The house that launched Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural career is on the market for $1.98 million.
In 1893, shortly after leaving the firm Adler & Sullivan, Wright was commissioned to build the Winslow House, in the Chicago suburb of River Forest. Although Wright had surreptitiously completed several projects around the city while employed at Adler & Sullivan—so-called bootleg houses including Parker House and Thomas Gale House in Oak Park—Winslow House was his first as an independent architect.
Wright, then 26, considered the 5,000-square-foot, two-story home the first of his Prairie School buildings. Indeed, there are numerous elements he would reuse and expand upon throughout his career. The low-pitched roof with deep eaves recalls the vast horizon of the open plain, the door is slightly sunken, and the home is symmetrical divided horizontally between slate and golden Roman brick.
Winslow House from the interior looking out to the street. Photo: VHT Studios.
Inside, the five-bedroom and three-bath house includes numerous elements Wright used in his own house in Oak Park. This includes the inglenook in the entryway, a semi-enclosed space that offered intimacy for arriving guests, intricate glass window patterning, and a ground floor fireplace designed to be a gathering space.
Unique to the Winslow House, which sits on two-thirds of an acre, is the open floor plan that offers end-to-end views and a back of the house comprised as differing geometric shapes that jut out into the garden.
The commission was granted to Wright by Edith and William Winslow after Adler and Sullivan turned them down (the firm was uninterested in residential assignments). Winslow Brothers operated a foundry that produced ornamental iron and brass fittings that were used on turn of the century American skyscrapers. The company later worked with Wright.
The open view interior of Wright’s first solo house. Photo: VHT Studios.
The Winslow House had been vacant for several years and deteriorated when its current sellers, the Vogts, bought it for $1.3 million in 2016. The Vogts said they have invested roughly $1 million into renovating the house. This includes thoroughly modernizing the building by installing air conditioning, upgrading the electrical system, and redesigning the yard featuring native plants, a practice Wright himself followed.
“You can almost feel where Wright was experimenting with different forms and different ideas of how to design the house,” the Vogts told Architectural Digest. “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.”
The staircase inside Winslow House chimes with other features throughout the building. Photo: VHT Studios.
The listing agent, Christie’s International Real Estate, calls Winslow House, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, “a rare opportunity to own a piece of architectural history that has been meticulously updated to meet today’s modern standards.”
Another notable Wright building, the Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, was recently put up for auction on the commercial real estate platform Ten-X. It is the only skyscraper Wright built and has been the subject of controversy following perceived mismanagement by its current owners, the blockchain entrepreneurs Cynthia and Anthem Blanchard.