Wright-trained architect Edgar Tafel dies in NY

[January 26, 2011]  NEW YORK (AP) -- A New York City architect who's believed to be the last surviving member of Frank Lloyd Wright's original Taliesin (TAH'-lee-es-in) fellows has died.

A friend says Edgar Tafel (TAH'-fuhl) died Jan. 18 at his Manhattan home at age 98.

Tafel designed the First Presbyterian Church House in New York's Greenwich Village. He also helped save two interiors from Wright's Francis W. Little House in Wayzata (WEYE'-zeht-uh), Minn., before it was demolished in 1971.

The living room is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The library is in the Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania.

Friend and structural engineer Robert Silman says Tafel was the last remaining Taliesin fellow. The apprentices were trained at Wright's home and school in Spring Green, Wis., beginning in 1932.

[Associated Press]

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