EXPLORER AND PHOTOGRAPHER ALICE DIXON ADDS THE MYSTIC INTO MAYA EXPLORATIONS

Alice Dixon LePlongeon

At 22 years old, Alice Dixon met Augustus Le Plongeon, a world explorer of antiquities, in London, in 1871. Le Plongeon, 26 years her senior, traveled to Europe after successful journeys to South America and California. His extensive explorations in Peru and Chile led him to London to study Mexican and Maya artifacts and manuscripts at the British Museum where they met. 

Considered an amateur archeologist, Dixon, a second generation photog- rapher, photographed ruins at Chichen Itza and Uxmal alongside her husband.

Alice Dixon's father, Henry, was a copper-plate printer who became a successful photographer and was recognized for his development of panchromatic photographic for his photos of London architecture. Alice learned the principles of photography from her father and worked as his assistant in his studio.

SPIRITUAL INFLUENCES

Another family member with a strong influence on Alice was her uncle, Dr. Jacob Dixon, who practiced spiritualism. Alice became involved in that movement at a young age, participating in seances at her uncle's home.

As for Le Plongeon, in Peru he studied earthquakes and explored the country's archeological sites, including Tinhuanaco which he photographed while trying to assimilate clues as to who the builders of that empire might have been. In combination with his own Peruvian explorations, he'd read the works of John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, explorers of the Yucatan in the 1840s, and came to believe that civilization had early origins in the New World and he began to form philosophies on the world's great civilizations.

A few years into his South American sojourn, Le Plongeon heard of the California gold rush and jumped a ship to partake in that historic event, spending several years in gold country where he speculated on land and became a surveyor. There he managed to earn thirty thousand dollars in profits, enough to fund his trip to Europe as well as future South American travels. 

In Europe he stumbled onto a new photographic technique that used paper instead of metal and urged the inventor to teach him the process. This would serve him well when uncovering Yucatecan ruins, enabling he and Dixon to document their discoveries. Their photos of Uxmal and Chichen Itza remain some of the best ever taken as they show the pyramid sites as they stood for eons, long before archeologists re-discovered them.

HONEYMOON IN MEXICO

Soon after meeting, Alice and Le Plongeon were married. For their honey-moon they set sail for Cuba then onto Mexico, where they planned to explore ancient pyramid sites. They landed in Progreso, Yucatan, in 1873. 

A bout with yellow fever for Alice dampened their arrival but Le Plongeon nursed her back to health. During her recuperation the two studied Yucatecan Maya and became acquainted with local scholars. They believed communicating with present day Maya was an important step to interpreting the past. Alice remained a champion of the Maya her entire life, and wrote about them long after she left the Yucatan.

Alice in Palace of the Governors, Uxmal

Their first visit to see pyramids was at Uxmal, forty miles south of Merida. They were awed by the size of the site and camped in the Governor's Palace, sleeping on hammocks. They both took photos, cleared the land to better see the site and were determined to return again later.

Camping at Uxmal

CHICHEN ITZA

The number one item on the Le Plongeons' bucket list was Chichen Itza. He'd heard from a local that a sacred codex was buried there in a building with many chambers and he believed he could further his eccentric theory of Maya world supremacism if he could locate the text. Their timing overlapped the Caste War of Yucatan, and Piste, the pueblo nearby, was overrun with Chan Santa Cruz Indians. Le Plongeon, determined to search for the desired text, asked local authorities to post soldiers at the site as security.

He located the building, could not locate the text, but the building's lintel contained numerous glyphs which he believed could further his theory. He took 500 stereoscopic photos of the hieroglyphs, and he and Alice traced a number of murals and made molds of them in bas relief.

QUEEN MOO AND PRINCE CHACMOOL

They fixated on the Upper Temple of the Jaguars near the ball court. It was 1875. Workers discovered a large slab with carved figures holding outstretched arms. Le Plongeon called it Atlantis. Murals on the walls depicted village life, war scenes and rulers in court. The explorer concluded this was a generation of Maya rulers whose totem was an eagle or macaw. He declared it a symbol of a Maya princess who he christened Queen Moo (Maya for macaw). Her brother he named Prince ChacMool, powerful warrior, a reference to jaguar in Mayan. This flimsy attempt at a scholarly decision became the basis for his Maya myth as the center of world civilization and placed him squarely at odds with fellow archeologists of the time. His Maya "myth" led to much derision and plagued him his entire career.

The fabricated myth about a Maya princess and her warrior king brother who had been forced to flee Egypt, bringing their philosophies of the Maya with them, seduced the two at-one-time prominent Maya notables. They were viewed as the Maya world's "new age" scholars due to this far-fetched belief and the theory branded Le Plongeon as an eccentric crackpot, earning him disdain from those in his field. 

Excavation of ChacMool at Chichen Itza

Yet in spite of his oddball theories, Le Plongeon discovered the famous statue, ChacMool, five feet long weighing hundreds of pounds, which is virtually synonymous with Chichen Itza and the ancient Maya. Originally spelled Chaacmool, Maya for powerful warrior, the word was misspelled as ChacMool through a mis-translation by one of his missives to a benefactor. The ChacMool statue was lauded by the American Geographical Society as a great archeological find. The Le Plongeons struggled to bring the statue to the U.S. to display in Philadelphia at the America Centennial Exhibition but the president of Mexico denied their request. 

In the meantime, they sent other Maya artifacts to the U.S. to display at centennial ceremonies but the objects arrived too late. And in another spate of bad luck, the photos Le Plongeon had labored over were stolen by another archeologist who claimed them for his own. Soon even their main benefactor would give up on their excursions. At times they found it difficult to find money to eat, so dire was their situation. 

"SURROUNDED BY ENEMIES"

"Surrounded by enemies, Remington always at hand, death lurking in every direction," Alice wrote in a letter to a friend in 1877, describing their predicament. The Mexico government had refused to pay them for the extensive work they'd completed in not only raising the incredible ChacMool artifact but in delivering it to the pueblo Piste. With this final blow, they picked up and moved on to other ruins—Mayapan and sites in Honduras.

Their travels continued and in 1884 the Le Plongeons left Mexico and settled in New York. There Alice focused on her writing, both fact and fiction. She became well known for a series of articles written for the New York Times and other publications in which she romanticized the Maya world. Her best known work was Queen Moo's Talisman. Both she and her husband lectured non-stop in Europe and the U.S. promoting the Yucatan pyramids and the Maya. 

Queen Moo's Talisman

In A Dream of Maya, by Larry Desmond and Phyllis Messenger, Desmond explains if history had been kinder to the Le Plongeons, it would have depicted an extraordinary couple whose lifelong work had not been fairly appraised. The book gives deep insight into their lives and their controversial views and document their hard-nosed earnestness and early pioneering excavations—from digging up pyramid sites to drawing architectural floor plans and tracing murals to keeping detailed photographic records.

A Dream of Maya by Desmond and Messenger 

Their extensive explorations were done under the duress of the Caste War, yet they persisted and came away with great discoveries. 

Augustus Le Plongeon died in New York in 1908. Alice died in New York in 1910.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

WOMEN IN ARCHEOLOGY: LINDA SCHELE—MAYA SCHOLAR, ARTIST, AUTHOR—GONE TOO SOON

 

Linda Schele at Palenque (Photo Justin Kerr)

It's hard for me to write about Linda Schele. Not just because she was so central to the study and understanding of the Maya culture, their writings, civilization and how the world came to view them, but because she was my gateway into understanding the Maya. Just several short months after I'd 'discovered' her by reading her works in my bookstore smack dab in the middle of Maya country, she died at 55 from pancreatic cancer in 1998 in Austin. Since it was pre-internet days and we were in rural Mexico I didn't learn of her death until five months later—a customer broke the news. I was devastated. Even though I only knew Linda Schele through the printed page, I felt I'd lost a friend.

A FOREST OF KINGS

Schele became my Maya mentor for a number of reasons. By way of introduction, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya, co-authored with David Freidel, held me rapt for days. Not only was she an author, she was a woman studying and doing, taking chances in archeology, predominantly a man's world at the time (and who's to say, probably still is). She was vibrant and exciting and wrote beautiful volumes about this mysterious civilization which bordered on the mystic but were firmly rooted in science. First and foremost an artist, she wove a story about the ancient Maya, who at the time were lauded yet elusive. Her work and writings were approachable. She made remarkable progress in a short period of time. She learned the names of Maya rulers, a true breakthrough. Along with fellow scholars Floyd Lounsbury and Peter Mathews, they were first to decode a Maya king's name, Pacal, in 1973, at Palenque's Mesa Rodunda. It was the first meeting of Maya archeologists, scholars and admirers, also known as the Maya Roundtable. Pacal, by the way, was Palenque's greatest and longest running ruler. Nothing like starting at the top, Ms. Schele.

THE CALL

How did Linda fall under the spell of the Maya? A graduate from the University of Cincinnati with degrees in education and art, she was teaching studio art at the University of Alabama. In 1970 she traveled with David, her husband, to photograph Mesoamerican sites in the Yucatan for the University's collection. The next year they returned to Mexico in an obligatory visit to Palenque. "When they arrived at Palenque, she was mesmerized," wrote famed Maya photographer, artist and scholar Merle Greene Robertson, who lived and worked on site.

Palenque Temple of Inscriptions (MacDuff Everton)

"The morning they left for Uxmal we said good-bye and hoped to see each other again" said Robertson. "At five p.m., guess who appeared at the door, Linda. They'd been to Uxmal but turned around and returned to Palenque. It was the beginning of a long, dear friendship."

Meeting Robertson, her most important mentor during the early stages of her new voca-tion, drew Schele into the world of the ancient Maya, their art and their system of hieroglyphic writing, at the time not fully understood.

Schele described her trajectory like this: "I was a fair to middling painter who went on a Christmas trip to Mexico and came back an art historian and a Mayanist."

UNVEILING A DYNASTY

Schele went on to become world famous and a leading authority in her new field. She believed her background in art assisted in seeing the Maya writing in an unencumbered, less scientific manner. Soon Linda's speciality was decoding Maya hieroglyphics, especially after the 1973 Mesa Rodunda at Palenque. Prior to that, though greatly studied by epigraphers and iconologists, no one had much luck deciphering them. 

How Glyphs Were Read by Schele and Others

Concerned that Maya research was limited to a few experts with special access to key resources, Robertson's brainstorm for the Palenque gathering drew authorities, students, and local Mayanists together to hash things out. Schele, along with Mathews, an undergraduate who'd spent a year working on famed archeologist Eric Thompson's T-numbers—the only 'de-coding' attempt so far at breaking the Maya glyphs—began piecing together Palenque's history using what was called the Tablet of 96 Glyphs. Researchers understood this to depict a line of royal accession, and within hours, through a combination of luck and Mathew's intimate knowledge of glyphs, they unveiled most of Palenque's dynastic history, including the aforementioned ruler Pacal. This achievement became the stimulus that led to many later discoveries by Schele and other scholars. 

Merle (center), Fellow Scholars and Linda (right)

VERTICAL ASCENT

Schele's accomplishments moved vertically. In 1975-76 she was a fellow in pre-Columbian studies at Dumbarton Oaks, D.C., while also working with fellow scholars to accelerate the process of Maya hieroglyphic decipherment through word order in Maya inscriptions. In 1980 she was awarded a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies and her dissertation, Maya Glyphs: the Verbs, 1982, won The Most Creative and Innovative Project in Professional and Scholarly Publications, by Association of American Publishers.

In 1977 she founded the Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop at Texas. These meetings, held at UT/Austin, have become a major source for many significant epigraphic discoveries made about ancient American civilization over the last two decades.

In 1981 she continued her teaching career in the Department of Art/Art History at the University. In 1988 Schele was named the John D. Murchison Professor of Art at University of Texas.

In 1986 she organized a ground breaking exhibition of Maya art, The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. The catalog, co-authored with Mary Miller, continues to be used as a major text for the field and was awarded The Alfred Barr Award of College Art Association for the Best Exhibition Catalog/1986.

CONTEMPORARY MAYA

Also in the mid-80s she expanded her academic interest to include the culture of the contemporary Maya. Along with two colleagues, she organized and presented 13 workshops on hieroglyphic writing to Maya speaking peoples of Guatemala and Mexico in order to re-introduce hieroglyphic writing and interest of the ancient Maya to the modern Maya. The Maya trained in these workshops are now actively engaged in the translation of the writings of their ancient ancestors and tutoring others to do so. Working with young Maya was her most cherished activity.

For general public interest she actively promoted making scholarly research accessible to the general public which included the annual Maya Meetings at Texas. She made numerous speaking arrangements around the world, took tours of Mesoamerican sites by Far Horizons, and wrote three more books: Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path, co-authored with Freidel and Joy Parker, 1993; Hidden Faces of the Maya, 1997; and The Code of Kings: The Sacred Landscape of Seven Maya Temples and Tombs, co-authored with Peter Mathews.

Code Breakers Peter Mathews and Linda Schele, Palenque 1973 (R. Thornton)

In a 25-year period, Schele produced a number of important works on ancient Maya art, culture and writing. But she was also a hands-on Mayanist who traipsed to and explored numerous pyramid sites from Mexico to Belize and Guatemala, looking at each Maya cityscape for symbols, clues to their astronomy, meanings of rituals deciphered from hieroglyphs, and the legacies the Maya left behind. Schele's unique combination of art, history and teaching gave her a fresh and unique overview of the civilization she came to love, know, and help bring to light. Her influence on how the world views the ancient Maya is unparalleled. RIP Linda Dean Richmond Schele.

Linda Schele and Bust of Pacal

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

THE TRAGIC LOVE STORY OF THE YUCATAN—ALMA REED AND FELIPE CARRILLO PUERTO

 

Felipe Carrillo Puerto and Alma Reed (By Merida de Yucatan)

Star Crossed Lovers, Part 2

Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Yucatan's progressive governor of the Yucatan, and San Francisco journalist Alma Reed are two names forever linked to Yucatan history. Their romance fueled pages in newspapers on both sides of the border, but the unlikely outcome of their very public romance enlisted all the elements of Greek tragedy. 

Reed was born in San Francisco and became one of the city's first women reporters. An advocate for the poor, Reed assisted a Mexican family in commuting the death sentence of their 17-year old son in 1921. The story was picked up by the Mexican press and due to heightened publicity, Mexico President Alvaro Obregon invited Reed to visit his country.

ENTER EDWARD THOMPSON

As a stringer correspondent, she also reported for The New York Times and was sent to meet Edward Thompson, the leading archeologist excavating Chichen Itza. During the visit, Reed met Felipe Carrillo Puerto, dynamic governor of the State of Yucatan, also known as an agrarian reformer.

Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Agrarian Reformer

Carrillo had commissioned a road to be built from Merida to Chichen Itza, opening the budding archeological site to both tourists and scientists. To commemorate the event, he'd organized a welcome ceremony inviting North American journalists and archeologists. 

UXMAL AND CARRILLO 

At the ruins, Reed interviewed the famed Thompson who had gone to Yucatan specifically to excavate Chichen Itza. Thompson took a liking to Reed and divulged he had in fact dredged Chichen Itza's sacred cenote, garnering gold and jade jewelry and ornaments he'd taken from the sacrificial victims. Astonished by the enormity of Thompson's admission, like the true-born paparazzi she was, Reed asked Thompson to sign a confession, which he did.

Chicen Itza (By Frederick Catherwood)

After Chichen Itza, the assembled entourage went on to Uxmal. During this leg of the journey, Reed and Carrillo got acquainted. Reed was fascinated with the charismatic Carrillo who had been called both a Bolshevik and a Marxist for his sweeping reforms.

Caught in the Act, Thompson Dredging Chichen Itza Cenote

In her interview with the governor, Carrillo explained Yucatan had been inhabited by a handful of powerful families dating back to 1542 when Merida was founded. These wealthy landowners were basically slave masters and notorious for their cruel treatment of the Maya. 

REVOLUTIONARY IN THE MAKING

In 1910 Carrillo had fought alongside Emiliano Zapata in Central Mexico. From their association he took Zapata's battle cry, Tierra y Liberdad, (Land and Liberty) for his own. Back in Yucatan, Carrillo claimed part Maya, part Creole heritage and began his reforms by setting up feminist leagues in Merida that legalized birth control and the first family planning clinics in the Western Hemisphere. As governor, he became an agrarian reformer: He seized uncultivated land from powerful hacendados and distributed it to the Maya, stating it was their birthright. He built schools. He reformed the prison system. 

Carrillo Puerto Amongst His People (By Instituto de Anthropologia)

No small wonder Reed named him the Abraham Lincoln of Mexico. As a liberal she agreed with his reforms. And besides that, she was smitten. But as a divorced woman and a Catholic, she tried to ignore the feelings she was developing for the married father of four. She left for the U.S., vowing never to return, in hopes of severing ties in what was becoming amor calido or steamy romance as the English translation went.

Two months later, however, The New York Times sent her packing back to Mexico to cover the archeology scandal involving Edward Thompson and his dredging of the Chichen Itza cenote which she exposed. She had a job to do.

Carrillo Puerto and Reed (By Forasteros)

On her second round in Mexico, both Reed and Carrillo's feelings couldn't be ignored. In the ultimate taboo, Carrillo divorced his wife to become engaged to Reed. He even had a romantic love song composed for her, still popular today, La Peregrina (The Pilgrim). 

It seemed a match made in heaven. The two idealists prepared for their wedding which would take place in San Francisco. Reed hastened back to the U.S. to make arrangements before her permanent move to Mexico. 

SEND LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY

Shortly after her departure to the U.S., however, another Mexican revolution seemed imminent. Fighting had broken out in the Yucatan and henequen planters and hacendados were trying to overthrow Carrillo due to his reforms. President Obregon's right hand man, de la Huerta, was opposing him and because Carrillo backed Obregon, he was at risk. Carrillo was forced to find guns to fight both the planters and de la Huerta's forces. And to make matters worse, he now had a $250,000 reward on his head. 

To secure the guns and ammunition they would need to do battle, Carrillo went by night to the Progreso coast with three brothers and six friends as guards to catch a boat to New Orleans. Just as they waded out to the launch that would take them to the U.S. where they'd acquire the firearms needed for their revolution, a Navy captain signaled to soldiers lying in wait on shore. The soldiers rowed out and captured Carrillo who told his small group to not fight but to go peacefully.

De la Huerta's forces took them back to Merida and jailed them overnight for an arraignment in the morning. Carrillo refused to make a plea. He was, after all, governor of the state and refused to recognize a kangaroo court. He was condemned on January 3, 1924, and taken to Merida Cemetery where he, his brothers and friends were lined up against the wall to await the firing squad. The first round of volleys was sent over their heads—the soldiers didn't want to kill them, so fiercely loyal were the Yucatecans to Carrillo. 

The commander shouted that those soldiers were to be shot, and over the dead bodies of the first soldiers, Carrillo, brothers and friends were executed as they stood with their backs against the cemetery wall.  

Merida Cemetery Where Carrillo Puerto Is Buried

A MARTYR'S DEATH 

In San Francisco, Alma Reed had been alerted that trouble was at hand. She heard the news shortly afterwards that Carrillo had died in Yucatan, a martyr's death, at 49.

Reed insisted on returning to Merida to see the spot where Carrillo fell. She stayed but briefly in the Yucatan and on arriving back to New York, was sent on an assignment to Carthage to explore ancient ruins. She would never re-marry. Her reporting life eventually took her back to Mexico where she helped establish the artist Jose Clements Orozco. 

One of Reed's fears was that President Obregon had a hand in killing Carrillo. He had, after all, assassinated Zapata after luring him to a truce meeting along with Pancho Villa. Reed thought Carrillo's radicalism may have aroused opposition from the Mexican president but she could never prove the link. 

Isignia of Pueblo Felipe Carrillo Puerto

The pueblo of Chan Santa Cruz, south of Tulum, changed its name to honor the Yucatan governor, and goes by the name Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Alma Reed died in Mexico City at age 77 in November, 1966, while undergoing surgery.

Antoinette May's book The Passionate Pilgrim, the Extraordinary Life of Alma Reed, tells the story of Reed and Carrillo Puerto as does Alma Reed's Peregrina: Love and Death in Mexico.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

 

WHY WAS FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT OBSESSED WITH THE MAYA?

 

The Ennis House, Los Angeles (photo TripSavvy).

Frank Lloyd Wright, considered by many to be the greatest architect of all time, never attended a formal architectural school. Wielding an avant-garde edge, he thought of interior and exterior places as one. This concept extended to his building forms and construction methods. Wright's signature on a certain type of architecture became not only an embellishment but a trademark. 

During a career that spanned 70 years, he designed over 1000 structures, created in harmony with humanity and the environment in a philosophy he dubbed organic architecture. His early beginnings were in the midwest where he was born and raised. That too is where he began his formal career as an architect in Chicago in 1893, after moving from rural Wisconsin.

THE PRAIRIE STYLE

From early on he experimented with different styles, incorporating one or more into his commissions, and by 1900, had developed a style that was to become his signature, the Prairie Style.  

Taliesen West (Architecturemagazine.com)

Coonley House/Prairie Style (Curbed Chicago)

1893 WORLD'S PRE-COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

Though it's believed that Wright never stepped foot on the Yucatán Peninsula, home to numerous Maya pyramids, when he arrived in Chicago, lore has it he was inspired by the display of Maya artifacts and replicas at the 1893 World's Pre-Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It was there he glimpsed plaster castings from major Maya sites, Chichen Itza and Uxmal. A feature of the lesser known Labna site, in the Pu'uc Region in southern Yucatán, became important to his work due to his recurring use of its meaningful arch.

Nunnery Quadrange, Uxmal site (Archeology.eu)

Wright's interest in the Maya was piqued early on, from childhood. He was drawn to the Maya world when his mother showed him pictures in books about Central America and Mexico."Those images stayed in his mind most of his life," said Thomas Hines, UCLA architectural historian.

INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL BEST SELLER 

Las Monjas, Chichen Itzá (Frederick Catherwood)

In the 1840s, two books about Central America archeology became best sellers: Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán, and Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, Part 2, by explorer John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood. The 1893 exposition's display of the ancient Americas lauded the indigenous people who first called this continent home. It was one of Stephens' books that drew Wright into the world of the Maya.

GOLDEN DOORWAY

Wright and his employer, Louis Sullivan, had contributed a monumental golden doorway for the Transportation Building at the fair and during his many visits to check on it, Wright would have seen Stephens' casts and photos of the Maya buildings. Both he and his employer were drawn to the style which would eventually be known as Mayan Revival; they both distained the European Neo-classical style that dominated other buildings at the expo.

Golden Doorway for Transportation Building

Eventually Wright broke from his employer and established his own firm in Oak Park, Illinois, where he designed numerous commissions, gaining ground and at times notoriety with many well-heeled clients. By this time he was married. With his wife, Catherine, and their six children, he settled into a white picket fence existence.

Edwin and Mamah Cheney house (compositiondelascasa.com)

THE CHENEY HOUSE

While designing a house for local residents Edwin and Mamah (Mamey) Cheney, Wright and Catherine began socializing with his clients at the precise moment that middle age, ennui regarding his Prairie style designs, and a craving for change and greener pastures collided. Mamah, a feminist and free thinker, could keep up with Wright intellectually. She intrigued him. Change won. She and her husband divorced almost immediately, allowing Mamah to escape the confines of her marriage. The couple soon left for Europe to avoid the brouhaha and the tabloids. They spent time in Germany and Italy, where he viewed various architectural styles. On their return to the US and despite his wife refusing to grant an immediate divorce, Wright was determined to build a house for Mamah in the rural fields of Wisconsin near his childhood home. It would be transformational and a beauty, and he would name it Taliesin.

Taliesin (Wisconsin Visitor Bureau)

TALIESIN 

Love and happiness, however, were short lived. At a nearly completed Taliesin in 1914, his lover Mamah Bothwick Cheney was murdered by a household staff member along with her two children and five others. After the heinous massacre, Wright sought solace far from the midwest. Los Angeles, known as a place for reinvention and recuperation, beckoned. He headed west.

Mamah Borthwick Cheney (history.com)

After the murders, he was again exposed to Maya architecture and pyramids at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. As the displays at Chicago had stimulated Wright, mentioned by Thomas Hines, the Panama Pacific Exposition glimpse of Maya culture made a lasting impression.

Though the displays were based on a Maya fantasy world, they cemented the Maya link between architecture and death, "Which was not only the setting for a fantastic pyramid palace but also for human sacrifice; part of the complexes displayed where humans were buried."

WRIGHT IN LOS ANGELES

"A place where the living could communicate and remember the dead," said Hines. "And after the loss of his lover, Mamah Cheney, death was much on the architect's mind. The exceptional architectural style of the Maya sites must have greatly intrigued him, for it was an outsized influence on his Los Angeles architectural style," continued the UCLA historian.

A.D. German Warehouse (franklloydwright.org)

Prior to his exodus to LA, Wright tried out his Mayan Revival style on a Richland, Wisconsin commission in 1915, —the A.D. German Warehouse. On completion, the site hardly looked like something that would house the wares of a green grocer in a small Wisconsin town—it more resembled a temple pulled from a Catherwood drawing of the Maya Nunnery at Uxmal.

This commission helped test the Maya motif that would become the basis of his residential work in Los Angeles. On completing Wisconsin, he accepted an offer to design the Imperial Hotel in Japan.  

Hollyhock House (photo Curbed LA)

MAYAN REVIVAL STYLE

Today five iconic LA houses render his Maya look. While constructing the first, Hollyhock House, he worked simultaneously in Japan on the Imperial Hotel which helped shape his vision as an architect.

Though the houses Wright designed in Los Angeles pre-dated the Art Deco movement that began in the 1920s, they have the undeniable air of deco. We'll never know if Wright influenced the movement or vice versa. And though the Mayan Revival style itself had begun at the turn of the 20th century, its popularity accelerated once Wright got on board. This style is most notably seen in his Southern California open-concept layouts built from concrete stackable blocks molded with local materials and natural color schemes, and stamped with bold geometric motifs.

Hollyhock House, his first LA commission, was completed in 1921 for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall who had purchased 36 acres on the eastern edge of Hollywood. Wright's finished design was above all a Maya temple. Barnsdall had planned on a multi-arts center, and never intended it for residential use.

The hearth at Hollyhock House (photo Curbed LA)

HOLLYHOCK PLUS FOUR 

With its 17 rooms and seven baths, it's often noted as a bridge of Wright's two prominent styles: Mayan Revival, with textile blocks inspired by temples from Palenque, and Prairie Style, with its low-pitched roof line. 

In 1927 she gifted it to the city. But it was at Hollyhock House, named for the flower that Barnsdall most loved, where Wright began working with natural materials. 

A "cultural nationalist," according to leading Wright authority Kathryn Smith, Los Angeles, he strove to define an original American architecture and shied away from Victorian and Spanish colonial styles. Though of Welsh origin, he believed an indigenous architectural style would better suit the Americas rather than a European style architecture.

Kathryn Smith said he sought out traditional materials on the lands where he was building, making the concrete blocks from sand and granite, stamping them with motifs resembling Maya symbols. His open concept layout led to massive rooms and enormously high ceilings, in some cases creating the feeling of a mausoleum, as people who actually lived in his houses had been known to say.

Next came the Alice Millard commission on one acre in Pasadena, La Miniatura. This is where he truly refined the concrete molecular block system, with his stamped Maya patterns. Flat-roofed and mysterious, a wall of blocks stamped with equi-distant diametric crosses greets one at the property's edge. One historian said the cross is a reference to the MesoAmerican understanding of the cardinal directions, pointing to the cardinal elements that establish the shape of the universe. Some called the Millard House a small temple in a eucalyptus grove.

The Millard House

The placement of the house is in a ravine, with two towering eucalyptus trees standing nearby, and gives the feel of being at a jungle pyramid site, much like Palenque. 

After the Millard commission came the Storer House in 1923. Built on a steep hillside, the house is dominated by a large upstairs living room with a high ceiling. Maya inspired columns and tall narrow windows dominate. It's believed that this house was built on spec. It was owned by Joel Silver, Hollywood producer, from 1984 until 2002. He gave it a thoughtful renovation including a pool that had been in the original plans. Brendan Gill, one of Wright's most thoughtful biographers, said it was more like a home for a Mayan god.

 

The Storer House (Californiahomedesigns.com)

Probably the best known FLW house in Los Angeles is the Ennis House, built also in 1923, for Charles and Mabel Ennis. It very much appears to be another Maya grand palace, but the Ennis' insisted that Wright incorporate some of their desires into his design. Notably seen in a handful of movies—Blade Runner, Day of the Locust, The House on Haunted Hill—it overpowers the environment and looms over the neighborhood like an ancient ruin, visible for miles around.

The Ennis House (TripSavvy.com)

Ennis House stamped wall of concrete Maya blocks (photo Galerie)

And last of the FLW LA five is the house built in 1924 for dancer Harriet Freeman and her husband Samuel, the Freeman House. Donated to USC, the daughter and son-in-law of the Dean of Architecture lived in the house while attendeding university. "It felt like a ruin," she said in 2002. "It was crumbling down all around us."

The Freeman House

Of Wright's LA houses, the Freeman House had the happiest existence. It was home for 60 years to the Freemans, a Bohemian couple who befriended him and scraped together the money for Wright's commission. Notably it was the only Wright house in LA to hold long-term occupants. The Freemans lived there until 1986 when they donated it to USC. According to Harriet Freeman, the house was dense and introverted, but it well suited their purposes. Along with being their home, Harriet, a dancer, used it as a dance center and salon where she entertained and performed.

GRANDSON ERIC WRIGHT

Eric Wright, 91, the architects's grandson who lives at FLW's unfinished Malibu property high in the hills, was interviewed by Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the LA Times, for his documentary on Wright, That Far Corner. When Hawthorne asked what drew FLW to Los Angeles, he was candid. "He was very upset about the loss of Mamey and the adverse publicity because they weren't married," Wright said.

"What was his state of mind when he moved to Los Angeles?" Hawthorne asked. 

"Sorrow," Wright said. "He had a wonderful life until her death."

Eric Lloyd Wright in Malibu (Los Angeles Magazine)

Hawthorne asked Tim Samuelson, Chicago's cultural historian, what he made of Wright's LA Mayan Revival look. "They seem like, the houses, almost mausoleum-like. They are heavy. One critic described them as dark and macabre—like the drama of Sophocles. The LA homes were. . . brutal, romantic, fantastic, and—strange."

FUNEREAL ASPECTS

Filmmaker Hawthorne continues, "The LA houses have funereal aspects. They're sinister, lacking joy. But scholars are hesitant to embrace the crude character of pre-Columbian death cults. These ideas, however, shaped Wright's understanding of pre-Columbian design and their meaning."

"His architecture," historian Blair Kamin said, "and this mission helped him to recover from personal tragedy. His architecture saved him in the end."

"His LA houses," continued Hawthorne, "stand apart from his work overall and apart from the rest of LA architecture of the period. They are not just heavy, but heavy-hearted—their starkness, and in some cases, their state of ruin. I don't think it's because the houses look crypt-like and that is why they are empty. It's because they are crypt-like that none are used as full-time residences. They are off-putting. The houses are shadowed by violence and even death.

"At the time, building these houses was a means for Wright to put a troubled period behind him for good. It exemplified his own uncertain state of mind. I believe they were a catalyst for putting aside that very troubled period.

"Wright buried Mamey in the Unity Chapel Cemetery in Spring Green, Wisconsin—but she's also buried in Los Angeles."

                        

                                                                  

Unity Chapel, Spring Green, Wisconsin—FLW's first commission

Who knew that Wright's ongoing obsession with the Maya would rescue him as he worked his way out of grief by creating mausoleum-like, cathedral/pyramid tombs over and over and over again in reverence of the woman he loved and lost. As the historian said, his architecture saved him in the end.

Gravestone for Mamah Borthwick Cheney in Spring Green, Wisconsin

Resources for this post came from Curbed LA—Demystifying Frank Lloyd Wright's Most Eccentric Homes; Coming Around to Frank Lloyd Wright—Architecture Magazine; Getting it Wright: Today's Prairie Style; Trip Savvy's Frank Lloyd Wright LA Homes; Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation: Peek Inside 7 Iconic FLW Houses; ChicagoCurbed.com's Take a Walking Tour of FLW's Oak Park Homes; WendyCity'sChicago.com's World Fair Moments: Sullivan's Golden Door; Sunset Ranch in LA: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Angeles; Los Angeles Magazine's Inhabiting a Legacy; Curbed LA—Frank Lloyd Wright's Forgotten Hollywood Sand Castle; Artsy.net's How Frank Lloyd Wright's Take on Mayan Temples Shaped Hollywood; Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan; and the documentary That Far Corner, by Christopher Hawthorne.

If you want to read more about the Maya, Mexico and the Yucatán, sign up at the top right for my bi-monthly blogs, or check my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, my memoir on life as an expat is available on Amazon. Also there check out my Mexico cartel thrillers, books one and two in my Wheels Up trilogy: Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown. For a journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, check out Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy.