Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James & Barbara Cimino Foundation, Anne Voillequé and Louise Nelson Judy and Steve Meyer.

With additional support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And contributions to the Friends of Idaho Public Television.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.

[Music] [Narrator] High above the Snake River in the Magic Valley sits an architectural masterpiece.

The only Frank Lloyd Wright designed building in Idaho, Teater’s Knoll.

Its story reflects the confluence of five bold personalities.

The country's premier architect, a famous Idaho artist and his wife, a mason with a wealth of talent and stone and a preservationist with a love of design.

Their aspirations combined to make Teater’s Knoll the unique gem it is today.

Its existence is due to the great success of an Idaho original, Archie Boyd Teater, a prolific artist who painted magnificent landscapes and captured some of the rich history of our state.

[Lester Taylor] He's an extremely interesting and in a simple way, a very complicated individual.

And he was from an extremely poor family.

He never finished eighth grade.

His teacher kicked him out of the class for doodling rather than doing mathematics.

He wanted to paint.

And I don't think he thought at that time that, you know, he needed any more education than that.

[Kristin Poole] He was a courageous man.

You don’t decide in 1920 to drop out of school in the 8th grade and become a painter, as a man in the American west.

[Lester] He had no formal art instruction until winter of 1921, he had classes at the Portland Art Museum.

But he was painting prior to that time.

Self-taught.

Absolutely self-taught.

[Kristin] I think what pushed him was his own desire to use his painting as a way to digest the world.

[Narrator] The subject of his paintings often drew upon the landscapes and the Western life he observed.

[Henry Whiting] Archie had spent time in the late teens and twenties in the Hagerman Valley.

And then he and his friend would fish for sturgeon in the snake River and salmon because salmon still came up into the Hagerman Valley.

And then they would haul the fish up to the miners in Haley and that's how, they made a living.

[Lester] As a result of his working along the Snake, he got a lot of material that he would paint about.

I don't think he saw himself as a historian, but his art.

There is a great deal of history, and especially history of the state of Idaho.

He painted at least two dozen mining scenes just from memory to record what it was like in those days.

And he also did a painting of what a logging camp looked like at that time.

Now, that's a marvelous record and that should be taken advantage of.

[Kristin] I think he recognized that the story of the American West was a really important story to tell.

And so he did a very important painting.

It’s the Battle at Greasy Grass He did a huge amount of research to make sure that the costumes were accurate, that the people he represented were there.

It was important to him, clearly to tell that story.

In the summers of his youth his restless nature would carry him and his paints from Boise by mule to the heights of the Sawtooths; mountains that became the subject of some of his early paintings.

Over the years his nomadic adventures would deliver him to the town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where breathtaking views of the Tetons would inspire a lifetime of work.

It was here that he'd meet Patricia Wilson, who would become his wife and help Archie grow into an artist of international renown.

[Lester] Patricia knew a lot about art.

She was an artist herself.

[Henry] Patricia was his sole gallery person as she was all his life.

[Kristin] She wanted Teater to be known.

And I think she was really the driving force behind that sort of painting of the day.

Particularly when he was known as Teton Teater and people were coming to the American West.

Everybody wanted a piece of that.

They wanted a souvenir.

And so he would paint furiously Jackson Hole.

and the Teton Mountains and slew them around the trees on Jenny Lake.

and sell them.

[Lester] The view of Teater is that he was a painter of the Grand Tetons.

Well, yes, he certainly did that.

[Henry] He could paint the Tetons from memory.

And the story has it that somebody came into their little gallery in Jackson, and said, “Mrs.

Teater, we just love Archie’s work.

But it's just a little bit too expensive for us.” And she said, “Well, come back in the morning.

I'll have him paint you a smaller one tonight.” [Lester] He was enormously prolific.

He one time said that if he painted for a couple of more years that he would be over 10,000.

He'd be the most prolific painter of all time.

Now, whether that's right?

He was enormously prolific.

[Kristin] He did things quickly.

He did them with impressionistic strokes most of the time.

And to our good fortune, we get to see what he saw through his lens.

[Lester] In the 20th century there was no Western painter like him.

[Henry] Archie was probably the most famous artist in Idaho [Narrator] Patricia's business acumen would capitalize on Archie's success and position them financially to commission a world class studio from one of the 20th century's greatest architects, Frank Lloyd Wright.

From Archie's years in the Hagerman Valley, he knew the ideal location for their studio, a place which came to be known as Teater’s Knoll.

[Henry] The reason it's called Teater’s Knoll is because it literally is a knoll.

Mrs. Farnsworth.

sold it to the Teaters for $125.

And she thought she had just bilked these crazy artists out of a lot of money.

But to her it was useless land because you couldn't raise cattle on it.

It's two acres in size and there is a 150 foot cliff on the river side And then the Snake River makes a big horseshoe bend in front of the site.

It's just one of the most beautiful sites in Idaho.

And Archie, with his art sensibility, recognized that right away.

And so they went to Wright with this site in mind.

[Narrator] By the time of the Teater Commission, Frank Lloyd Wright was the most famous architect in the world.

He pioneered the Prairie School movement and developed the concept of the Usonian home.

[Geoff Parks] The notion of Usonian provides beautiful space for everyone.

And it doesn’t need to be a larger more expensive home.

It can be something that we can all enjoy.

Usonian sort evolved out of the Prairie School.

And that’s what sort of set the notion that we can think of the built environment in a different way, grounded to the earth and molded and shaped where that inside and outside have connection.

[Narrator] His dwellings sought harmony with nature.

And his plans for the Guggenheim Museum in New York would drive architecture toward a new frontier.

A studio designed by Wright could signal to the world that an artist of great mastery occupied the space.

[Henry] Clearly the reason that they went to Wright was because it was a marketing thing for Archie.

And virtually from mid-fifties onward, every piece of promotional copy that she would do would always say that Frank Lloyd Wright designed his studio.

[Narrator] Wright's design and the natural resources of the rugged desert landscape would inspire one young Mason from Oakley to produce a masterwork of his own.

[Henry] Really the great construction story of this place is the work of Kent Hale, which cannot have been easy because all the walls are angled at 60 and 120 degree angles.

And, it's a sloping site and the footing is step down and the walls are battered outwards below the window sill level.

So you have all this stuff enters into the calculation.

And it's truly some of the finest rock work in any Frank Lloyd Wright house.

[Kent Hale] Well, I had been working for a fella by the name of Fred Reed, a contractor from Twin Falls, He called me one day and said, “I just got a plan here I’d like you to look at.” And I went down and when I saw it was a Frank Lloyd Wright house, boy, I was became very enthusiastic.

Cause at the time he was my ideal.

I thought that no one quite like him here, right at his prime.

No way I was going to miss this job.

And so I did everything I could to get it.

[Brent Hale] He desired this job so much that he reduced his bid by about one third.

He felt like if Frank Lloyd Wright could endorse the stone, and promote his masonry, that would be his ticket to, you know, big time.

[Henry] He knew from his youth they had this Oakley Stone that was more beautiful than any rock he had seen.

And at that point, he had even built this little fireplace for his parents outside their family home.

[Brent] He was asked by his father to build this fireplace in honor his grandfather It's been in use for 75 years and I still love it.

I love to sit here and have a fire.

And it's pretty much exactly how it was when he completed it.

And this is his first attempt at anything significant out of Oakley Stones.

[Narrator] As with many of Frank Lloyd Wright's designs, the plans called for locally sourced material.

[Henry] The original floor plan calls for the rock work to look like Fallingwater, the famous house over the waterfall in Pennsylvania.

Fallingwater is built of sandstone And so that's what Wright was asking for was a horizontally laid rock [Kent] And so when I saw that in the specifications, I looked around here and and found where it came out natural.

[Kent] The sandstone, the mason found they could work it so easily.

Face it and so forth.

That, uh, that’s what they used.

But this is very unique in that, uh, the stone comes out in a natural manner which it doesn’t need a lot of workability.

For instance you can take a little, uh .

.

.

little piece like this and it, uh, already cut.

Nature made this for us.

We didn’t have to, uh .

.

.

work it so much.

And this kind of started the more of a rustic natural effect that stone should be.

[Brent] So back in the late forties, early fifties as he was having dreams of becoming a stonemason and getting into the stone industry, he came up here looking for the perfect stone, and he came across this area.

And this is where all of the stone for Teater’s came from.

And this is a great example of what he was looking for.

It's been in the weather for probably tens of thousands of years.

So the edges are softer.

And it's got some lichen on it And this one is another great example of maybe one that would be properly sized.

This one hasn't been on the surface as long, but this is pretty much the shape that he was looking for.

[Henry] Yeah.

[Brent] And there was limited supply of it.

And he picked up probably every bit of stone that had the characteristics that he was looking for to put in Teater’s Knoll.

It makes Teater’s Knoll all that much more unique and special - [Henry] Yeah.

[Brent] because that that particular stone no longer exists.

[Henry] Yeah.

[Narrator] Kent Hale’s selection of Oakley Stone would prove to be the spark to an industry that today infuses an estimated $250 million dollars annually into the local economy.

[Henry] This was the first major building that had ever been done in Oakley Stone.

[Brent] You can look at the prow and just see how how straight it is.

It's a 60 degree angle.

I just.

I'm amazed that he was able to make it look so straight.

It doesn't bow.

It doesn't bend.

He did everything perfectly.

But if you look closely, it's also quite jagged.

[Henry] Yeah.

But as a whole, it reads as a straight line.

Yeah.

[Brent] Beautiful.

[Narrator] The surface rock Kent gathered for the studio is referred to as “Float Stone”.

Laying it in harmony with Wright’s design would be just one of many challenges he faced.

[Henry] you know, this was Kent's first project, really.

Which is quite amazing.

But Patricia thought that it wasn't proceeding fast enough.

And she fired Kent with the building about two thirds finished.

[Brent] She felt like he wasn't doing a very good job.

She made some disparaging comments to a local newspaper.

[Kent] They sent in a .

.

.

the little article that said they were a little bit delayed in constructing their building because they had to teach the stonemason how to lay stone.

This was his last straw as far as I was concerned.

[Brent] Ultimately he couldn't take it much longer.

She sued him for leaving the job.

He countersued for nonpayment.

He won the lawsuit, but ended up getting 1/10th of what he bid on the job.

So $700 dollars of the $7000.

[Henry] He didn't get to finish the project.

And some of the work here is really, really bad.

This is one of the most interesting parts of the whole studio, is because right here you see Kent Hale’s original work below the level of the window sill.

And then above the windowsill is some other mason’s work.

This is all composed order and this is chaos.

[Brent] Chaos.

[Henry] There's no relation between the parts.

[Geoff] You can cover a lot more wall more quickly in that way but you lose that compressive nature of what that material actually is.

And your mind just instinctively picks up that this isn’t natural.

That stone could fall over.

It doesn’t want to be resting on its narrow edge.

It wants to be flat.

Because that’s how we see it in the landscape.

[Brent] Yeah, this would have been one that he left on the mountain.

[Henry] (Laughs) Okay!

[Brent] It's hard for me to look at it, Being someone who appreciates my father's work.

[Henry] Yeah.

[Brent] I think, uh, Mrs. Teater might have robbed the world of something special.

[Henry] Yeah.

[Brent] If she'd allowed my father to complete the job.

[Henry] Yes.

[Narrator] One of the signature features Kent Hale did complete before being released from the project was the chimney.

This one built to a grand scale.

[Henry] The rock work that would be looked at more than any other place in the whole studio would be this.

And so here on the interior, you see lichen.

And I love to point this out to people that that's what is it?

70 years ago that was put there.

And that lichen is still alive and growing.

[Brent] My, my father was an artist.

[Henry] Yes, he was.

He was.

[Narrator] Once construction was complete, the Teaters used the studio seasonally, splitting their time between Jackson Hole and Hagerman.

In their later years they gave generously to causes dear to them.

They started the Archie B. Teater Fund for Handicapped Children and supported important medical programs at the Mayo Clinic.

Their nomadic spirit took them on adventures around the world.

[Kristin] But he didn’t just go to Paris.

He didn’t just go to Italy.

They went to very, very difficult and challenging places.

Which, to their credit, he diaried it.

[Narrator] Archie collected images from exotic locations and brought them to life on his canvas back home.

The studio would prove to be a sanctuary for the rest of their creative lives.

[Henry] I have heard from friends of the Teaters that his most creative work was done here at the studio.

[Narrator] Archie Boyd Teater died in 1978.

But his spirit is alive and well in Hagerman, where the Historical Society purchased a new home that will display some of the 600 Teater paintings they have in their collection.

[Darlene Nemnich] We are so excited about this new building.

This room here will be our Archie Teater gallery.

And in it, we have Archie's easel.

And we put here one of my favorite of Archie's paintings.

It is of the Tetons.

And it was part of the collection that we got from the Idaho Community Foundation.

Our first show is a curated show with Kristin Poole.

She is going to look through over 650 paintings.

So we’re really excited to kind of dig into his art and understand his art more.

[Kristin] Hi everybody.

What we wanted to do with this show is really sort of give people an overview of Archie's life, who he was, how he painted, and the styles he painted in.

He was what we call a plein air painter.

Meaning, he painted out of doors almost all of the time.

And he painted what he saw.

And Hagerman really was a base for him throughout his lifetime.

So these five paintings here are of Hagerman and, this is the Pope House, for those of you who know where you are.

And there is a very funny story about Archie plopping himself down on the land and deciding to paint the house.

And Mr. Pope came out and said, “What are you doing, young man?” And he said, “Well, I'm painting a picture and you're bothering me, so you should leave.” And he kicked him off his land.

So that shows you a little bit about Archie's determination and his arrogance.

I love this painting here, which is a really sweet painting of the river and the landscape in this part of the world, and really shows that Archie studied the land.

He really understood the formations of these hills.

He understood how to paint water.

And it took me a while to find this fisher person here.

But this fisher person is just a suggestion of a person with this little tiny fishing line.

Really wonderful sense of rushing water.

Very bucolic and very typical of Teater.

These are three seascapes, done at very, very different times in his life.

We believe this was done at the end of his life when he was living in Carmel, California with Patricia.

But you see, they're really, really different in how he applies the paint.

This is really “googie.” I mean, he's got, you know, he's using the paint and he's kind of sticking it on.

Whereas this is very, very, very softly painted.

And then here he's doing a combination of both of those things.

This is very nicely painted.

And then there's the drama of the water.

Water is one of the things that I believe Teater did best.

Because he really captures the feeling and the movement of water.

You can sort of taste what this feels like.

[Narrator] Patricia remained in California until her death in 1981.

The studio was abandoned and left to the Quaker Church.

Its condition deteriorated until it was in a state of ruin.

[Henry] you know, it looked kind of like a prison camp.

There was a chain link fence with three strands of barbed wire.

It really looked pretty bad.

In any case, I was really intrigued.

I started to conceive in my mind, this would really be a great way to learn hands on about Frank Lloyd Wright, would be to buy this place and to restore it.

[Narrator] It was his uncle, Alden B. Dow, a student of Wright’s, who gave Henry the confidence to take on the project.

[Henry] So it's always been really important to me that the first person I asked about this was my uncle.

He said, “Henry, I think that's really a good idea that you do that for your life.” And he says, “As a matter of fact, I think that is such a good idea that if I were your father, I would loan you the money make sure that you did it.” And then he paused for a second, he said, “But then it wouldn't mean as much.” And he was, he was telling me that I had to take responsibility for it.

And that's been like one of the most important things ever said to me in my life.

it's just one of these things that was just meant to happen.

[Narrator] After he purchased the property in 1982, his first order of business was to restore relations with Kent Hale.

[Brent] Henry had a good enough eye to see that the original stonework was perfect, beautiful.

And so he reached out to my father.

There was still some hard feelings about the whole Teater’s Knoll and Henry basically provided redemption for that mess that he went through in the fifties.

I think he was really proud of it.

I think he recognized that it was pretty much his showcase.

It was the most significant job that he'd ever done.

[Narrator] Henry's preservation of the studio has ensured that Frank Lloyd Wright's legacy lives on in the Hagerman Valley, where upon occasion he opens his private home to tours organized by local nonprofits, giving tourists an opportunity to see firsthand the mastery of Mason Kent Hale and experience the breadth of Wright's creative space that is Teater’s Knoll.

[Applause] [Henry] Well, thank, thank you all for coming.

I appreciate you being here.

You can't tell from here, but you're about to experience one of the most beautiful sights in the whole state.

[Carrie Apple Gate: Docent] It's just fascinating.

And I can see why people are getting emotional as soon as they come around the corner.

[Sarah Del Grande: Tourist] It's all situated so that every window you look out you have this amazing view of the river.

It's just gorgeous.

[Nola Nelson: Tourist] I love how it definitely feels like an artist lives in the studio.

[Doug Stan: Docent] Right.

[Jennifer Pisano:Docent] Mm-hmm.

[Ann Debolt: Tourist] I think it is incredible.

I love everything here.

The rock, the view.

I mean, it's.

I'm so happy I finally was able to come on a tour here.

[Brittney Scigliano] To be able to showcase the architecture and the history of a private home, and then to have someone like Henry, who is a amazing steward of this home, it's a big deal for preservation.

[Henry] Frank Lloyd Wright homeowners always talk about how they see something new every day in their house.

And I would say that 90% of the time it’s the relationship with the architecture to nature.

At this point in my life, I spend a lot of times observing that.

I have the time to watch the sun gradually come into the main studio room and then the leaves are dancing on the floor and as the sun goes down, the light goes deeper and deeper into the main room.

You get this amazing feeling of harmony.

It doesn't require a manifesto to explain what's going on or anything.

It's just visceral.

you can just feel it.

It really is like a chapel.

It is a chapel to creativity and creativity for an artist.

Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James & Barbara Cimino Foundation, Anne Voillequé and Louise Nelson Judy and Steve Meyer.

With additional support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And contributions to the Friends of Idaho Public Television.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.