The slew of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes for sale in the Chicago area has just grown by one, with placement on the market of a historic home in River Forest.
Newly offered to the market with a $1.275 million price tag is the Isabel Roberts House, 603 Edgewood Pl. in the western suburb. Built in 1908 at the end of Wright’s Prairie period, the home was designed for Roberts, office manager of the architect’s Oak Park studio. The nine-room, four-bedroom home, which sits on almost a half-acre, boasts more than 70 art glass windows and door panels, most in a horizontal diamond pattern surrounded by bands in a rectangular pattern at the edges.
Literature provided by exclusive listing agent Donna Schwan Jackson of Urban Search Corp. of Chicago cites architectural historian Grant Carpenter Manson, who wrote of the home: “Its salient characteristic is the deceptive handling of levels, resulting in a two-story house which, on the outside, gives the effect of one.
“The weaving together of . . . various levels and the centrifugal nature of the plan make for strong, subtle and immensely memorable effect, which is the very quintessence of Wright’s domestic style.”
The home currently is owned by William and Carol Pollak, who bought it in 1989 and have upgraded its kitchen, electric service and roof. Two previous owners’ renovations, however, have been considerably more extensive. The owners from 1923 to 1942 engaged an architect from Wright’s studio to replace the stucco exterior with brick, and also hired a Prairie School landscape architect, believed to be Jens Jenson, to design the garden. The family that bought the home in 1951 actually employed an aging Wright (1867-1959) himself to help restore the home, which had fallen into disrepair. The renovation in 1955-56, which forced the owners to vacate the home for almost two years, involved adding a bathroom, installing a copper roof, completely overhauling the wiring and plumbing, modifying interior spaces and details and improving the home’s furnishings.
The Roberts house, however, joins many other Wright listings on the market. Lake Forest’s lone Wright-designed home, at 170 Mayflower, has been on the market since last September for $1.495 million. It was listed unsuccessfully for about six months in 1995 for $1.975 million, and later reduced to $1.6 million. The 12-room, five-bedroom home, which was built in 1954 and is owned by Larry Smith, sits on 1.7 wooded acres bordering a ravine. Jill Okun of Coldwell Banker has that listing.
For more than a year, both portions of the split-up, 90-year-old Avery Coonley estate home in west suburban Riverside have been on the market. The 11-room north residence at 281 Bloomingbank was on the market until the end of last year for $1.295 million, but was pulled off the market. The owner is building a new home elsewhere and is expected to re-list the home in the near future, according to its listing agent, David Stanger of F.C. Pilgrim & Co.
The 11-room, 4,000-square-foot southern half of the Coonley estate, at 300 Scottswood, has been for sale for more than a year for $890,000. Lois Hall Merrill of F.C. Pilgrim & Co. is the listing agent for 300 Scottswood.
Other Wright homes on the market around the area, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy in Chicago, include the Ferdinand and Emily Tomek home at 150 Nuttall Rd. in Riverside, which has been on the market for a long time for $1.135 million; the Emil Bach house at 7415 N. Sheridan Road in Chicago, which has been listed for about $800,000; and the H. Howard Hyde home at 10541 S. Hoyne Ave. in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood.
According to a building conservancy spokeswoman, there are nearly two dozen Wright homes and buildings on the market around the country, out of the more than 360 that he designed.
Update: On April 12, we reported that the home of former Channel 5 sportscaster Tom Zenner, in the Harris Farms subdivision in east Aurora, was under contract with a listing price of $309,900. The property’s final selling price in May was $299,000–a $14,000 profit over what Zenner, who remains unemployed, paid to build the home in late 1995.
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