11 Frank Lloyd Wright Houses You Can Visit

Table Of Content

• Community Day Sunday At Frank Lloyd Wright House in Florence
• The Top 16 Frank Lloyd Wright Houses You Can Tour
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s Norman Lykes House
• Inside A Nordic Sauna Designed To Blend In With Nature
• Inside One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Final-Ever Designs
• What was Frank Lloyd Wright’s early life like?

Completed in 1925, the hillside dwelling served as a salon space and residence for Samuel and Harriet Freeman, who became enthralled with Wright’s work after staying as guests at the nearby Hollyhock House, which the architect designed in 1922. Later in his life (and after his death in 1959), Wright was accorded significant honorary recognition for his lifetime achievements. He received a Gold Medal award from The Royal Institute of British Architects in 1941. He received honorary degrees from several universities (including his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin), and several nations named him as an honorary board member to their national academies of art and/or architecture.

Community Day Sunday At Frank Lloyd Wright House in Florence

The architect constructed the 2,884 square-foot residence from 12,000 textured concrete blocks and completed it in 1925 with two bedrooms, one bathroom, a semi-open kitchen and a hearth. As one of only four of Wright’s projects to feature the ornate blocks, the abode’s textile design is exposed on both the exterior and interior. However, the pair say there is also a certain amount of pressure that comes with owning a Wright design. With the ultimate goal being to honor the architect’s vision, it’s easy to question whether the right decisions are being made, particularly as it comes to restoration and renovation. “I felt so nervous to open the house up originally, because I was afraid that people would have an opinion that we did something wrong,” Amy says. Ultimately, they’ve received positive feedback from guests and friends and family alike.

The Top 16 Frank Lloyd Wright Houses You Can Tour

From his family background in Unitarianism Wright absorbed the ideas of the Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who encouraged an honest life inspired by nature. The English Arts and Crafts movement, which promoted craftsmanship, simplicity and integrity in art, architecture, and design, provided a powerful impetus to Wright’s principles. The household art movement, a distinct movement in middle-class home decoration, informed Wright’s earliest interiors. It aimed, as the name implies, to bring art into the home, and was primarily disseminated through books and articles written by tastemakers who believed that the home interior could exert moral influences upon its inhabitants. These various sources were tempered by the lessons and practices Wright learned under his mentors, Joseph Lyman Silsbee and Louis Sullivan. In 1889 Wright completed the construction of a small two-story residence in Oak Park on the Western edge of Chicago.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Norman Lykes House

Sometimes you have to get creative,” said Peters, who has explored ways to update the Wright-designed Norman Lykes House. She says she’s looked into having an exclusive documentary made about Wright with Volumedia and offered to work as a project manager for owners looking to use the property as an “experience” rental. Eight Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings marks the first modern architecture designation on the World Heritage List in the United States. Nestled in grassy fields on 10.5 acres in Kirkwood, Missouri, the Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth Park is a unique and significant residence designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, widely recognized as the greatest American architect of the 20th century. The 1,900-square-foot residence built for Russell and Ruth Kraus was the architect’s first building in the St. Louis area, and is one of only five Wright designs in Missouri. It is an excellent example of Wright’s democratic vision, intended to provide middle-class Americans with beautiful architecture at an affordable cost.

Wright chose to locate his office in the building because the tower location reminded him of the office of Adler & Sullivan. Cecil Corwin followed Wright and set up his architecture practice in the same office, but the two worked independently and did not consider themselves partners. Whether you’re a lifelong architecture enthusiast or simply curious about this American design master, a Frank Lloyd Wright house tour is an unforgettable experience.

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The Unity Temple improved on the Larkin Building in the consistency of its structure (it was built of concrete, with massive walls and reinforced roof) and in the ingenious interior ornament that emphasized space while subordinating mass. Unlike many contemporary architects, Wright took advantage of ornament to define scale and accentuation. Wright’s mother, Anna Lloyd-Jones, was a schoolteacher, aged 24, when she married a widower, William C. Wright, an itinerant 41-year-old musician and preacher.

One of Frank Lloyd Wright's Earliest Commissions Lists for $779000 - Architectural Digest

One of Frank Lloyd Wright's Earliest Commissions Lists for $779000.

Posted: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Live in your own Usonian home:

Located in Hollywood’s Barnsdall Art Park, the Hollyhock House  was the first Wright-designed residence in Los Angeles. Commissioned by Aline Barnsdall, an eccentric oil heiress, the structure recently underwent a comprehensive $4.35 million conservation effort. Built between 1919 and 1921, the Hollyhock House originally served as Barnsdall’s own venue for producing avant-garde plays.

Eight of those buildings are now UNESCO World Heritage listed, and many of the homes that he designed have become museums open to the public. Here is a tiny sampling of some of our favorite Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes, each of which offers a reminder of why the architect remains a such legend. Arguably Wright’s most revered residence, Fallingwater is truly awe-inspiring and almost otherworldly. Designed for a Purdue University professor and his wife, the John and Catherine Christian House (also known as SAMARA), is a bold and inviting example of Wright’s Usonian architecture. John and Catherine, who were working with a decidedly modest budget, first approached Wright in 1950, when he was already a well-established architect. Much to their surprise, Wright agreed to the undertaking with only one caveat — that they see Wright’s design through to full completion, no matter how long it took.

What was Frank Lloyd Wright’s early life like?

An integral architectural feature within the room, the mural was designed by Wright and executed by his colleague, the artist Charles Corwin. It is a fascinating blend of decorative motifs; forms from exotic cultures—such as Egyptian winged scarabs—are combined with flat, geometric designs that echo the work of Wright’s international contemporaries, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Vienna Secessionists. The home is constructed of 12,000 cast concrete blocks, and Wright designed the walls to be textured on both the interior and exterior. Frank Lloyd Wright fans, take note—one of the architect’s most notable homes is on the market in Los Angeles.

The administrative block for the Larkin Company, a mail-order firm in Buffalo, New York, was erected in 1904 (demolished in 1950). Abutting the railways, it was sealed and fireproof, with filtered, conditioned, mechanical ventilation; metal desks, chairs, and files; ample sound-absorbent surfaces; and excellently balanced light, both natural and artificial. Two years later the Unitarian church of Oak Park, Illinois, Unity Temple, was under way; in 1971 it was registered as a national historic landmark. Built on a minimal budget, the small house of worship and attached social centre achieved timeless monumentality. The congregation still meets in the building’s intimate, top-lit cube of space, which is turned inward, away from city noises.

The concrete—a combination of gravel, granite and sand from the site—was hand-cast in aluminum molds to create blocks measuring 16”x 16” x 3.5” that were then woven together with steel rods, giving the textile block houses their name. The Ennis House is unusually monumental and vertical for a Wright residence, but when the architect completed it in 1924 he immediately considered it his favorite. Kentuck Knob was one of the last homes that Wright ever built—he was 86 years old when he agreed to take the project on. Built with local sandstone and North Carolinian red cypress, the structure’s low-slung profile blends gracefully into the landscape. And if you’re wondering why a house in Pennsylvania is called the “Kentuck Knob,” the home’s fanciful name was inspired by the property it’s built on.

“We decided that we wanted to do something contemporary and modern.” Coincidentally, two decades before being handed the deed, the pair had visited the Wright home and thought they’d never live in a property like it. “Tom Monaghan, [the founder of Domino’s Pizza,] owned the house, and we came over to tour it one night,” he says. By now Wright’s practice encompassed apartment houses, group dwellings, and recreation centres.

Adjacent to the home is Wright’s studio, which buzzed with fellow artisans and architects. Originally quite small, Wright designed a number of additions during the twenty-year period in which he lived in the home with his wife and six children. A National Historic Landmark, the Home and Studio is owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has been restored, maintained, and operated as a museum by the The Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust. Both the Home and Studio are open for tours and, when you’re done, you can take a self-guided audio tour of the Oak Park neighborhood, which boasts the world’s largest collection of Wright-designed buildings.