He was world famous as an architect.

It was famous -- infamous, to some -- for futuristic architecture of its own, with a grand canopied carport entrance, pink and purple shag carpeting, an interior waterfall and a bar that mechanically revolved.

Frank Lloyd Wright never made it to the Gobbler -- the architect died about a decade before the restaurant and motel opened -- but next month these two Wisconsin icons will meet at last.

On June 6, The Frank Lloyd Wright Wisconsin Tourism Program will host "The Gobbler Gala," a dinner and discussion at the building in Johnson Creek, just off Interstate 94, that was once the Gobbler Supper Club.

There will be a catered gourmet turkey dinner and speakers will include Jefferson architect Helmut Ajango, who designed the Gobbler, and Wright historian Sidney Robinson, formerly of the University of Illinois-Chicago, now with the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

As one who rarely missed an opportunity during a Madison-to-Milwaukee run to duck off the highway and seek refreshment at the Gobbler, I am both amused and pleased by this development.

The idea came from Jack Holzhueter, retired after many years with the Wisconsin Historical Society, and a Wright Tourism board member. He enlisted another board member, Margo Melli, a Madison attorney and law professor, and together they persuaded the current owner of the Gobbler property, Jefferson attorney Raymond Krek, to go along.

Though the restaurant has been closed for several years, much of the interior is still in place and Holzhueter said there's even a chance they'll get the revolving bar operating.

The only real problem is explaining the uniqueness of the Gobbler, which for most of its years had a motel adjacent to the restaurant, to those who never experienced it.

A writer named James Lileks once imagined what someone pitching the Gobbler to investors might have said: "It's going to be a futuristic, state-of-the-art motel with every modern convenience from water beds to 8-tracks. The entire dining area will be covered in deep-pile pink and purple carpet. But wait -- here's the best part. It will look like an abstract sculpture of a giant turkey. We'll bill it as a romantic getaway -- and call it the Gobbler."

A woman named Lenka Reznicek created a Web site, www.gobblermotel.blogspot.com, devoted to the Gobbler. It has many photos, including some of the motel, which was razed in the past decade.

I spoke to Reznicek about the site a few years ago. She was working as a staff assistant in the economics department at the University of Chicago.

"I had heard about it before I moved to the Chicago area," Reznicek said. "A friend of mine who appreciates anything offbeat told me about it. Then when I moved here I realized it was just a couple of hours away."

The Gobbler opened in the late 1960s. The original owner was an area turkey farmer named Clarence Hartwig. An early brochure for the Gobbler said this: "The Gobbler Supper Club, the only one of its kind in all the world, was conceived to enhance the role of Tom turkey as the all-American delicacy. The building's rotunda design permits dramatic use of natural lava stone to simulate ruffled turkey feathers and windows form the eyes of the Gobbler."

Some years ago, the architect, Helmut Ajango, told me Hartwig had approached him in 1965 or '66 and said he wanted to get out of the turkey business and into the restaurant business.

At one point I told the architect I especially liked the revolving bar.

"There was only one other one in the country, in Seattle, when we did it," Ajango said. "At first, it went all the way around in 40 minutes, and some people got disoriented. We settled on an hour and 20 minutes."

The June 6 event is open to the public and there is ticket information at the Wright Tourism Web site, www.wrightinwisconsin.org.

I asked Holzhueter what he thought Frank Lloyd Wright might have made of the Gobbler. He laughed and remembered that Wright's driver once recalled the architect saying pretty much the same thing whenever they pulled up to something that might be construed as a tribute or homage.

"I always knew this would happen," Wright would say. "And I wish it wasn 't so ugly."

Heaven knows what he would have made of the inside.

Contact Doug Moe at 608-252-6446 or dmoe@madison.com.