The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

I learned this evening of Edgar Tafel's death last Monday. As friends have pointed out, we should rejoice in his full, rich life. He died peacefully at home, in his beloved townhouse in lower Manhattan.

Edgar graciously wrote the introduction to "Wright in Racine," my first book, in 2004. We got to know each other when I called him on behalf of the Racine Heritage Museum, which was planning a Wright exhibit in 2001.

I had read in Jonathan Lipman's "Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings" that the company was close to breaking ground on a design by a local architect when H.F. Johnson Jr. was persuaded to meet Frank Lloyd Wright. They met, the other architect was dismissed, and today we have Wright's SC Johnson Administration Building.

Edgar, who was one of the original apprentices in the Taliesin Fellowship (1932-1941), supervised construction of the Administration Building and of Wingspread, among other projects.

Edgar in 2007 with photo of him as an apprentice.

I had asked many people in Racine if they had any inkling what the other building would have looked like. They did not. I asked Edgar the same question. "I made a drawing of it in 1995 for a lecture! Would you like to see it?" The drawing was in my mailbox two days later, and our friendship began.

I had the pleasure of picking Edgar up at the airport in Milwaukee when he came out to give a lecture at the museum in Racine. Our first stop was the Albert House (19) in North Bay, next to Racine. The Albert House was his first private commission. Rita Albert, his client, met him at the door. Edgar bowed, "Madam, your architect is here." A warm reunion followed.

I last saw Edgar in May, 2007, on a visit home to New York City. Edgar took me on a tour of the neighborhood, eager to point show me his nearby addition for the First Presbyterian Church, below.

Below is a profile of Edgar that I wrote in 2002 for The Journal Times.

The photos of Edgar are from 2002 (at the Administration Building) and 2007 (in New York)

by Mark Hertzberg
Journal Times

Edgar Tafel was a conscientious young architect, a 26-year-old apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright in the Taliesin Fellowship in Spring Green, when he did too good a job on his first commission, a house he designed for a Racine family in 1938. Word filtered back to Wright a few years later that the clients were delighted because the house was done on time and under budget, and the roof didn’t leak.

The clients may have been delighted, but Wright was not. Not only did he have a reputation for not meeting budgets and deadlines, as well as for some problems with leaky roofs, he worried about the priorities of Tafel and the other apprentices as commissions came in for them.
“‘Any print that leaves this place has my name on it,’ was Wright’s way of thinking, and that became a point of friction,” says John Albert, a Racine attorney who is a friend of Tafel’s. “It may be that Tafel was being seen to emerge as a highly effective, independent architectural genius, which may not have fit Wright’s view of the proper role of an apprentice.”

Wright was very direct about his concern, Tafel recalls. Wright called all the apprentices together, something he rarely did, and told them, “From now on there will be one prima donna, and that’s me.” Tafel and his fellow apprentices had thought they had a long future with the Fellowship, but Tafel saw trouble ahead, and left the program to strike out on his own, nine years after he’d made the long bus and train journey from New York City to Spring Green.

He had distinguished himself as an apprentice, supervising construction of three of Wright’s most famous buildings, the SC Johnson and Son Administration Building; Wingspread, the Johnson home; and Fallingwater in Bear Run, Pa.

The Administration Building construction headquarters were in a former bar and grill across from the job site on 16th Street, and H.F. Johnson Jr. wrote on the blackboard that “Mr. Wright authorized Edgar Tafel to carry on first... during his stay in Arizona.”

Tafel, 90, returns to Racine this week to pay homage to Wright as part of the Racine Heritage Museum’s year-long celebration of “Wright In Racine,” an exhibit that continues through Oct. 15 at the museum at 701 Main St.

Despite the disagreement that led to Tafel’s decision to leave the Fellowship, Wright had a soft spot for him. When Tafel faced a board of 10 architects to get his license in New York City in 1948, he spotted a letter with a red symbol on top of his folder which the 10 examiners were passing around. The symbol could be nothing else but Wright’s signature, and each of the architects snorted when he read the letter. Tafel asked if they would share the contents of the letter with him because he had given so much of his life to Wright. One of the examiners replied, “He says we’re not qualified to judge you.” Tafel chuckles as he tells the story, “They certified me in spite of him.”
Tafel still has an affinity for Racine because of that first commission in a career that has spanned more than 50 years. “Racine is a part of my whole life.”

Tafel had gotten that first commission after giving a speech to a service club in Racine when an attorney living in Wright’s Hardy House at 1319 Main St. asked him to help a recently married young attorney in the firm. The result was a home surrounded by nature, on a spectacular lot In North Bay, overlooking Lake Michigan.

Tafel was so saddened by the news of Wright’s death in 1959 that he didn’t know whether he could attend his funeral in Spring Green. His wife told him he had to go, that he’d regret it if he didn’t.

Tafel learned at the funeral that Wright had praised him indirectly, perhaps as only Wright could. It’s a story that Tafel tells with gusto. He was talking to Marshall Erdman, a Madison builder who had worked closely with Wright, and Erdman asked him if he wanted to know what Wright had once said about him. “I was kind of scared,” Tafel says, but he asked Erdman to tell him anyway. When asked about his former apprentice one day, Wright had thought for a minute before replying, “Edgar is a man with a mind of his own.”

Tafel’s distinguished career includes some 85 homes, 35 houses of worship, as well as colleges, factories, community centers, and additions to existing buildings. There are five Tafel homes in Racine, and he worked on a number of other projects here, including a shopping center once proposed for the north side. Tafel has also been active in international efforts to preserve buildings designed by Wright, and in preserving Wright’s legacy in books, television appearances, and lectures.

Independent thinker, and respected architect, Tafel learned well from his mentor.