Edgar Tafel: Flame-Keeping Architect

Frank Lloyd Wright has been dead for almost 40 years, yet the man who many say was the world's greatest architect - and who was certainly its most famous - remains very much in the public eye, most recently with the completion of Monona Terrace, a civic center in Madison, Wis. Wright first proposed Monona Terrace in the mid-1930s and his followers finished it this summer.

One reason for Wright's long run in the limelight is Edgar Tafel of Springs. The retired architect, who has consulted on many documentaries and exhibits of Wright's work, lectures extensively about his nine years as one of Wright's apprentices at universities and museums across the country.

He is the author of "Years With Frank Lloyd Wright: Apprentice to Genius," a memoir, and of "About Wright," a collection of letters and stories.

"I Was There"

"I do it because I love the history," said Mr. Tafel, who at 85 retains an almost photographic memory and spouts Frank Lloyd Wright anecdotes as readily as a dedicated baseball fan can recall his favorite player's batting average from 10 years ago.

"There is a tremendous amount of interest in the subject," he said. "People want to know about Mr. Wright. Why should they go ask some professor who will tell them what they think he was about? I was there."

Mr. Tafel joined Wright's Taliesin Fellowship in Spring Green, Wis., in 1932 after his first year of studies at New York University, and extended what had begun as a one-year stay to 1941, when he broke off to start his own practice.

His arrival at Taliesin came during the depths of the Depression, when building had ground to a halt. Wright, at the time, was trying to revive a career that had been severely damaged by scandal - he had run off with the wife of a client - and to erase his reputation as a deadbeat.

While commissions were few, it was a time of great intellectual ferment and inspiration. During Mr. Tafel's stay, Wright and his associates executed some of their most famous work.

The projects included Fallingwater, Edgar J. Kaufmann's country home outside Pittsburgh, universally known for its poured concrete balconies cantilevered over a rushing stream; the brick and glass Johnson Wax Company building in Racine, Wis., which caused a sensation when it opened in 1938 and continues to draw tourists, including a good many architects from around the world, and Wingspread, a low-slung, sprawling Johnson family residence north of Racine.

Usonian Community

The fellowship also labored on Wright's Broad Acre City, a vision of urban living in the future; early plans for Monona Terrace, and some of Wright's first Usonian homes, designed as affordable housing for the middle class.

"People ask me if Mr. Wright had any influence on me," said Mr. Tafel. "If you studied with Beethoven, and were there when he composed his nine symphonies, something would have to rub off."

Or, at the very least, dazzle the observer.

Once, Mr. Tafel recounted, Wright received a phone call from Mr. Kaufmann in Pittsburgh. He wanted to come to Taliesin to check on the progress of his house.

"Come along, E.J. We're ready for you," Wright told his client.

In the drafting room, there was quiet panic. While the site had been plotted, Wright had not committed a single sketch to paper.

Wright At Work

For the next several days, as he drove toward Wisconsin, the client called to check in. Each time, Wright reassured him, but did nothing.

Finally, a call came from Milwaukee. Mr. Kaufmann was less than 140 miles away.

After hanging up the phone, Wright strode into the drafting room and sat down. While Mr. Tafel and another assistant kept him supplied with sharp pencils, Wright began to draw, erase, draw again, all the time talking to himself about where the Kaufmanns would take their afternoon tea and such.

When Mr. Kaufmann was announced a few short hours later, Wright had completed the floor plans and elevations for one of his masterpieces.

"E.J.!" he said. "We've been waiting for you!"

His Own Mark

While acknowledging Wright's artistic drive and individuality ("He was not a product of the system.")Mr. Tafel was not afraid to make his own mark.

"Just because you were influenced by him didn't mean everything you did had to be Wrightian," he said at the Louse Point Road residence he shares with his companion, Jean Gollay. "Take this house. There is nothing Frank Lloyd Wright about it. It's all Jean and Edgar."

That's true. The couple live in a bayman's house that has been extensively renovated and expanded in a traditional style, including the addition of a second story and a rooftop terrace with a view of Accabonac Harbor.

Mr. Tafel designed the living room, with a study above, to let light enter from all sides. An enclosed staircase provides ample wall space for an extensive art collection. The overall effect is of simplicity and comfort, like a favorite sweater.

Early Education

Mr. Tafel was born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants. "My mother was a seamstress. She worked in sweatshops," he said. His father claimed to have "printed his own passport" to get to the United States. Together, they started a dressmaking business.

When success came, the Tafels, "who were involved in the Liberal movement," moved to Stelton, N.J., and joined the Ferrer Colony, named for a Spanish educator and anarchist who had been executed by the Spanish Government in 1909.

Their son attended the colony's Modern School. "Every morning, we assembled and sang and danced. Then we could go to whatever class we wanted, sculpture, painting, printing. They taught English in printing class."

Playing With Blocks

The boy enjoyed playing with colorful blocks and designing model towns with them. "Everyone said, 'Edgar is going to be an architect.' "

Later, Mr. Tafel attended the Walden School in Manhattan - he would later design an addition to the school - before transferring to a public high school and taking art classes on the side. The books he was reading about his chosen field included "The Autobiography of an Idea" by Louis Sullivan, the Chicago architect with whom Frank Lloyd Wright got his start, and Mr. Wright's own autobiography, published in 1932.

That summer, an aunt showed him an article in The New York Herald-Tribune. "Your hero is opening an architecture school," she said.

At Taliesin

Mr. Tafel applied and was accepted, at a reduced tuition. Wright took him for less money, he later learned, because he was so strapped for cash.

At Taliesin, times were hard. "It was terrible," Mr. Tafel said. "There was simply no money."

Students were put to work renovating and expanding Wright's beloved house and studio on a hill overlooking the Wisconsin River Valley. They plowed fields and helped with the cooking. With no work coming in, they spent their time recopying Wright's older buildings.

"One of the basics at Taliesin was, we lived in buildings that we put together. We worked in buildings that we put together. It stuck with you."

Supervised Fallingwater

As things improved, the apprentices who had been at Taliesin for a while were given more responsibilities. Mr. Tafel supervised the work at Fallingwater for a time and served as clerk of the works at the Johnson Wax building.

Eventually, he began to bring in his own work. He designed a house, with Wright's help, for a friend of Mr. Johnson's in Racine. The clients were thrilled, said Mr. Tafel, but when the great man caught wind of his apprentice's success, he did a slow burn.

"He called a meeting of the fellowship at 9 o'clock on a Saturday night," Mr. Tafel said. "We knew something important was up because he never did that."

Wright told the group that henceforth apprentices who brought in outside work would be responsible for it but would receive only one-third the commission, not half as before. "There will be only one prima donna in this organization," he told them, "and I'm it."

Independence

The end came soon for Mr. Tafel. "A few of the guys were sitting around drinking beer one night analyzing the future," he said, "and I realized it wasn't going to work for me." He resigned the next day. When he told Wright of his plans to leave, the response was, "The sooner, the better."

It would not be easy. Mr. Tafel went to work for a major firm in Chicago, where Wright's reputation had not yet recovered from his indiscretions. "They called him Frank Lloyd Wrong."

One day, one of the firm's principals happened by Mr. Tafel's drafting table. "I see you were with Wright," he said. "I suppose you think he's the best architect in the country."

Mr. Tafel thought about it for a moment and replied, "I'd have to say he's the best architect in the world." That evening, a white envelope appeared on his desk. In it was his paycheck and a letter informing him he had been fired.

On His Own

The United States entered World War II soon after, and Mr. Tafel quickly found work with Uncle Sam. For most of the war he was stationed in Calcutta, India, doing drafting work for an Army photo-intelligence unit.

After the war, said Mr. Tafel, "I decided I was never going to work for anyone else again." He returned to New York, passed his architecture exams, and opened his own practice.

By now Wright's reputation had recovered, and Mr. Tafel received some commissions thanks to his former association. Mostly, though, he said, word spread that "my buildings came in on time, within budget, and they didn't leak" - which was not always the case with his mentor, he remarked with a sly smile.

Unlike Wright, who could be arrogant and unbending - when Mr. Johnson complained of a leaky roof at Wingspread, Wright told him to move his chair - Mr. Tafel learned the importance of pragmatism.

"You have to please your clients. You have to solve their problem," he said.

SUNY Commissions

The approach worked. Mr. Tafel has designed 90 houses and 35 churches and synagogues, including the church school and office at Manhattan's First Presbyterian Church on West 12th Street, one of his favorites.

His practice later expanded to include commissions for the State University of New York system. In a joint venture, Mr. Tafel's firm and two others designed the expansion of the State University at Geneseo in the '60s. Mr. Tafel was responsible for the fine arts building, a student center, and dormitories.

In the mid-70s, at the height of his career, Mr. Tafel employed 20 people. "We had $25 million worth of projects on the table - and then the crash came," he said.

Unrelenting inflation was battering the economy. A slew of projects were stillborn, including an $8 million social science building for the State University at Buffalo. "They had the contracts drawn up, but they couldn't sell the bonds," the architect recalled.

Second Career

He eventually was forced to give up his office and most of his staff, setting up a smaller operation in his Greenwich Village house with a few trusted employees. "We poked along like that for a few more years," Mr. Tafel said.

By then, however, as the interest in Wright "just grew and grew and grew," he had launched his second career. Although he left Wright's employ under a bit of a cloud, Mr. Tafel had re-established ties during the 1950s, even helping Wright find the contractor who would build his last work, the Guggenheim Museum, within budget.

He was never sure what Wright really thought of him, though, until 1959, when he met a former colleague at Wright's funeral. The man said he had asked Wright his opinion of Mr. Tafel not long before he died. "Edgar Tafel has a mind of his own," the master replied.