The M&I Bank building in Spring Green, Wisconsin, is a definite “must see” if you are in the area touring Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home. The bank was designed by a Wright associate, William Wesley Peters. Peters was Wright’s first apprentice, joining him in 1932. He assisted Wright in the designs of Fallingwater and did the structural rendition of the Guggenheim Museum.
The bank, located in downtown Spring Green about an hour’s drive west of Madison, is an operating bank, and is open during business hours. A nearby building, at one time the drive through window for the bank, is now occupied by Spring Green’s Chamber of Commerce.
Peters was first married to Wright’s adopted daughter, Svetlana, who tragically died in an auto accident with one of Peters’ sons. Later, he was briefly married to Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of Joseph Stalin, in a marriage arranged by Peters’ mother-in-law, Olgivianna Wright. (Frank Lloyd Wright’s last wife, she survived him and ran the Foundation for many years.)
Peters was a widely respected architect and engineer, and a loyal friend of Wright and advocate of his ideas. He completed several projects that Frank Lloyd Wright left in various degrees of completion after Wright’s death. He was Chairman of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation from 1985 until his death in 1991.
Photos by Bo Mackison, a Madison area writer and photographer who travels Wisconsin in search of Frank Lloyd Wright-related architectural gems. To see more Wisconsin photos, visit her galleries at Seeded Earth Photography.