The Heller House in Hyde Park is for sale and the web edition of Chicago Magazine has a blog entry with a decent photo gallery — including a number of interior views.
Asking price is $2.5 million.
Jan 312012
From a Chicago Tribune article on the Lego Architecture series, the architect behind it and Lego Robie:
I remember thinking: If Darth Vader had built a summer house, it would look like the Robie House.
Oak Park’s Wednesday Journal has an article on the return of one of Wright’s great-grand children to Oak Park.
Last December I linked to an article on S. Lloyd Natof, Frank Lloyd Wright’s great-grandson (he’s the grandson of Frances Wright) and a furniture designer living in Chicago. He’s recently moved his workshop from Downtown Chicago to Oak Park and will open it early in the new year.
Living in Oak Park, he notes, also plays a strong role in the emotional side of his art.
“The thing about Oak Park is that it has a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright homes in a small space, but perhaps more importantly, it’s a lot of his very early work. There’s a lot of experimentation here. There are no failures, but there are lots of different ideas, things he continued to define and make more concise over the course of his career. As someone who is interested in the built world, it’s very interesting and educational to see his work here. When I walk through his houses, I have sensations that I don’t have anywhere else. It’s very evocative; I feel very touched.”
Natof teaches a class at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.
You can visit Natof’s website here.
Dec 152011
Col. James Pritzker will begin the restoration of the exterior of the Emil Bach house.
“The interior (of the Bach House) is almost brought back to fully historical standards,” said Sean McGowan, chief operating officer at Pritzker’s family office, Tawani Enterprises. “We want to just finish everything out.”
“Including the paint color,” added Mary Parthe, Pritzker’s chief investment officer. “We had to go through several different paint samples to get close to the original color on the interior. Now we’re working on the exterior.”
In a departure for the normally secretive nature of the family, Pritzker’s staff will be documenting the Bach House restoration in a blog, which also will launch in the spring.
Both Lynn Osmond, CEO of the Chicago Architecture Foundation, and James Peters, former president of Landmark Illinois, praised the Bach House plans, citing evidence that Pritzker is willing to spare no expense in his quest for historical accuracy. Pritzker recently won the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s highest honor, Patron of the Year, for the restoration of the 16-story Monroe Building. Peters called the building, which opened in 1912 and is located at 104 S. Michigan Ave., “a tour de force.”
“What he does with his restoration, it’s so historically accurate,” Osmond said. “His team really invests in research and the technical side of it. They figure out where the terra cotta was made. How do we replicate it? Where do we find the patterns? Even the hardware on the Monroe Building is perfect.”
Col. Pritzker has won awards and acclaim for his faithful, spare-no-expense restoration of the Monroe Building, home to a large instalation of Rookwood Tile.
Lynn Becker has a post on the new, low-energy lighting recently added to the exterior of The Rookery, the Burnham Root landmark with a Wright-designed lobby that once housed Frank Lloyd Wright’s offices and today to home the the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust.
Nov 182011
The Buehler House, a Usonian near San Francisco, is featured in Forbes. Sale price is $5 million.
The San Francisco Chronicle in October published an article with more details about the history of the house and in 2003 The New York Times interviewed the home’s (at the time) first and only owners, Katie and Maynard Buehler.
The agent’s site for the house has a photo gallery and more information.
Oct 062011
A rare version of Wright’s Wasmuth Porfolio will be on display Sunday, October 9 through Tuesday, October 11 at the Oak Park Public Library. It is the library’s own copy, last exhibited in 1996.
The book will be displayed in the art gallery on the second floor. Gallery hours are 1PM-6PM Sunday and 9AM-9PM Monday and Tuesday.
Pilgrim Baptist Church
Chicago, Louis Sullivan, Restoration/Renovation
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Sep 082011
More than five years after a devastating fire, reconstruction of Adler Sullivan’s great Pilgrim Baptist Church is getting underway. This first phase will cost about 1/10 of the projected cost of the full restoration.
Aug 222011
On Saturday, October 1, the Pleasant Home Foundation is hosting a tour inside of six Oak Park home — including one Wright remodel of a Burnham & Root home. More information can be found on the Pleasant Home website. You can register for the tour here. Cost for the tour is $35.
Aug 102011
Demolition has begun on a home that Frank Lloyd Wright lived in briefly after the murders at Taliesin. The 1887 home, in Chicago’s Gold Coast, was damaged by construction on a home next-door (owned by George Giannoulias, brother of Demetris Giannoulis the CEO of the failed Broadway Bank — jackassery run in families, apparently).
Wright and Miriam Noel lived in the house through 1915 (http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/theskyline/2010/07/franklloyd-wright-called-many-places-homebut-only-scholars-and-wright-buffs-likely-know-that-the-old-master-once-lived25-e.html that the Secrest biography of Wright pinpoints the house as the place where Wright first became disenchanted with Noel). The house had no known Wrightian features; its only architectural significance is its age. Though within a Federal landmark district, the area and home have no status with the city of Chicago that would offer any protection from destruction.
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