Frank Lloyd Wright Designed This House at 26—It’s Now for Sale for $1.98 Million
Photo: VHT Studios, courtesy of Elizabeth August
A newly renovated Frank Lloyd Wright home that owners Susan and Arthur Vogt call “a labor of love” will hit the market on September 4. Located in River Forest, Illinois, near Chicago, the residence, know as the Winslow House, will be offered at $1.985 million. Elizabeth August of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate holds the listing.
The Vogts first fell in love with the Winslow House in an architectural history class in college, never dreaming that more than 40 years later they would end up owning it. The house had been vacant for several years when Arthur Vogt, an architect himself, pitched it to his wife Susan as a retirement project. They worried it would deteriorate or be torn down if it didn’t find buyers who could lovingly restore it into a practical home. In 2016, they purchased the home for $1.3 million, and in 2018, they moved from Boston to Chicago to live in the house while renovating it.
After putting about $1 million into the renovation, the Vogts are listing the home at an intentional loss.
“I think of it as our personal philanthropy project,” Arthur Vogt says.
Designed for William Winslow, a manufacturer of decorative ironworks, the home was built in 1893 and was Wright’s very first commission as an independent architect after parting ways with his mentor Louis Sullivan. Previously, he’d completed a number of “bootleg” houses around Chicago—that is, commissions on the side of his full-time job, which he wasn’t supposed to be doing.
“You can almost feel where Wright was experimenting with different forms and different ideas of how to design the house,” Arthur says. “For me, that was captivating.”
The front of the house rises in a traditional box shape, a sign of Sullivan’s influence, but the roofline has Wright’s signature wide eaves, an early harbinger of the Prairie style. The back of the home shows playful experimentation, as different geometric shapes extend out from the house.
The five-bedroom main home is approximately 5,000 square feet with ornate woodwork and brass sconces throughout. As visitors enter the home, their eyes will be drawn to the inglenook fireplace, a cozy, recessed room within a room that Wright repeated throughout many of his designs. Unlike many homes of the era, Wright used an open floor plan, where visitors can see “end to end,” Susan says. Large windows drench the home in natural light. The property, which sits on about two thirds of an acre, also includes a two-bedroom coach house.
“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 Vogt says. “But it needed to be brought into the 21st century.”
When the Vogts began renovations, their top priority was adding air conditioning. They also upgraded the electrical system and remodeled the bathrooms. They added modern touches for convenience—the house now has a tankless water heater, a whole-house generator, and smart thermostats.
They also tackled the overgrown yard, adding a drainage system to mitigate any flooding from a nearby river. Then, to honor Frank Lloyd Wright’s original vision, they hired historic landscape architect Carol Yetken to design a yard featuring native plants that would have been available during Wright’s era.
Now the Vogts are ready to turn it over to new owners, who they hope will love it as much as they have and preserve all of its one-of-a-kind features.
“You could call it a love story,” August, the listing agent, says. “[The Vogts] wanted this home to shine and carry on for years to come.”
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
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