Frank Lloyd Wright Designed His First Prairie-Style House When He Was 26. Now, It’s for Sale

Frank Lloyd Wright’s first commission as an independent architect is officially on the market. Listed at $1,985,000, the Winslow House in the Chicago suburbs was built in 1893—when the Midwestern architect was only 26 years old.

Wright would go on to become one of history’s greatest American architects, designing famous homes such as Fallingwater and Taliesin West. But in the 1890s, his notoriety was limited to the Chicago suburbs, where he’d made a home with his wife and children while working for the architecture firm Adler & Sullivan,

While working at the firm, Wright had been accepting private design commissions on his own time—which he wasn’t permitted to do. His superiors discovered his activities, and Wright left the firm on bad terms. However, his departure allowed him to begin openly accepting commissions as an independent architect.

The first people to employ him were Edith and William Winslow, who owned an ornamental iron company in Chicago. Wright designed a five-bedroom house for the couple in River Forest, Illinois. According to a statement from Christie’s International Real Estate, which is selling the property, the project “helped launch Wright’s groundbreaking career.”

In 2016, Susan and Arthur Vogt purchased the house, which they had fallen in love with in a college architecture class many years earlier, per Architectural Digest’s Abigail Singrey. The home had been empty for years, and the retired Vogts worried that it would continue to deteriorate if nobody took care of it. They bought it for $1.3 million, moving from Boston to River Forest to begin renovations in 2018.

“You can almost feel where Wright was experimenting with different forms and different ideas of how to design the house,” Arthur, who is an architect, tells Architectural Digest. “For me, that was captivating.”

In 1970, the Winslow House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. According to the statement, Wright considered it his first Prairie-style design. Inspired by the “broad, flat landscape of America’s Midwest,” the Prairie style emphasized harmony between buildings and their surrounding landscapes, per the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust.

The Winslow house includes many design signatures that would become characteristic of Wright’s style. “The low-pitched roof with deep eaves recalls the vast horizon of the open plain,” writes Artnet’s Richard Whiddington. “The door is slightly sunken, and the home is symmetrical, divided horizontally between slate and golden Roman brick.” The home also features a unique inglenook fireplace, a partially enclosed room that Wright would mimic in later designs.

When the Vogts started work on the building, they were committed to conserving its style and function.

“We felt that the best way to preserve this house was to make it suitable for a family to live in it and continue the legacy of it being a family home,” Susan tells Architectural Digest. “But it needed to be brought into the 21st century.”

Their $1 million renovation included installing air conditioning, updating the electrical system, renovating the bathrooms and landscaping the large yard. The Vogts also added a generator, a tankless water heater and smart thermostats. They’re purposely selling the house at a loss, hoping the new owners will love the house as they have.

“We didn’t do this to make money,” Susan tells Dennis Rodkin of Crain’s Business Chicago. “We did it because we want this house to be lived in and appreciated by someone.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.