In Ohio, mother-daughter duo brings Frank Lloyd Wright’s final vision to life

The plans for RiverRock, Frank Lloyd Wright’s final home, were said to be on his drafting table when he died in 1959.

They were mailed to the client — friend and art teacher Louis Penfield — the week of Wright’s funeral. Penfield already lived in a Wright-designed suburban Cleveland house, one custom-tailored to accommodate his nearly 7-foot height. Penfield originally commissioned RiverRock because his primary residence was on a proposed interstate path.

But the interstate never came to be, and so neither did RiverRock.

A generation later, Penfield's son, Paul Penfield, never managed to build the home either, so he listed his family’s original Wright for sale, along with plans for the unbuilt RiverRock, hoping they would be brought to fruition one day.

That job landed on two unlikely candidates: Buyers Debbie and Sarah Dykstra, a mother-daughter duo who describe themselves as “one retired lady and one never-built-a-house lady.”

Their 14-month journey to build RiverRock is now the subject of an upcoming documentary series premiering Wednesday on the Magnolia Network and HBO Max the following day.

The four-part documentary series, "The Last Wright," follows the RiverRock project from breaking ground in October 2023 to completion in January.

Becoming on-screen stars of the build process was the last thing either Dykstra remotely wanted. The producers told the homeowners, “'Everyone wants real people,’” Sarah Dykstra said in an interview. “And here we are.”

When searching through land for sale in their hometown of Willoughby, Ohio, where houses could be built for each of them and additional family members, the Dykstras saw the Penfield home for sale with 30 acres.

Neither Debbie nor Sarah were necessarily Wright enthusiasts, but the listing piqued their interest. After writing a letter promising to build RiverRock eventually, Penfield’s son, Paul, sold the land, two other structures, the Penfield house, and the RiverRock plans to the Dykstras.

“I found out later that there were developers looking at it and maybe would have torn down our two houses and done something else,” Dykstra said. “Maybe forgotten all about RiverRock and never cared about it. I know it was important to Paul when he got our background and intentions for it.”

The mother-daughter team has stewarded the Penfield home since 2018, renting it for short-term stays as Paul did, and planned the same for RiverRock.

Updating the Penfield house and renovating the property's farmhouse and cottage took most of the Dykstras' time at the project's beginning. They hadn't yet specifically asked Paul where the RiverRock plans were located.

The unbuilt home became a lost thought in the remodeling process, until one day spent digging through the Penfield home, opening up a long bench with built-in hidden storage.

“We started going through stuff over there, and we found all these rolls and rolls of blueprints, different ones, some for the [Penfield] house, some for RiverRock,” said Sarah Dykstra.

Some of the RiverRock plans were hard to read. For the first five months of the project, the Dykstras' architect worked off the faded, decades-old blueprints until the Avery Library at Columbia University, known for its Wright collection, scanned and enhanced the drawings.

The completed home is set low in its natural surroundings with dramatic, sharp rooflines and a corner cantilevered off the structure, piercing the sky. Vertical windows split by wood cover nearly the entire exterior, except for the stone perimeter walls. The design plays off the land and location right off the Chagrin River. The name RiverRock came from the home’s proximity to the river, and Louis Penfield and Wright had planned for heavy use of rock from the Chagrin to be in the house.

The goal was to build the home as closely as possible to the original plans, down to the product and finish specifications. The Dykstras believed they achieved that, but the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which works to manage, educate and preserve works by Wright, previously told the publication ArtNet in an article about RiverRock that any unbuilt home linked to Wright is “not Frank Lloyd Wright’s work,” but instead a “derivative of the original plan.”

When asked for comment over email, the foundation pointed Homes.com to its online policy that maintains any build after Wright’s death would not be legitimate.

“Historically, the process of construction of his many built works was typically facilitated by his own on-site representatives so as to ensure conformity to working drawings and their intentions. This is, of course, not possible today,” the foundation's policy says.

To the Dykstras, the home is as legitimate as it can get today.

“I didn't know how much the county and the city would bend to allow us to do it exactly as it was planned,” Debbie Dykstra said in an interview. “And thank God, they said, ‘Yeah, pretty much, go ahead.’ … We made a couple of changes under the skin.”

The town of Willoughby, much like the architectural world, had known about the RiverRock plans for decades, waiting for it to be constructed.

Town officials “worked really well with our architects to make sure we could go with as minimal changes as possible,” said Sarah Dykstra.

Prior to the build, the Dykstras traveled to Wright’s works, such as Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob in Pennsylvania, even speaking with the oldest original homeowner of a Wright-designed house, 101-year-old Roland Reisley.

A common complaint for Wright homes is leaky roofs, mostly due to their flat lines and minor pitches — like the Penfield house — leaving water to sit. RiverRock's pitched roofs help to force water away from the home, but the Dykstras made further enhancements.

They opted for two roofs at the pitch with modern-day weatherproofing and a moisture shield wrap, and on the flat roof, they used a product from a company called Kemper System that creates a rubber, waterproof barrier.

“I've seen a couple comments online that said that this is probably the best built Wright house because of new technologies that are available that weren't available back in the ’50s,” said Sarah Dykstra.

The team went with additional steel to support the piercing cantilever roof feature. More efficient double-paned glass was installed instead of single-pane windows, and spray foam insulation was spread throughout the home.

Where the original plans specified asbestos ceiling boards, it was easy for the Dykstras to choose an alternative, as the building material began to be regulated in the 1970s due to growing awareness of its health hazards.

The home includes time-appropriate furniture and appliances that the Dykstras gathered while road tripping the country.

“We had decided that we wanted it to look like a family actually lived here and came from one house and moved in. So, they had to bring their own old stuff,” said Debbie Dykstra.

Hunting across the country, they picked up original, still-in-the-box robe hooks, towel bars, a never-before-used vintage oven, and a fridge with lazy Susan shelves, all specified in RiverRock plans. The floor heating system, Airfloor, is still around today and was installed as specified.