There is no doubt that the work of the west coast architects in developing the northwest coast style was greatly influenced by the revolutionary work of Frank Lloyd Wright and his extraordinary rethink of what a midwest house should look and feel like.
Via Adele Weder comes this gem of an original Frank Lloyd Wright House originally commissioned by the same couple now selling it. The couple now in their nineties are selling the house-completely untouched-for about 1.4 million dollars in US dollars.
“The three bedroom, two bathroom home sits on 3.77 “extremely private acres at the end of a quiet cul de sac” in St. Louis Park, just seven miles from downtown Minneapolis. Inside its 2,647 square feet, there are vaulted ceilings and walls of windows that take advantage of the “incredible light” in the home’s breathtaking great room, which also features a stunning brick fireplace. The floors throughout are done in the architect’s signature hue, Cherokee Red.”
This project commenced in 1958 and was completed in 1960. Most of the furniture inside the house was designed by Wright and the “property has extensive built-ins, as well as dining chairs, lamps, and even cabinet pulls created from Wright’s original designs. The place even has a finished basement, quite a rare find for a FLW house.”
The home is currently listed with Coldwell Banker for $1.395 million, or approximately 1.86 million dollars in Canadian currency.
Wow $1.4 million (US of course) gets you a Frank Lloyd Wright in the Twin Cities and here it gets you crack shack.
Yeah I’d rather have this piece of history than a Vancouver tear down.
But that’s just me, I’m a weirdo
Go for it. What’s the holdup?
Author
Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.
Years ago we made a side trip to see “Falling Water.”. Although it is a home like no other, and includes ideas that I would love to incorporate in any new home, it was also very obvious that I couldn’t live in Wright’s house. As admirable as it was, it wasn’t our dream home because we would need to force our lifestyle into his vision.
Beyond that a Wright home is a museum and you really forego the chance to put a personal ” stamp” on it. At least a Vancouver Special is a blank canvas.
This house has been on the market for over 300 days and has recently been reduced by $100K. Good chance that it’s been for sale before and didn’t achieve ask. Sitting on 3.77 acres, it’s clearly not hitting people’s hot buttons. All that wood panelling is too dark – that’s why most interiors have white ceilings.
The kitchen was not designed by someone who has ever cooked. It has an atrocious layout. There are no photos of the laundry area. Doubtless it is as bad.
The floors are his beautiful signature red, but they’re concrete – agony to stand or walk on.
FLW loved monumental fireplaces. They are as silly as the “feature walls” slapped up by Van Spec builders. Chinese buyers do make use of hearths, however – that’s where they store their shoes.
The house has a lot of unpleasant sharp edges. Wherever you rest your elbows should be rounded.
I’ll take this original over cookie cutter plantations of vinyl siding and suburban peel n’ stick stylizing any day. There are cheap references to Frank Lloyd Wright everywhere in suburbia, usually tossed into a confusing mix of poorly-executed detailing pulled from a developer’s catalogue of tricks.
Wright’s influence was felt far, wide and long. Many local architects like Ron Thom and Arthur Erickson took his design process to heart in their own work. Of course there will be incongruencies in detail and usage when architecture from 60 years ago is transported into today’s context, just as most older houses are often renovated to suit modern programming (notably by expanding the kitchens), and use expensive land more judiciously.
But you cannot deny Wright’s refined eye for the Japanese tradition of grounding a structure with horizontal lines, using natural and hard-wearing materials in residential design, for orchestrating the architecture as a sequential journey from outside to inside and from room to room, for using unique equilateral divisions of the 90-degree angle (45, 22.5 …) and the 60-degree angle, for understanding the subtle power and many manifestations of natural light, for incorporating courtyards and open space into the architecture and creating transitional areas from inside to outside, for creating unique complex details that are widely copied or cheesily referred to even today, for the importance of establishing a sense of permanence by anchoring a house with a massive hearth and a ground-hugging succession of low exterior walls, and so forth.
Wright did not design only for the rich. He reacted to that critique with his array of around 60 cool Usonian houses for the middle class, not a Bear Run / Falling Water, Robie House or Guggenheim among them. He could have designed social housing like Erickson did, but decided to stick mostly with private commissions. He favoured private cars and large lot subdivisions over public transit and high density communities, though he was deeply involved in big city projects.
You can call Wright on a number of things, but his originality within a particular period of time cannot be denied.