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From 1911 until 1958, the year before his death, Frank Lloyd Wright was continuously building and rebuilding Taliesin, his tawny, low-slung home and studio complex in the lush Wyoming Valley south of here.
But until recently, Taliesin was crumbling. Foundations had slumped, windows had caved in, joists had rotted a tragic fate for an architectural treasure that has been nominated to join the Pyramids of Egypt and Chartres Cathedral on a list of the world's most valued cultural properties.
Now, with $8 million worth of help from the state, the rebuilding of Taliesin has begun again. Rot has given way to renewal.
"By last summer, finally, it wasn't falling down faster than we were fixing it. We realized that we were winning the battle," said Peter Rathbun, a genial, bearded architectural historian who is preservation administrator of the Taliesin Preservation Commission.
The non-profit commission, established in 1990, grew out of recommendations by a bipartisan task force established by Gov. Tommy Thompson. The commission is working in partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which owns Taliesin, to restore the architect's residence and the four other Wright-designed buildings on the 600-acre property.
The budget for the effort is $24 million, which most experts think is conservative.
The first $8 million came as a loan from the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority; $1 million of the $8 million needed from the private sector also has come in, even though a major fund-raising push has not yet begun. The remaining $8 million is being sought from the federal government, although that plan stalled in the House of Representatives last year.
Mindful of Wright's scorn for frozen-in-time preservation, the restorers treat...