Despite considerable hype—including a lengthy catalogue entry with accolades from architecture experts and fellow artists—a custom built house by starchitect Frank Gehry fell far short of earlier estimates and just below the presale estimate at Wright auction house in Chicago yesterday (see Raymond Pettibon Has Gehryish Taste in Apartments and Gehry’s Eisenhower Memorial a Go, Geffen Contemporary Remodel Next?).

Winton Guest House, Gehry’s “sculptural building” composed of six geometric forms clad in a range of building materials and finishes, sold for a hammer price of $750,000 ($905,000 total) on May 19, after “five minutes of lackluster bidding,” according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It was once valued at $4.5 million, but estimates were tamped down to $1 million to $1.5 million for the sale, the Star Tribune reports (see Frank Gehry Fired From World Trade Center Arts Complex Job and Frank Gehry Gives Spanish Critics the Finger).

The house, which has won numerous awards, was commissioned by Minnesota arts patrons Penny and Mike Winton after they read a feature on Gehry in a 1982 edition of the New York Times Magazine. According to the Wright catalogue, the house was initially situated on the Wintons’ 12-acre Lake Minnetonka property and then moved in 2008 to Owatonna Minnesota. “Upon purchasing this work, the structure will again need to be relocated,” the catalogue states.

The six forms that make up the house include: a 35-foot tall pyramid-shaped living room finished in black painted metal; a curved bedroom covered in dolomite limestone from southern Minnesota; a cube-shaped fireplace alcove covered in brick; a rectangular garage and kitchenette covered in Finnish plywood and strips of aluminum, and a rectangular loft in galvanized steel and a second bedroom with a slanted roof, also painted in black metal.

The house was sold by the University of St. Thomas which acquired it in 2007 as a gift from Kirt Woodhouse, a real estate developer who purchased it from the Wintons in 2001.  The new owner, who was not identified will have to move the house at “substantial additional cost,” the Star Tribune reports.