it's really neat. You just feel immersed in Frank Lloyd Wright. It's not just, you know, one building or one house, it's a whole, whole campus.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 44:56Josh Clark?

  If you want to know more about Frank Lloyd Wright, then just go out after the pandemic ends and start visiting some of his houses. And since I said after the pandemic ends, let's optimistically go on to listener mail.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  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?

• 45:28Josh Clark?

  Uh...

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Is this after the 24th, probably?

• 45:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Jerry can make it so.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  I think it is, but if not, it's, it's just before. And 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 Flatiron, our co-writer Nils, who's just an amazing dude.

• 45:55Josh Clark?

  Yes, and our illustrator Carly 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 her illustrations.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's an illustration of Momo. There's an illustration of my daughter. There are nice little Easter eggs in there. You know, we haven't talked a lot about the contents of the book. There are, we had a lot of fun with the, with the notes at the bottom, the footnotes. It's a really, became kind of a fun part of the book. We mention, I don't even, I have to lost count how many podcasts we mention, but we notate those in the end.

• 46:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and there were plenty that we, we missed. Like, I did another, like, I shouldn't have done this, but I did another, like, like, fine-tooth comb, like, just scraped through of every word in the book.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Of course you did.

• 46:47Josh Clark?

  To see, you know, what, what podcasts we needed to link to. And I was like, oh, man, I found like 50 of these so far. And I emailed and was like, is it too late to add footnotes or podcast footnotes? And they're like, yes, that time has come.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  As you were holding the book?

• 47:01Josh Clark?

  So maybe in the second edition. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Can we get these reprinted?

• 47:04Speaker 02

  I have the number here, actually. We have listed in the book, or referenced in the book, we have 274 references to other podcasts. But here's a few of the chapters. We did one on Murphy Beds, one on backmasking, one on aging, one on donuts. That's a great chapter.

• 47:25Josh Clark?

  I love that chapter.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  What else? Kamikaze, demolition derbies. It's like Stuff You Should Know in book form.

• 47:32Josh Clark?

  It 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, the things and kind of dove into it and fleshed 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.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Totally. Jack Kevorkian.

• 48:00Josh Clark?

  That was a good one, too.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Keeping Up with the Joneses, that's one of my favorite ones.

• 48:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. There's like 27 just amazing chapters in there. Each one's better than the last. And then, astoundingly, it starts back over and somehow, chapter one is better than chapter 27.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  But you know, if you haven't bought it yet, I highly encourage you to. It makes a great gift, even if the person doesn't even know who we are. It's, it's in the great tradition, I think, of the great 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 of the pictures. And she loves looking at the back and going, there's you and Josh. It's very cute.

• 48:41Josh Clark?

  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 buy the book, or who bought the audiobook that's available to you. 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. But we appreciate the people who have supported us by buying the book. So thank you very much to everybody who has or will buy our book, because that's, that's very kind of you and it means a lot to us.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  And you can look forward to a kids' version coming soon.

• 49:15Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Right?

• 49:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, eventually, we're taking the same 27 chapters and kidifying it, but without being patronizing. So that would be a really great book. No, we're taking the swear words out. The chapter on mezcal didn't make the cut in the kids' book.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  I know. I think, I mean, I think this book is appropriate for kids as young as like probably 12 years old. It's not like it's, it's not like it's dirty or anything. It's, 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.

• 49:47Josh Clark?

  Yes. It'll make every 12-year-old who reads our, the adult book really want mezcal.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  So anyway, thanks to everyone who's bought it. 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.

• 50:05Josh Clark?

  Yep, for sure. I guess that's it, huh?

• 50:08Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 50:09Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, thanks, everybody, for hearing us out about our book spiel. And if you bought the book or the audiobook, thank you. If you can't, again, we love you anyway, so don't worry about it. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to [email protected].

• 50:30Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 50:46Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop Toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 51:17Speaker 03

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• 51:59Speaker 04

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment. A Lincoln Original Series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 52:31Speaker 05

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.