Romeo and Juliet Windmill, Wooden windmill on the Taliesin estate in Wyoming, Wisconsin, United States
The Romeo and Juliet Windmill is a wooden windpump on the Taliesin estate near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Its tall square tower rises from a rough stone base, clad in alternating light and dark brown wooden planks, with a short open belfry of vertical slats under a shallow sloped roof. Above it stands a metal windmill wheel of many thin radiating blades, beside a small orange square flag with a white mark. Wright named its two intersecting forms Romeo, the lozenge, and Juliet, the octagon.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed the windmill in 1896 for his aunts Jane and Ellen Lloyd Jones, who needed a windpump to supply water to their Hillside Home School. His uncles objected to the design, and Wright defended it to the aunts by likening its two joined forms to Romeo and Juliet. The local Weekly Home News reported it completed in 1897; it was the second structure the aunts commissioned from him, after Hillside Home School I of 1887.
Wright named the two intersecting volumes after Shakespeare's lovers: the lozenge, which takes the wind, is Romeo, and the octagonal shaft supporting it is Juliet. He told his aunts that Romeo "will do all the work and Juliet cuddle alongside to support and exhalt him."
The windmill stands on the Taliesin estate south of Spring Green, Wisconsin, near the base of Tan-y-Deri; Taliesin itself is on the hill to the north and the Hillside Home School down the hill to the south. It no longer pumps water, and the estate is visited by guided tour, so check tour arrangements before setting out.
The structure underwent renovation in 1938 when its original shingle cladding was replaced with cypress board and batten materials. This material change helped the structure better resist the elements and maintain its integrity across the decades.
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