American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the 20th century’s most prolific architects, designing over 1,000 houses, offices, and museums throughout his 70-year career. His residential designs are among the most sought-after by architecture buffs, commanding a premium and coming pre-loaded with a rich and fascinating history.
Here are seven on the market right now.
The Samuel Eppstein Residence
Galesburg, Michigan
3 bedrooms; $2.1m
Frank Lloyd Wright master-planned The Acres community in Galesburg, Michigan, in the late 1940s for a group of scientists working in the labs of the Upjohn company. Samuel and Dorothy Eppstein were among them, though their home would turn out to be one of only four Wright designs that were ultimately built in The Acres, adding to its importance.
Despite its provenance, the house fell into disrepair over the following decades before undergoing a total renovation under the custodianship of Marika Broere and Tony Hillebrandt in 2016. Their restoration focused on preserving the heritage home’s existing elements while updating its systems, plumbing and electrics. Rotting mahogany was replaced, concrete floors were restored, and climate control was added to prevent further decay. Meanwhile, its innovative concrete blocks are left to shine, and the bathrooms have been updated with salvaged 1950s tiles.
Last year, the Usonian was listed for sale with its neighbour, The Eric and Pat Pratt House, which sold.
The Eppstein House is still looking for a buyer, with an asking price of $2.1m. The house is also available to rent via Airbnb for $455 per night and is fully furnished with original Frank Lloyd Wright furniture and postwar modernist furniture from the period.
The Warren Hickox House
Kankakee, Illinois
4 bedrooms; $585,000
When The Warren Hickox House was constructed in 1900, Kankakee was a small city on the up, though by the latter part of the 20th century, it had fallen on hard times. This partly explains why this Illinois property is listed for under one million – a rarity these days – though the other part is that it needs renovating.
The then 33-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright designed The Hickox House—and its neighbour, the B. Harley Bradley House—in a Japanese style with a modified cruciform plan. It features broad flared roof ridges, deep eaves, stained wood trims, and a white plaster facade.
The good news is that the 3,277 sq ft period property retains many original features. The bad news? They need work. Its kitchen, for example, hasn’t been touched since 1958, according to Realtor.com. (Wright’s original cabinets are stashed in the basement.) A previous owner also painted the interior woodwork and installed carpeting – big no-nos for purists. But it has four large bedrooms, with 120-year-old stained glass, and tips for its renovation can be gleamed next door: the B. Harley Bradley House is open to the public as a museum. Victoria Krause Schutte of @properties /Christie’s International Real Estate has the listing.
The Robert & Winifred Winn Residence
Kalamazoo, Michigan
3 bedrooms; $1.3m
The Robert D. and Winifred L. Winn Residence was built in 1950 and is one of eight Frank Lloyd Wright-designed properties in Kalamazoo. Four of them, including the Winn home, are in the Parkwyn Village subdivision, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2022. Its owners have owned the Winn Residence since 2012 and are thought to have invested around $800,000 to preserve the historic property. It remains true to Wright’s vision, with living spaces spanning two storeys and Wright’s signature walls of windows, concrete blocks and open layout highlighting its horizontal lines. Double-sided fireplaces and signature red floor tiles are intact, offering the quintessential Wright look.
Fred Taber of Jaqua Realtors is listing the 2,469 sqft Michigan home for $1.3m.
The William Winslow Residence
River Forest, Illinois
5 bedrooms; $1.985m (contingent)
This 1893 home in River Forest, Illinois, was Wright’s very first commission as an independent architect after parting ways with his mentor, Louis Sullivan. Previously, he’d completed several ‘bootleg’ houses around Chicago—that is, commissions on the side of his full-time job, which he wasn’t supposed to be doing, but this ‘transitional’ house marked the launch of his eponymous practice aged just 26.
The Winslow Residence has been fully restored by retired architects Arthur and Susan Vogt, who’ve sunk around $1m into renovating the historic Illinois property. With five bedrooms, the house spans 5,000 sq ft and retains its original ornate woodwork and original stained glass throughout, as well as a signature large Inglenook fireplace in the living room. The layout is open-plan – a visionary concept for the period, with an upgraded kitchen and bathrooms. It also comes with a newly-renovated coach house, a self-contained one-bedroom guest house with a kitchen, 1.5 bathrooms and an upstairs living room and den.
After a month on the market, the house is tentatively listed as ‘contingent’ – but you can still peek inside the Illinois property, listed exclusively with Elizabeth August of @ Properties Christie’s International Real Estate.
The Norman and Aimee Lykes Residence
Phoenix, Arizona
3 bedrooms; $8.95m
Will this swirling desert masterpiece ever find a new owner? The Lykes Residence is one of Wright’s most recognisable designs, even though it’s one of his least replicated ones, and is available for rent or for sale.
The futuristic ‘sun house’ has a swirling geometric design of interlocking concentric circles. Built right at the end of his career (when he was working on projects such as the similarly circular Guggenheim Museum in New York), the 3200 sq ft home was his final design, started by the architect in 1959 and completed after his death by John Rattenbury in 1967.
Windows and cupboards follow the building’s curves, while internal walls are a mix of mahogany and exposed brick. The Phoenix property originally had five bedrooms, but in the 1990s, the two smallest bedrooms were combined to create one large suite. As with all of the architect’s projects, the furniture and cabinetry were designed custom and are intact.
The house is available for rent or for sale, in its entirety, or via a novel fractional ownership approach, offering six people the opportunity to purchase a share of the Arizona home for $1.5m each. (The catch? All six buyers have to be in place before escrow.) Realtor Deanna Peters has the listing.
The Randall Fawcett House
Los Banos, California
7 bedrooms; $3.495m (contingent)
Nestled into 76 acres of rich farmland in Los Banos, in California’s Central Valley, The Randall Fawcett house is an architectural triple threat. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1955 and completed posthumously using the architect’s blueprints in 1961 by the Fawcett family. Fifty years later, it was restored by Taliesin architect Arthur Dyson in 2012 with consultation from FLW’s grandson Eric Lloyd Wright and Cornelia Brierley, a senior Taliesin Fellow and the original interior designer.
The Fawcett House boasts a super-sized Usonian design, with seven bedrooms and six bathrooms. Other FLW staples, such as walls of glass and oversized fireplaces, expanses of wood and natural materials and geometric floor tiles, all feature across the interiors. Crosby Doe is listing the California property.
The H.C. Price Tower
Bartlesville, Oklahoma,
Mixed-use; $600,000+
Now for a change of pace: The Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, has the privilege of being the only skyscraper that Frank Lloyd Wright ever realised (the rest got stuck on the drawing board).
Wright designed the 19-storey copper and concrete mixed-use building in Bartlesville in 1956 as the corporate HQ for the oil pipeline firm H.C. Price Company. Price Tower is Frank Lloyd Wright’s sole high-rise development, and he referred to it as ‘the tree that escaped the crowded forest’.
The architect drew on an earlier, unrealised design from 1925, with the tower featuring a central ‘trunk’ supporting concrete floors that cantilever like tree branches, complete with patinated copper ‘leaves’ and gold-tinted glass. Price Tower was envisaged as mixed-use from the start, including apartments, shops, and offices.
The building has been mired in controversy in the last few years (read more about that here), and after spiralling debts, it’s being auctioned off via Ten-X Commercial Real Estate Auction Platform with an opening bid of $600,000. The auction was scheduled to begin on 7-9 October 2024, but that appears to have been bumped to 18-20 November 2024.
