During his seventy-year career, Wisconsin-born architect and social philosopher
Frank Lloyd Wright
designed such structures as New York's spiraling Guggenheim Museum and Tokyo's earthquake-proof
Imperial Hotel
. Three miles south of
SPRING GREEN
, itself forty miles west of Madison on Hwy-14, stand Wright's magnificent former residence,
Taliesin
, and his
Hillside Home School
. The streamlined geometry and functional grandeur of the latter, opened in 1932, exemplify Wright's break from the boxy, fustian Victorian style (May-Oct daily, tours on the hour 10am-4pm; $10). His studio is imposing; there's also a jewel-like theater space. Extensive and varied tours are also available of the house (daily except Wed at 9.30am & 1.30pm; reservation only; $40) and grounds (May-Oct daily at 10.45am & 1.45pm; $15). These and other, pricier, tours leave from the
Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center
(tel 608/588-7900,
), designed by Wright in 1953 as a restaurant; it now features displays, a café and a bookstore. Among numerous other Wright-influenced buildings are the bank, pharmacy and the lounge of the
Post House
, 127 E Jefferson St (tel 608/588-2595), a mid-priced restaurant downtown.
From 1944 onward, Alex Jordan built the
House on the Rock
, six miles south of Taliesin on Hwy-23, on and out of a natural, 60ft, chimney-like rock - for no discernible reason. He certainly never lived in it, nor did he intend it to become Wisconsin's number one tourist attraction (mid-March-Oct daily 9am-dusk; Nov-Dec holiday tour daily 10am-6pm; $19.50, or $12.50 Nov-Dec). Only the first section of this multilevel series of furnished nooks and chambers bears any resemblance to a house of any kind. With its low ceilings, indirect lighting, indoor pools, waterfalls, trees and pervasive shag carpeting, the style is a sort of Frank Lloyd Wright meets
The Flintstones
. The rest of the house is a logic-free labyrinth, containing Jordan's astounding collection of collections (antiques, nickelodeons and pneumatic music machines, miniature circuses, dolls and dolls' houses, maritime memorabilia, armor and firearms, ad infinitum), with little to indicate what is genuine or imitation, and no clue as to what it all means. The net effect is overwhelming and disorienting, alternately great fun and ghastly. Highlights include the
Infinity Room
, comprising three thousand small glass panels tapering to a point and cantilevered several hundred feet above the Wyoming Valley. A complex of other attractions has been added to the fifty-acre grounds, including the utterly dazzling
World's Largest Carousel
(with 269 fabulous figures and some 20,000 lights), a circus building, a giant doll's house and an old-style shopping street.
