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James Goulka lives upstairs from Frank Lloyd Wright's old bedroom. His commute from his work space, set up at Wright's unassuming corner desk, to an apartment above the master's old living quarters, is nine steps.
Goulka, 55, never met Wright, whose legacy he is now charged with protecting. But he is clearly an admirer, and he's shaken up a few things in the name of guarding Wright's domain.
"I think this is one of the coolest little spaces around," Goulka said, stepping from the claustrophobically low-ceilinged outer area of Wright's bedroom at Taliesin to the dramatic opening in the center. "You feel the expansiveness, a soaring ceiling, all the windows around you."
"Cool" is one of two words that Goulka, the new president and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, uses a lot. He studied Wright's works as an art history major at Yale before getting a master's in business administration from that school.
As a child, Goulka lived in a house in Oak Park, Ill., across the street from Wright's former home and studio. He noted that his mother spent much time looking through a bay window of her home at the Wright house while she was pregnant with him.
Goulka said visiting every Wright site in North America and Japan is a personal goal that shapes his life. He estimates he's visited about a quarter of the 600 sites.
The other word? "Bigger." And that leads to another term Goulka likes to...