Jules Salkin (1916–1998) met legendary architect John Lautner one fateful summer at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship. Now known as The School of Architecture, The Taliesin Fellowship was founded in 1932 when twenty-three young people came to live and learn at Taliesin, master architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s estate and home near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Lautner was one of Wright’s apprentices, though Salkin was merely a summer student who came to Taliesin as a first chair violist for the Indianapolis Symphony, hand selected by Leopold Stokowski for the All American Youth Orchestra. Salkin performed with the Taliesin Quartet during Wright’s summer residencies where he was encouraged by Wright to attend Wright’s architecture classes and lectures. It was here where music, architecture, planning, and philosophy converged. Salkin was a polymath in the truest sense, and became equally fluent in structural theory, cooperative economics, and chamber music. Wright’s emphasis on organic design, economical construction, and community planning would shape the arc of Salkin’s career, as would his close friendship with Lautner, whose structural daring he would both later encourage and collaborate with from within. Architectural historian Harold Zellman would later described Salkin as “fierce in his passions, voracious in his knowledge, and cocksure in his judgments.”

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