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The woke left has become adept at reframing historical narratives. History is often concealed, not erased — a form of lying by omission.
We are here to bring it to light.
One such case is the massacre of 1914 at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin home in which Julian Carlton, a 30-year-old black handyman from Barbados, killed seven white guests — including children — with a hatchet and set the house ablaze.
Blood and Fire in Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Love Cottage”
By the early 1900s, Frank Lloyd Wright was already a legend in the making — the daring mind behind Prairie-style homes that redefined American architecture. But in the summer of 1914, his name became forever linked to one of the most shocking murders in U.S. history — a massacre that left seven people dead and his dream home drenched in blood.
It all began with a scandal.
Wright, then 47 and married with six children, had fallen for Martha “Mamah” Borthwick Cheney, the wife of one of his wealthy Oak Park clients. Their affair ignited a firestorm of gossip across the Midwest. When they ran off to Europe together, it was national news. Seeking refuge from the judgmental glare of Chicago society, Wright built a new beginning — Taliesin, a secluded home and studio on a hill in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
He called it “Taliesin,” after a Welsh poet whose name meant “shining brow.” The press preferred a crueler nickname: “The Love Cottage.”
Locals whispered. Ministers condemned them. One county official even said Wright’s “immorality” would corrupt the town’s children. The architect didn’t care. “Laws and rules are made for the average,” he told reporters. “The really honest, sincere, thinking man must live without them.”
But some laws — and some forces — can’t be defied.
A Day of Fire
August 15, 1914.
Wright was away in Chicago that afternoon, working on new commissions. At Taliesin, Mamah and her children — John, 12, and Martha, 8 — sat down for lunch on the porch. Inside, several of Wright’s draftsmen and laborers gathered at a long table in the dining room. Lunch was being served by Julian Carlton, a 30-year-old handyman from Barbados who had worked at the estate all summer alongside his wife, Gertrude.
Then — a sound.
A worker later recalled hearing “a swish, as though water was thrown through the screen door.” A strange liquid began to pool across the floor. It wasn’t water. It was gasoline.
Within seconds, flames tore through the room. Carlton had locked the doors, attacked Mamah and her children with a hatchet, and set the house ablaze.
Draftsman Herbert Fritz, just 19, leapt through a window, his clothes on fire. As he rolled down the hillside, he saw Taliesin engulfed in flames, and through the smoke — Carlton swinging his hatchet at the workers trying to escape.
By the time help arrived, the once-peaceful home was a smoldering ruin. Seven people were dead — Mamah, her two children, two laborers, a 13-year-old boy, and two more employees. Only Fritz and one other man survived their burns.
The Killer’s Silence
Hours later, rescuers found Carlton in the furnace room, barely alive. He had swallowed muriatic acid in a failed suicide attempt. He never spoke again, dying from starvation weeks later in jail.
His motive was never proven. His wife said he’d become paranoid, sleeping with a hatchet beside his bed. Others claimed he’d been insulted by co-workers or enraged after being told he’d been fired. One witness remembered a chilling comment Carlton had made:
“If anyone around here ever did me any dirt, I’d send him to hell in a minute.”
Ashes and Aftermath
Even after the massacre, newspapers couldn’t resist moralizing, calling Taliesin “the ruined kingdom of love.” For Wright, it was a nightmare that would haunt him for life. Yet, through the grief and horror, he rebuilt.
By the end of 1914, the ashes of Taliesin rose again — only to burn once more a decade later, this time by accident. Still, Wright rebuilt it yet again, determined to outlast tragedy itself.
Today, Taliesin stands as a National Historic Landmark, serene and beautiful against the rolling Wisconsin hills — a place of art, genius, and the memory of a massacre that changed its creator forever.
Hollywood recently touted a movie about the tragic death of Emmett Till. We wonder if there will ever be a film about the massacre at Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Love Cottage” with the typical white-guilt embellishments.
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