actually think one of the most important influences on Frank Lloyd Wright is the landscape he grew up in, the Southern Wisconsin landscape...of sedimentary limestones and sandstones in a flat bedding plane. And over and over again the Prairie houses, actually long before Taliesin that, including Taliesin, reflect that Prairie landscape. I think when most people hear the word ’Prairie architecture’ they think that what he’s emulating is the grassland, this great flat grassland of Illinois. I actually think what he’s emulating is the rocks. I think he’s emulating these limestones which have this sort of beautiful rectilinear mason-like structure to them.—William Cronon, Historian