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Drawn to Spring Green

Creative urges converge in Frank Lloyd Wright's hometown.

There's a story behind everything in Spring Green.

Frank Lloyd Wright's story begins in the 1860s, when his unconventional grandparents and their 10 children emigrated from Wales to settle this dramatic valley of the Wisconsin River, which came to be known as "the valley of the God-almighty Joneses.''

The story of Alex Jordan's House on the Rock, atop a limestone spire that overlooks the valley and Wright's beloved home, is rooted in spite. After his father traveled from Madison to show Wright blueprints for a rooming house, and was harshly snubbed, he vowed to get even and "put a Japanese house up out there.''

The founders of the renowned American Players Theatre ended up in Spring Green after considering 43 other sites. They chose a hillside site near the river for its superb acoustics, built an amphitheater and staged the first play in 1980.

Marion Nelson's South Asia imports shop, in a 1903 hay barn, draws collectors from many states. Its story begins in the 1940s in a small Minnesota farm town, where young Marion grew up dreaming of the India that would become her part-time home.

They all came to this valley — or, in Wright's case, returned to it — along with many artists and artisans, who settled amid its wooded bluffs and ridges.

"We call it the Spring Green vortex,'' said manager Michael Anderson at Taliesin Bookstore at the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center. "There's something going on here.''

Wright likened the pull of these unglaciated hills to a stretched rubber band. Nelson says that when she and her husband, Duane, first drove through from their home in Illinois, "it was like it was pulling us in.''

Today, it's the tourists who are pulled in.

Visitors come from all over the world to House on the Rock. There's even a Christmas tour, adding excess to excess:  more than 6,000 Santas, sitting between wooden soldiers on the booming Gladiator Calliope, being pulled by mermaids on the 182-chandelier Carousel, surfing next to a giant whale tail on Heritage of the Seas.

It's not exactly festive, but it's a spectacle.

"It's unbelievable,'' said visitor Pat Phillips of Cottage Grove, Minn. "This guy had to have a bolt loose, but he's so creative. I've never seen anything like this.''

No one really knows what drove Alex Jordan to turn his father's "Japanese house,'' begun in 1946, into a 16-building, over-the-top collection of stuff. Frank Lloyd Wright, however, was brashly outspoken about his architectural motivations, reflecting the Lloyd Jones family motto: "Truth against the world.''

Taliesin is here, the 1911 masterpiece he built for his ill-fated mistress near a sharp bend in the Wisconsin River that the local Sauk and Winnebago considered sacred. There's the Hillside Home School, which he built for his sisters in 1902, and the 1897 Romeo and Juliet Windmill Tower.

There's the 1886 family chapel that was Wright's first design job, as an 18-year-old apprentice; his 1956 schoolhouse; and Taliesin's cow barn and dairy tower, with a conical spire to "commemorate the Guernsey teats.''

They're distinctively Wrightian, with red hipped roofs, rows of windows to let the outside in and strong horizontal lines, reflecting the stacked slabs of golden limestone in nearby outcroppings.

"His family had a Unitarian love of nature, and his architecture reflects the idea that nature is inherently good,'' said Taliesin tour guide Erik Flesch. "He said he could design everything from chicken coop to cathedral, and everything would be just as beautiful and just as perfect for its purpose.''

The tours include the family cemetery outside Unity Chapel, where the epitaph of Wright's strong-willed mother, Anna Lloyd Jones, reads, "She loved the truth and sought it.''

"She was an intense woman,'' Flesch noted.

Farther along the river and up a hill is another building whose golden color is closer to the saffron robes of a Buddhist monk. This is the Dharma House, a teaching center and retreat for Tibetan monks, and the Medicine Buddha Healing Center, the first official North American branch of the Dalai Lama’s medical institute.

In the hay barn next door is Global View, which, at first, looks like an ordinary shop. But how many shops carry old leather masks from the Indian desert, puppets used at the funerals of childless Indonesians and temple toys from Tibet?

"It looks like a museum, but it isn't,'' said manager Kathy Madigan. "The difference  is that you can pick things up, touch them and get a feel for the people who made them.''

A trip to Global View is a lesson in South Asian cultures, and, in fact, the complex regularly hosts schoolchildren on field trips, as well as cultural groups on tour. It's an unusual collection of stuff, but founder Marion Nelson can tell customers exactly who made everything and how it's used.

"We're the house off the rock,'' said Nelson, who spends four months a year in India and Indonesia visiting friends and buying art and artifacts. "We're trying to be a respectful place for the artisans whose works are here; if people are putting their heart and soul into something, it's the least we can do.''

This is the place to come for a shimmering Kashmiri rug of hand-embroidered silk, soft slippers of Indian camel leather stitched in gold or a Balinese table carved from the root of a litchi tree.

Many people come to this valley to look and to shop; in October, it's one of the stops on the big Southwest Wisconsin Fall Art Tour. Painters, potters, woodcarvers and glass blowers have set up shop in the hills;.

Many Spring Green artists are among the 50 represented at the Wisconsin Artists Showcase on Washington Street, a former cheese warehouse that also holds the studio of papermaker Jura Silverman. On Winsted Street, Gallery Art on 23 carries the work of 25 artists, as well as the studio of glassblower Colleen Ott.

And whatever you buy, from a Tibetan singing bowl to an etched-glass vase, you'll know one thing: In Spring Green, it'll be an original.

Trip Tips: Spring Green

Getting there: It's an hour or less west of Madison.

2010 events:  May 30, BobFest at Spring Green General Store. June 26-27, Spring Green Arts and Crafts Fair. Sept. 6, BeatleFest at Spring Green General Store. Oct. 15-17, Southwest Wisconsin Fall Art Tour.

Accommodations: The Silver Star Inn B&B Inn outside town has friendly proprietors and 10 attractive rooms. 608-935-7297.

In town, the pleasant Hill Street B&B, a 1904 Victorian, has seven rooms, 608-588-7751.

House on the Rock Resort, formerly Springs Golf Club, is a lovely Wright-style resort between the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center and the American Players Theatre, in a beautiful valley between two ridges.

It has very handsome two-room suites with microwaves, mini-fridges, spa baths and patios or balconies with a view of a ridge. There's a pool, lap pool, hot tub, racquetball court and locker rooms with saunas and steam rooms . 800-822-7774.

Dining: At the Wright Visitors Center, Riverview Terrace Cafe has a lovely view of the river and is open daily for breakfast and lunch and for dinner until 9 p.m. Thursday, 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 8 p.m. Sunday, 608-588-4507.

Spring Green General Store is open only until 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday, but it features such specials as risotto margherita and curries in addition to its sandwiches, burritos and salads. 608-588-7070.

The Bank Restaurant & Wine Bar on Jefferson Street downtown has a luxe setting in an ornate 1915 former bank building and a changing menu, 608-588-7600.

The Grandview at House on the Rock Resort features a build-your-own pasta bowl, steaks, chops and seafood. Its Turn Pub and Grill has a more casual menu.

Theater-goers can order picnic dinners from the Hubbard Avenue Diner in Middleton to eat before the show.

House on the Rock: It's open daily from late March to early November, closes briefly, then reopens in mid-November for a Christmas tour through early January. From early January to late March, it's open Fridays-Mondays.

There are three tours. The Ultimate Experience Tour, which includes them all, is $26.50, $15.50 for ages 4-17. 608-935-3639.

Frank Lloyd Wright Visitors Center: It's open daily from May through October and weekends in November and April. Five different tours are offered. A one-hour tour of Wright's 1902 Hillside School, an introduction to his life and work, is $16, free for children under 18 when accompanied by an adult.

The two-hour Shuttle/Walking Tour is $20; the two-hour House Tour is $47; the two-hour Highlights Tour is $52; and the all-inclusive estate tour is $80. Add $4 for reservations, 877-588-7900.

American Players Theater. In 2010, it will perform "As You Like It,'' "All's Well That Ends Well,'' "Another Part of the Forest,'' "The Circle'' and "Major Barbara'' in the Up-the-Hill Theatre.

In the Touchstone Theatre, it will stage "Waiting for Godot,'' "The Syringa Tree'' and "Exits and Entrances.''

The plays are performed in repertory June 5 to Oct. 17. Tickets are $35-$53. 608-588-2361.

Shopping: Bargain Nook III is downtown, as are the Spring Green General Store. Most shops and galleries are open daily in summer; in winter, many are open only on weekends, so check hours. Good stops include No Rules Jewelry & Gallery, Panacea, Gallery Art on 23 and Jura Silverman Gallery, all downtown, and  Global View across the river, 608-583-5311.

If it's your birthday, you can get discounts and free stuff all over town, including admission to House on the Rock. For more, see Wisconsin's birthday town.

Information: Spring Green tourism, 800-588-2042.

Last updated on March 5, 2010