A Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian Home Lists for $1.85 Million in Michigan
Photo: Mathew Truman
A Usonian masterpiece by Frank Lloyd Wright in Kalamazoo, Michigan, has just listed for $1.85 million, reports Realtor. The residence, known as the Robert D. and Winifred L. Winn House, was designed in 1950 and spans three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms across 2,469 square feet. “It is an amazing work of art,” Fred Taber, who holds the listing, tells AD. “As you drive up to the house you feel like you have left the city behind and have driven into the country.”
The home is located in Parkwyn Village, a unique neighborhood in Kalamazoo that was designed by Wright. In the 1940s, a group of young families wrote to the architect asking if he’d lay out a community on the land they’d recently purchased. In a promotional flyer, the group described the development saying that buying a lot was an “opportunity to work out by an individual family its aims and ideals in a new home—one that is well designed, comfortable, and homey and not necessarily expensive.”
Wright agreed and outlined a neighborhood of 40 roughly-one-acre plots, with communal playgrounds, gardens, and tennis courts on an additional seven acres. He only designed four homes in the neighborhood, including the Winn House and the McCartney House, which listed for sale in March of this year and just sold for $670,000.
The Winn House was the last Wright-designed home to be built in the neighborhood and was completed in 1950. Like the three others, it is crafted in a Usonian style—a type of home Wright envisioned to be low-cost and accessible to the middle class. Most featured open floor plans, simple materials, and a single floor, though the Winn House is unusual in that it is two stories. It features a curved façade, enclosed porch, and is cantilevered over the hillside. Also unique, the home is on two lots, making it feel particularly private. “It’s an amazing setting,” Taber adds. Further, it’s the only waterfront home in the neighborhood, and it offers views of Little Asylum Lake.
The sellers bought the Frank Lloyd Wright property in 2012 and spent $800,000 to renovate and restore the home to its intended glory. “The Winns deviated from the original design,” Taber explains. “[The sellers] pretty much gutted the home and followed the original blueprints to make it as it was intended to be.” This included new cement floors, a patio skylight, new interior plywood, and restoring the built-in living room furniture, in addition to new plumbing and electrical systems. “The sellers hired John Eifler in Chicago to oversee the restoration,” Taber adds.
At $1.85 million, the residence is the second most expensive in Kalamazoo. According to Taber, the ideal buyer is a “Wright enthusiast who doesn’t want to do any work to a home, who just wants to enjoy it and be a steward of a wonderful and historical piece of art.”
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
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