Fred Bernstein has written an excellent short article - more of a timeline, really - on a recent on-line battle for a set of tremendously important photographs of Taliesin, taken just before the original structure burned down in 1914. And unlike that story, this one ends happily, albeit quite expensively.

On Jan. 24, a Monday night, Jack Holzhueter learned that 32 photographs of Taliesin - Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio in Spring Green, Wis. - were for sale on eBay. Mr. Holzhueter, on the board of curators of the Wisconsin Historical Society, looked at the Web site and realized that the photos were exceedingly rare. "They're a Rosetta stone for the building," he said: they were taken in 1911 and 1912; Taliesin burned in 1914 and was rebuilt in somewhat different form. Mr. Holzhueter, a retired writer and, he says, "full-time patsy," told his colleagues, "We've got to do something about this." The auction would end at 9:17, Central time, on Friday night, Jan. 28.