> Wright left Oak Park and separated from Tobin Wright in 1909. Before leaving, he divided the studio and the home, allowing Tobin Wright and the children to live in the studio wing and rent out the house for income. Wright sold the property in 1925 and later owners divided the building into six units and neglected to preserve the historically significant property.
This is a really generous interpretation of what happened... He ran off to Europe with one of their neighbors, and his ex-wife (not divorced yet, though!) was left high and dry with no money and was forced to turn the studio into apartments for income.
FLW almost always gets very generous interpretations of his intentions. I've been to 5 of his houses (including this one) and I've not heard anything negative about him on the tours. I say this as someone who likes his houses a lot (and considers themselves as someone who's gotten over the "FLW is overrated" hump).
Agreed. I'm a huge fan of his work and have spent some time in Oak Park as well.
That being said, the most accurate/honest depiction I've seen is a 2-part series on PBS. I think it does a great job of capturing the genius alongside the troubled hubris.
I know houses used to be cheaper but I was still struggling to understand how a 22-year-old from what doesn't sound like a very rich family could have afforded this. His foundation website says "he negotiated a five-year contract with Sullivan in exchange for the loan of the necessary money" and then "it was not long before escalating expenses tempted him into accepting independent residential commissions". I guess you really did used to be able to get whatever you wanted just by going to college and working hard.
At age 22, FLW was specially trained, working at the equivalent of a frontier AI lab (the most important architect in Chicago) and in the most booming city at the time (Chicago, especially where construction was concerned- due to the Great Fire rebound)
He's not a random, there are a lot of factors working for him
It kinda seems like Sullivan being shrewd. Sullivan probably saw the value in one of his junior architects going through the whole process of building a house for himself. It'd give Wright valuable experience. Mistakes could happen to his own property rather than a client's. Having such a contract may limit the chances that Wright would leave the employer. Wrights attitude towards Sullivan would be more positive if Wright saw him as a patron.
22 year olds lucky or gifted enough to be able to borrow 10x the national average earnings from a boss paying them a high enough salary to expect repayment within five years would to be able to think about buying a small house in an outer suburb of most cities today if that was their priority. Especially if they took on extra contract work.
Obviously most 22 year olds in 1890 didn't earn a few times the national average salary. At the beginning of the twentieth century 81% of households were rented, and most of those were not nearly as nice as Frank Lloyd Wright's first home, which was not nearly as nice as it is today after decades of extensions.
It never ceases to amaze me how Wright's style was so ahead of the times. A lot of people immediately think the houses are mid-50's but they're in fact 20 to 30 years earlier! If you happen to be driving through somewhere near one of the houses that are under conservancy[1] they are well worth a stop.
It's really amusing when you tour something like Casa Loma[0] in Toronto (a gothic revival house) and then compare it to the Darwin Martin house[1] in Buffalo, which was built basically 10 years before. I can't imagine visiting a FLW house in the early 1900s and then building a super kitschy castle.
There's something similar in cinema. For example, I was watching Terrance Malick's Badlands for the first time a couple of years ago and I could swear it felt like a film from the 90s or maybe early 2000s. But it was from 1973.
I grew up in Oak Park and I've been in the home and studio several times. It's a remarkably homey home, in contrast with Wright's reputation for art over practicality. It's also what you'd expect from a tech nerd's work at home home: it has a whole house audio system in the form of a player piano built into a central stairway.
The homes architects build for themselves are fascinating studies. Walter Gropius’s house in Lincoln, Massachusetts is similarly human in scale with incredible attention to detail.
Like the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Oak Park there’s something a little underwhelming about them at first to a modern sensibility - they feel like spaces you are familiar with from modern houses (albeit often realized with greater skill than is typical - both houses make incredible use of their window perspectives for example). But then you need to recognize how far ahead of their time they were; Gropius’s aesthetic was his invention; that you can replicate it in your own home out of an ikea catalog today is because of him.
I went on the tour of this home / studio early this year.
The tourguide didn't mince words, and came at FLW pretty hard for scams and philandering. My understanding is that FLW was kind of a grifter. Outside of being famous for just not paying his employees and designers, he was working on the side to put up houses that were explicitly against his contract after being paid huge cash advances by his friend / employer. He also famously hoarded his designers' and sculptors' ideas and claimed them for himself.
There's some fascinating ideas at play in his houses, and the fact that he designed the furniture for the rooms they would go in is fascinating, even though I didn't care much for his style. The concept of 'compression and expansion' came through well, when you'd walk through a somewhat narrow offset corridor before entering a grand room. It definitely had an impact.
That house was basically a prototype for a bunch of random ideas he had, including a stage for his children and his wife's students to perform plays (she was a youth teacher) complete with a giant mural of a djinn iirc was inspired by one thousand and one nights.
It's unfortunate they didn't include more photos in the AD article and doesn't really do it justice, even though a lot of his design aesthetic wasn't for me.
Specifically there was an octagonal drafting room without central supports, using chains linked across the room and held together by a giant hub to hold it together from the sides. Truly a wild piece of engineering I've never observed in any home elsewhere.
Since the home was also a studio, he would take people on a bit of a wild tour through his home before leading them to my favorite room on the tour -- and also octagonal 'deal room', which is the room most representative of all of his ideas within that house, with hidden drawers, and drafting boards hidden everywhere. https://martinhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/flw_studi...
> Wright borrowed $5,000 from one of his bosses, Louis Sullivan,[25][28][29][I] who took title to the land.[19][23] In exchange, Wright had to repay the loan within five years.[30] Excluding the land cost, Wright eventually spent $5,300, which included $1,200 from his own savings and $3,500 from Sullivan's loan.
That was for the original construction, which was much smaller in size. The house you see in the photos was after multiple expansions and additions as his career took off.
> Wright left Oak Park and separated from Tobin Wright in 1909. Before leaving, he divided the studio and the home, allowing Tobin Wright and the children to live in the studio wing and rent out the house for income. Wright sold the property in 1925 and later owners divided the building into six units and neglected to preserve the historically significant property.
This is a really generous interpretation of what happened... He ran off to Europe with one of their neighbors, and his ex-wife (not divorced yet, though!) was left high and dry with no money and was forced to turn the studio into apartments for income.
FLW almost always gets very generous interpretations of his intentions. I've been to 5 of his houses (including this one) and I've not heard anything negative about him on the tours. I say this as someone who likes his houses a lot (and considers themselves as someone who's gotten over the "FLW is overrated" hump).
Agreed. I'm a huge fan of his work and have spent some time in Oak Park as well.
That being said, the most accurate/honest depiction I've seen is a 2-part series on PBS. I think it does a great job of capturing the genius alongside the troubled hubris.
I know houses used to be cheaper but I was still struggling to understand how a 22-year-old from what doesn't sound like a very rich family could have afforded this. His foundation website says "he negotiated a five-year contract with Sullivan in exchange for the loan of the necessary money" and then "it was not long before escalating expenses tempted him into accepting independent residential commissions". I guess you really did used to be able to get whatever you wanted just by going to college and working hard.
At age 22, FLW was specially trained, working at the equivalent of a frontier AI lab (the most important architect in Chicago) and in the most booming city at the time (Chicago, especially where construction was concerned- due to the Great Fire rebound)
He's not a random, there are a lot of factors working for him
> equivalent of a frontier AI lab
Except frontier AI labs basically consider the entirety of human creation, multiplied by 100, to be their total addressable market.
The most important architect in Chicago could only ever be able to capture a small fraction of a single city's architecture business.
The house you see in the photos is the result of years of additions and expansions, funded by his success as a world-class architect.
The original construction was much more modest in size.
Thanks I guess I should have realized that, now it seems less insane.
I’m sure the original home was amazing for its size, given who was driving the construction.
It kinda seems like Sullivan being shrewd. Sullivan probably saw the value in one of his junior architects going through the whole process of building a house for himself. It'd give Wright valuable experience. Mistakes could happen to his own property rather than a client's. Having such a contract may limit the chances that Wright would leave the employer. Wrights attitude towards Sullivan would be more positive if Wright saw him as a patron.
22 year olds lucky or gifted enough to be able to borrow 10x the national average earnings from a boss paying them a high enough salary to expect repayment within five years would to be able to think about buying a small house in an outer suburb of most cities today if that was their priority. Especially if they took on extra contract work.
Obviously most 22 year olds in 1890 didn't earn a few times the national average salary. At the beginning of the twentieth century 81% of households were rented, and most of those were not nearly as nice as Frank Lloyd Wright's first home, which was not nearly as nice as it is today after decades of extensions.
N = 1 though.
> With money borrowed from his boss
Genius in field works for wealthy man in field, gets special treatment at a young age. News at 11.
I agree and feel same. Doubly so since after 100+ years it's now more expensive and difficult to build a custom home? Seems off.
It never ceases to amaze me how Wright's style was so ahead of the times. A lot of people immediately think the houses are mid-50's but they're in fact 20 to 30 years earlier! If you happen to be driving through somewhere near one of the houses that are under conservancy[1] they are well worth a stop.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Frank_Lloyd_Wright_wor...
45 years earlier in some cases. I found the Robie House in Chicago (built in 1910!) to be a total head-trip.
Wow he was born a _lot_ earlier than I would have thought!
It's really amusing when you tour something like Casa Loma[0] in Toronto (a gothic revival house) and then compare it to the Darwin Martin house[1] in Buffalo, which was built basically 10 years before. I can't imagine visiting a FLW house in the early 1900s and then building a super kitschy castle.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Loma
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_D._Martin_House
Things like the Dessau Bauhaus and the German Pavilion in Barcelona were built in the 1920s. Post-war Modernism was a bit of a second wind.
Isn't Wright sort of famous for designing structures that leak when it rains? My understanding is that Falling Water House is a beautiful money pit.
Falling Water was an engineering disaster, but it was a unique project for him. Most of his houses are not like that.
well, it's often said that all good architecture leaks [0]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0j0d2ymixY
FLW created the times
There's something similar in cinema. For example, I was watching Terrance Malick's Badlands for the first time a couple of years ago and I could swear it felt like a film from the 90s or maybe early 2000s. But it was from 1973.
I think you would enjoy "The Sugarland Express," directed by 26-year-old Steven Spielberg and released in 1974.
https://youtu.be/JLSQBAXIKtk?si=Q8FP4c8v72PiZU93
Available here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=trailer+sugarla...
I grew up in Oak Park and I've been in the home and studio several times. It's a remarkably homey home, in contrast with Wright's reputation for art over practicality. It's also what you'd expect from a tech nerd's work at home home: it has a whole house audio system in the form of a player piano built into a central stairway.
The homes architects build for themselves are fascinating studies. Walter Gropius’s house in Lincoln, Massachusetts is similarly human in scale with incredible attention to detail.
Like the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Oak Park there’s something a little underwhelming about them at first to a modern sensibility - they feel like spaces you are familiar with from modern houses (albeit often realized with greater skill than is typical - both houses make incredible use of their window perspectives for example). But then you need to recognize how far ahead of their time they were; Gropius’s aesthetic was his invention; that you can replicate it in your own home out of an ikea catalog today is because of him.
I live in Oak Park, just a couple blocks from the studio. The Unity Temple is the thing to see. :)
I live within walking distance of a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Sadly, it's a private residence and closed to the public.
I went on the tour of this home / studio early this year.
The tourguide didn't mince words, and came at FLW pretty hard for scams and philandering. My understanding is that FLW was kind of a grifter. Outside of being famous for just not paying his employees and designers, he was working on the side to put up houses that were explicitly against his contract after being paid huge cash advances by his friend / employer. He also famously hoarded his designers' and sculptors' ideas and claimed them for himself.
There's some fascinating ideas at play in his houses, and the fact that he designed the furniture for the rooms they would go in is fascinating, even though I didn't care much for his style. The concept of 'compression and expansion' came through well, when you'd walk through a somewhat narrow offset corridor before entering a grand room. It definitely had an impact.
That house was basically a prototype for a bunch of random ideas he had, including a stage for his children and his wife's students to perform plays (she was a youth teacher) complete with a giant mural of a djinn iirc was inspired by one thousand and one nights.
It felt like a psychedelic church.
It's unfortunate they didn't include more photos in the AD article and doesn't really do it justice, even though a lot of his design aesthetic wasn't for me.
Specifically there was an octagonal drafting room without central supports, using chains linked across the room and held together by a giant hub to hold it together from the sides. Truly a wild piece of engineering I've never observed in any home elsewhere.
I tried photographing it, which was essentially impossible but here's the best version I could find. https://www.instagram.com/p/DOZxFBoEdMb/
Since the home was also a studio, he would take people on a bit of a wild tour through his home before leading them to my favorite room on the tour -- and also octagonal 'deal room', which is the room most representative of all of his ideas within that house, with hidden drawers, and drafting boards hidden everywhere. https://martinhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/flw_studi...
> Wright borrowed $5,000 from one of his bosses, Louis Sullivan,[25][28][29][I] who took title to the land.[19][23] In exchange, Wright had to repay the loan within five years.[30] Excluding the land cost, Wright eventually spent $5,300, which included $1,200 from his own savings and $3,500 from Sullivan's loan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright_Home_and_St...
According to BLS CPI data $5000 in 1889 is $182,132.07 in modern day purchasing power
That was for the original construction, which was much smaller in size. The house you see in the photos was after multiple expansions and additions as his career took off.
No idea why he's so famed. I've been to a few of his houses and they are completely impractical to live in.
So focused on making things look good, but spent no time thinking about people actually living in the houses.
He wasn't even a licenced architect. He couldn't leagally sign off on drawings or incorporate as a business with the word "architect" in it, etc.
https://codygatlindesign.com/2024/09/28/why-6-of-the-worlds-...
Mid house tbh
Built his own home at 22. Started his own firm at 26. Raised six children. Peak Gilded Age energy. Boomers have nothing on him.