I'll admit I'm a little biased. I've spent years working at Taliesin—Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio in southwestern Wisconsin—and my love for this place runs deep. It's the kind of deep that's hard to explain until you've stood on that hillside above the Wisconsin River, watched the light move across the valley, and felt, even in a small way, what Wright was reaching for when he built here. 

Wright didn't just work in Greater Madison. He was from here, in the truest sense—shaped by this land long before he ever put pencil to paper. This summer, his birthday weekend coincides with a milestone worth celebrating: the 75th anniversary of one of his most personal buildings, the Unitarian Meeting House in Madison. There has never been a better moment to plan a Wright-inspired getaway to this region. 

Jump around to plan your Wright-inspired weekend:

The Unitarian Meeting House at 75 

Wright's relationship with Madison runs deeper than most visitors realize. Over the course of his career, he designed more than two dozen structures in and around the city. Among them is the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House, completed in 1937—the first true Usonian home Wright ever built, and his most sustained attempt to create genuinely affordable, design-forward housing for ordinary American families. He also designed Monona Terrace, his sweeping lakefront civic center first conceived in the late 1930s, which took nearly sixty years and the determined advocacy of generations of Madisonians to complete in 1997. Madison has always taken Wright's vision seriously. 

But perhaps no building here speaks more directly to who Wright was than the Unitarian Meeting House. Given his roots—the Lloyd Jones family's faith, his boyhood in this landscape, his earliest lessons in architecture through the lens of a family chapel—it makes perfect sense that he would design a Unitarian meeting house, and that he would do it here.  

The First Unitarian Society commissioned Wright in the early 1940s, and after years of community fundraising and the particular kind of faith it takes to build something genuinely new, the Meeting House was completed in 1951. Its dramatic limestone prow reaches toward the Wisconsin sky like hands raised in prayer—which is exactly what Wright said he intended. It is one of his most personal buildings, and it remains an active congregation to this day. 

This summer, it turns 75. For anyone who wants to understand Wright—not just his architecture, but the full arc of his life and convictions—this building is essential. It is where the story comes full circle. 

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75th Gala Weekend 

The 75th Anniversary Gala Weekend is the centerpiece of Wright's birthday weekend in Greater Madison, bringing together tours, a commemorative gala, and related programming that honors both the building and the community that has sustained it across three-quarters of a century. 

Know Before You Go 

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More Things to Do During Wright’s Birthday Weekend

Wright's birthday weekend offers more than a single destination. Make the most of your time in Greater Madison with these experiences: 

  • Tour Taliesin in Spring Green: Wright's home, studio, and architectural laboratory. Stay for lunch at Riverview Terrace Cafe, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation's restaurant overlooking the Wisconsin River valley. Reserve tours early at franklloydwright.org, as they fill quickly. 
  • Visit Monona Terrace on Lake Monona—the building that took nearly sixty years to realize and was worth every one of them. Official tours are offered Thursday through Saturday for just $5. 
  • Wright in Madison Experience Pass: It’s a quick sign-up that connects you to sites, stories, and hidden gems across the region, and includes discounts and curated itineraries across Wright-related sites. 

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Recommended Hotels

Wright's birthday weekend is best enjoyed over a full stay. These hotels put you within easy reach of both Madison and the Spring Green area. 

Near Unitarian Meeting House:

Near Monona Terrace Community & Convention Center:

Near Taliesin:

  • Spring Valley Inn
  • House on the Rock Resort
  • You may also consider Middleton hotel options, located between the Unitarian Meeting House and Spring Green 

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Wright’s Roots in the Driftless

To understand Frank Lloyd Wright, you have to start with the land—and with the people who settled it. Wright's maternal family, the Lloyd Joneses, were Welsh, Unitarian, transcendentalist farmers who put down roots in Wisconsin's Driftless Area, that ancient unglaciated landscape of steep valleys and winding rivers in the southwestern part of the state. They built a community here rooted in self-reliance, reverence for the natural world, and a belief that honest work—in the fields, in the mind, in the spirit—was its own form of worship.

If you know a little about Welsh culture, a little about Unitarianism, and a little about transcendentalism, you know a lot about Frank Lloyd Wright. One of Wright's earliest exposures to architecture came through his uncle Jenkin Lloyd Jones, who commissioned a small family chapel in the valley—Unity Chapel—and hired Chicago architect Joseph Silsbee to design it. A young Wright worked on that project, absorbing the principles of a building that was modest, grounded, and deeply connected to the landscape around it. 

Wright left Wisconsin as a young man to pursue his career, but he came back. In 1911, he returned to this same valley—his grandfather's land, the ground he had worked as a boy—and began building Taliesin. It was at once a personal home, a working studio, and an architectural laboratory: a 1:1 experiment in everything he believed about how buildings should meet the earth. He built it into the brow of the hill rather than on top of it, rebuilding and refining it across decades. The more layers you peel back, the more you discover just how deeply this place is tied to Wright's core: it is both the mothership and an expression of his worldliness. An enigma, like him: bound by no rules, ever changing and evolving. 

Wright called Wisconsin his “somewhere”—the place he felt his roots, the land that put sap in his veins. Spend a weekend here and you'll understand why. We hope to see you this June.

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