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The Ellwanger and Barry Company Papers, housed in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, includes correspondence between the Rochester nursery company and the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
In 1911 Wright moved to the home he designed outside Spring Green, Wisconsin. Named Taliesin, the country house also served as his studio. To landscape the property, in May 1912 Wright ordered a profusion of fruit trees and other plantings from Ellwanger & Barry (E&B). Unfortunately E& B’s shipment of the order was not well timed; a railroad strike in Chicago resulted in the stock not being unloaded from the cars for almost three weeks and many of the plants withered and died. Wright contended that the loss was the fault of E&B and refused to pay for the dead plants. For their part E&B claimed that they “cannot be held responsible for any nursery stock which might fail to grow. If the loss occurred by reason of the delay on the railroad, claim for such loss should be made to the Railroad Company.” (E& B to Frank Lloyd Wright, October 19, 1912).
On November 29, 1912 Wright sent his retort:
Throughout 1913 E&B, Wright, and his landscape architect Jens Jensen exchanged letters trying to settle the matter. In July, Wright wrote that he would be willing to pay his bill if E&B replaced the “rotted stock” (Frank Lloyd Wright to E&B, July 1913). E&B agreed to this proposition and in the fall of 1913 replaced the plants.
In February 1914, E&B still had not received payment from Wright. Every month they resubmitted their bill, but no payment was forthcoming. In response to the letter sent in August, E&B received this letter from Jens Jensen: 
In the letter Jensen refers to the catastrophic events that had recently occurred at Taliesin. Living at the house with Wright was Mamah Borthwick. Their love affair had caused a huge scandal when, in 1908, she left her husband and two children and Wright left his wife and six children to be together. In August of 1914 a deranged servant tragically set Taliesin on fire and murdered Mamah Borthwick, her two children, and four others.
The dispute over payment of Wright’s bill came to a conclusion when on December 10, 1914 E&B could finally record that the bill had been paid.
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