Issue Jun 12th 2024  June 12th 2024

Wright's McCartney House In Michigan Lands A Buyer With Local Roots

After listing agent Fred Taber put the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed McCartney House on the market in March, he was flooded with interest.

In the end, a buyer with Michigan roots will be handed the keys to the Kalamazoo, MI, home.

“That house had 15 people tour it who were all set to make offers, until they found out they can’t Airbnb it,” says Taber, of Jaqua Realtors, adding that interest came from California, Dubai, Florida, Texas, and Canada. “Every single one wanted to Airbnb the house. You can’t do that. It’s a zoning ordinance by Kalamazoo.”

Built in 1951 for Ward and Helen McCartney, the four-bedroom, two-bath Usonian-style beauty was the couple’s home until 2004. Tucked into the Parkwyn Village subdivision, the 1,671-square-foot house sits on 1.12 acres. Parkwyn Village is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Taber co-listed the home with Victoria Krause Schutte, of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate. He notes that Christie’s is involved because of its “stature in the global real-estate market.”

The sale price is not yet disclosed, as the deal is still pending, but the asking price did drop to $699,000 in April—down from its original $790,000 ask.

By reducing the asking price and eliminating contingencies, the seller found a buyer.

“Frank Lloyd Wright is what attracted them [to the home],” says Taber. “They have a cottage in the area. They will be 50/50 residents, so it would be Michigan residents buying the home. I am very confident that this offer will go through. These are the right people to buy the home. They’re very passionate about the home. He’s an architect.”

Included with the sale are some furnishings original to the home—dining tables, a coffee table, and three end tables—along with two paintings by Helen McCartney and six blueprints of the home. The buyers are the sixth family to own the house. Five of those families have owned the place in the past 20 years, Taber says.

In 2021, the house was listed for $445,000 and was fresh off a restoration. It eventually sold for $425,000 that same year.

While one of Wright’s many Usonian-style homes—typically with long, horizontal lines and a cantilevered roof—the McCartney House is different in that it flaunts a diamond-shaped module.

Another interesting quality is the built-in stereo and turntable, which are common in most Michigan Usonians. “All the working parts are gone,” says Taber, but it could be a fun restoration project for the new owners.

Click for more details: realtor.com  

The Story Behind Frank Lloyd Wright's Kentuck Knob

To understand the Frank Lloyd Wright home, Kentuck Knob in Dunbar, Pennsylvania — you must know that near it is another Wright house, Fallingwater.

"Fallingwater is, of course, arguably, one of the most famous houses in the entire world, and we exist latterly and figuratively because of them," said Tim Fischer, manager of Kentuck Knob.

The Hagan family from Uniontown, who were once the owners of the Hagan Ice Cream Company, were friends of the Kaufmann family, who owned Fallingwater. And after years of visiting them at their home above the waterfall, the Hagans decided they needed their own Frank Lloyd Wright house.

What would follow in the mid-1950s would become the house on top of the knob.

"They caught Wright at the tail end of his career," said Fischer. "He agreed to design a house for them and said his one condition was he had to create all of this without ever stepping foot on the property, sight unseen. He told the Hagans to send topographical maps and photos, and he would come up with the design for them, and that's what he did."

Wright once said, "No house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it." And that's part of the organic philosophy in the architecture that he used in designing this house.

"Wright wanted to create distinctly American architecture, and these Usonian houses were part of that program," Fischer said. "They would be small, modest houses, affordable for the average American family, so they should be able to spread all across the United States. It was the beginning of what we know today as the ranch-style house."

The Hagans ended up paying around $96,000, which in today's currency is roughly $1.2 million, to build the house, landscape it, and fill it with furniture.

They lived here full-time until the mid-1980s. Eventually, they sold the home to architect enthusiasts Lord and Lady Palumbo of Great Britain, and it was the Palumbo family that opened this home to the public in 1996. Thanks to them, each year, thousands of people journey from all over the world to see this Wright hidden gem. The next time you are at Fallingwater, leave some time to drive down the road and visit Kentuck Knob.

Click for more details: cbsnews.com  

Rosenbaum House: The History Behind Wright's Alabama Masterpiece

The Rosenbaum House located in Florence, Alabama, is considered the state’s claim to architecture fame, being the only home in the state designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

It was built in 1940 and is one of the purest forms of the Usonian style. Wright’s goal was to bring function into the American household, shifting away from more ornate styles.

Stanley and Mildred Rosenbaum were gifted the funds to build on the land by Stanley’s parents as a wedding gift. The couple was given $7,500 to build a home upon the two-acres overlooking the Tennessee River. Today, the presence of trees blocks the view of the river.

The young couple had heard of Frank Lloyd Wright and commissioned him to design their home in Florence. Wright’s designs for the home ending up costing over double what the couple originally planned to spend.

In the year of 1940, the Rosenbaum home was complete. A few years and a few children later, the Rosenbaums decided the home was too small for their growing family. In 1948, the Rosenbaums commissioned Wright once again to build an addition to their home.

The Rosenbaum family lived in the home for over 60 years before selling it to the city of Florence in 1999. The home was opened up to the public almost a year later after undergoing efforts to restore the home to its former glory.

The home designed by Wright was a Usonian home which brings function, affordability, open floor plans and organic structure into harmony with one another. He decided the home should be practical above anything else, giving the home plenty of hidden storage spaces throughout the house. The house’s storage spaces were created to replace the need of a basement or attic in the home.

When visiting the home, you will notice the dozens of hidden storage spaces placed thoughtfully around the Rosenbaum home. Wright, even though he never visited the location, wanted to incorporate as much of the natural surroundings into the home as he could.

The building includes many windows and skylights in order to brighten the home with a natural source of lighting. Wright also used materials found in Alabama including cedar and red clay bricks to build the majority of the home.

Wright not only wanted to design the home himself, but he also wanted to design the furniture and decor within the home. Wright thought any outside furniture would do the home an injustice and insisted on the family using his furniture in the exact spots he saw fit.

Click for more details: thebamabuzz.com  

Tracing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Influence

Over his 70-year career, Frank Lloyd Wright designed more than 1,000 structures—museums, homes, churches, commercial buildings—532 of which were built. But thanks to his ideas (and his fame) his influence maps far beyond his work. From the 1930s onward, to be inspired by Wright could mean working alongside him as an apprentice or fellow at his home, studio, and architectural school Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and later Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona—like E. Fay Jones, one of Wright’s esteemed protégés. It could also mean admiring Wright’s ideas from afar. One of the best examples of this is Joseph Eichler, who in the early ’40s rented a Usonian-style house designed by Wright in Hillsborough, California, and was so inspired by its long, horizontal lines and walls of windows that he developed his Eichler homes with similar modernist principles.

Wright’s influence reached other architects from his generation and later ones, too. He popularized the term organic architecture, referring to the philosophy of designing in harmony with natural surroundings, and was among the group of Chicago-area architects to introduce Prairie style as an extension of the early-20th-century Arts and Crafts movement. Unsurprisingly, many of Wright’s actual descendants also pursued careers in architecture: His son, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., also known as Lloyd Wright, became a landscape architect and designed a number of Southern California homes and landmarks. Meanwhile, Lloyd Wright’s son, Eric Lloyd Wright, also went on to become an architect and spent much of his career restoring his father’s and grandfather’s buildings.

But the web of Wright’s architectural influence doesn’t stop there: Dwell highlights nine architects whose works were touched by Wright’s ideas, whether directly or from a distance. Wright treated his residential projects as testing grounds for his evolving visions; unsurprisingly, his impact on future generations of architects shines in the homes they designed.

Click for more details: dwell.com