This Day in Architectural History (Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mistress Slain in Their Dream House by Insane Servant)

August 15, 1914—Urgent business on a project called Frank Lloyd Wright to Chicago—miles away from Taliesin, the Wisconsin home he had designed as a haven from disapproving eyes for himself and mistress Mamah Borthwick Cheney. While the architect—not as famous for his scandals as for his genius--was gone, a recently hired cook locked the dining room and set it ablaze, then stood by a door with an ax to ensure that nobody could get out.

Borthwick, her two children, and four other people perished in the blaze.

One can only imagine the mixture of embarrassment and shock among Wright and his two companions on the railroad back to the rambling house: his son from his estranged wife Catherine, John, and Edwin Cheney, a former client cuckolded by Wright.

For all his distress, Wright vowed to rebuild. He had reason to do so: one of the survivors of the blaze, Taliesen’s carpenter, Will Weston, could not save the residential wing, but the drafting studio and agricultural wing could be salvaged.

Little did Wright know that faulty wing would, more than 10 years later, lead to a second fire—and yet another rebuilding attempt.

In a way, the catastrophes serve as an apt symbol for an architect who managed to survive as a working architect all the way into his early nineties (the Guggenheim Museum, his last significant institutional creation, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year). Time after time over the years, he was written off as a has-been, only to come back with another unusual design.

Wright had lived for more than 20 years in Oak Park, Ill. (Ernest Hemingway's birthplace) for more than 20 years before he and his lover made the momentous decision to run away from their conventional lives.