On this day in history, famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright was away attending to the construction of Midway Gardens in Chicago when he received a terrible message: “Taliesin destroyed by fire,” it read, and that was all. For the time being, at least, Wright knew little: Their servant, Julian Carlton, had attacked Mamah, Wright’s mistress, her two children, and a group of Taliesin workmen, pouring gasoline under the door and setting the home ablaze. When some victims broke windows and tried to escape, Carlton hacked at them from outside the house with a hatchet.
History Daily: 365 Fascinating Happenings Volume 1 & Volume 2 – August 15, 1914
Frank Lloyd Wright started as an architect in the well-to-do Chicago suburb of Oak Park. He designed several homes in his unique “Prairie” style, emphasizing family life’s importance. Wright was a family man, married to Catherine and father to six children.
As his Prairies style grew in popularity, so too did Wright. And with popularity came temptation. He began having affairs with clients’ wives. Then he started an affair with Mary “Mamah” Borthwick Cheney in 1903 while designing a home for her husband.
Image: Frank Lloyd Wright in 1926. (Wikimedia Commons)
Borthwick was an early feminist, a well-educated woman who could speak multiple languages. She was the first woman Wright considered his intellectual equal. As the Cheney house was being completed, Borthwick and Wright would have sexual encounters in the bedroom. Unfortunately, Wright’s unique architectural style was his undoing: thanks to the open floor plans and large windows, neighbor children could climb up trees and watch them.
While this was undoubtedly the nadir of his career, he did manage to get a commission to design Midway Gardens in Chicago. He was there in August 1914. He left Borthwick and her two small children, who were visiting for the summer, back at Taliesin, the home he had built for Borthwick and himself in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
On Saturday, August 15, at midday, the Taliesin household sat down for lunch. Borthwick and her two children sat on the porch. Wright’s long-time personal aide and handyman, 30-year-old Barbados native Julian Carlton, served them lunch, as he always did. Down a long hallway, in the formal dining room, a crew of workers also sat down to eat, and Carlton served them. He told his wife, Gertrude, the family cook, to go home.
As they started eating, Carlton said he needed some gasoline to clean a carpet, a common practice at the time. Carlton found the can of gas, and as the others ate, he snuck around the building, bolting the doors shut before grabbing an axe.
One of the workers said they smelled gas and saw the liquid flowing under the door just before it caught fire. While the workers desperately tried to escape, Carlton ran down the long hallway to the porch and immediately buried the axe deep into Borthwick’s forehead. Next, he began hacking at the children. Martha, the daughter, nearly escaped, her dress in flames, before dying on the lawn, her head crushed in. John, Martha’s son, was not so lucky.
Back at the main dining room, 19-year-old draftsman Herbert Fritz broke through a window and escaped the inferno. He rolled down the hill to put out his flaming clothes, and when he looked up, he saw that the whole house was engulfed in flames. In the meantime, Carlton continued attacking the workers as they exited the house.
Two other men managed to escape: 35-year-old master carpenter William Weston, who had built Taliesin, and 38-year-old gardener David Lindblom. The three and Herbert Fritz ran to a nearby house to call for help.
Soon neighbors arrived to put out the fire, and they came upon a gruesome scene: the bodies of the Cheney children and three workers – Weston’s 13-year-old son, Ernest; draftsman Emil Brodelle, 26; and foreman Thomas Bunker, 68 – lying dead on the lawn. Mary Borthwick’s body would eventually be found inside, her skull nearly cleaved in two. Later, Lindblom would succumb to his burns and die, bringing the death total to seven.
As the fire was being doused, the local sheriff formed a posse to track down Carlton. They eventually found him curled up, barely conscious, in the basement. He had swallowed acid in a failed suicide attempt. He was nearly lynched on the spot, but the sheriff got him away and drove him to the nearby jail, with carloads of angry men in hot pursuit.
Because of the wounds sustained to his mouth and throat from the acid, Carlton could not speak or eat. So police tried to Ascertain his motive by questioning his wife and all the other workers on the estate. Gertrude told police that Carlton had become more and more paranoid in the weeks leading up to the massacre and had started keeping an axe near the bed. Surviving workers said there had been some disputes with Carlton recently, including a rumor that he had been called a racial slur.
There was also a rumor that Borthwick had told Carlton that he was being let go, and Gertrude confirmed that the two of them were scheduled to take the train to Chicago that evening. Considering that Borthwick was his first victim, this makes the most sense as a motive. But in the end, no reason could be confirmed. Carlton died of starvation seven weeks later before he could stand trial.
The press was savage in their coverage of the crime, attributing Borthwick’s death to proof of an Avenging Angel, as though this were the punishment she deserved for “disregarding the bonds of marriage.”
Wright buried her in his family’s plot in the nearby Unity Chapel cemetery, which he had designed. He buried her at night, in secret, in a plain pine box under a wreath of flowers. He then sent local newspapers an open letter thanking the community for their support and defending Borthwick.
In the letter, he also vowed to rebuild Taliesin in her memory. And he did. By the end of the year, he had rebuilt the residential wing – and already fallen in love with another woman.
But the rebuilt Taliesin would not stand for long. In April 1925, faulty wires ignited another fire that destroyed the living quarters. Wright again rebuilt his estate, serving as his studio, school, and home until he died in 1959.
Today it still serves as a museum to Wright. But the tragedy of 1914 is scarcely mentioned, considered a blot on his otherwise great legacy.
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