Three houses designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright — all within a 20-minute drive of each another in Michigan — have hit the market at the same time.
The homes, known as "Usonians," were built in the early 1950s as simply designed, affordable residences for the middle class. Wright is said to have preferred the term "Usonia" as a reference to the United States.
It’s no coincidence that the small, single-story homes were built in close proximity. In 1946, a group of scientists working at nearby pharmaceutical company Upjohn purchased land to develop a cooperative housing project outside Kalamazoo, Michigan. They requested Wright design the subdivision, and, to their surprise, he agreed.
The project would eventually split into two subdivisions, The Acres and Parkwyn Village, both of which are on the National Register of Historic Places.
Three of the eight Wright homes in the area are on the market simultaneously for the first time, each named after its original owner and priced between $1.3 and $2.2 million: the Winn House, the Weisblat House, and the Eppstein House.
It’s a rare time for these “cult classic” homes, according to listing agents Fred Taber of Jaqua Realtors and Brian Kirksey of Keller Williams Realty. One owner recently passed away, another is looking to sell their investment property and a third is relocating after years in the home. The housing market and interest in midcentury modern design have resulted in the highest asking prices yet.
The Weisblat House last sold for $500,000 in 2017, the first time its owners changed hands since it was built. The Eppstein House last sold for $368,000 in 2016, and the Winn House sold for $200,000 in 2012, according to Homes.com data and public records.
“When I first priced [the Weisblat] house in 2017, there hadn’t been a sale in the subdivision for 10 years,” said Kirksey. “It was a reach for $500,000 and it was the highest sale of a Usonian in the area. Fast forward and the market has changed dramatically for Wright houses.”
The Winn is the lowest-priced Wright home on the market at $1.3 million, noted Taber, who also sold the McCartney House and Pratt House in Parkwyn Village last year.
Search for a house by architectural style with Homes.com filters
New buyers will likely be out-of-towners looking to own a Wright house as a secondary property, noted both agents. Most of the homes in the subdivisions are vacation properties for the owners, and they are sometimes listed on rental websites Airbnb or Vrbo.
Taber said short-term renting of a Wright home generated more than $100,000 per year for his clients. Parkwyn Village has limited permissions for short-term rentals, while many of the homes in The Acres are rentable.
Wright's Usonian design
The subdivision plans were to build homes for families, so each home includes two to three bedrooms and hovers around 2,500 square feet. At the sprawling Acres, where the Weisblat and Eppstein homes are, every lot is a full acre, adding up to a total of 70 acres.
All three homes feature Wright’s Usonian approach he used to create cheaper housing in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 1929 and Great Depression, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
The scientists’ requests are what Wright’s Usonian designs fulfill: a moderately priced home with a distinct design. Each home is constructed primarily of concrete blocks with concrete flooring, wood framing, and wood details with a steel support structure.
Wright may have designed the homes, but the owners had their hand in physically building them. White efflorescence can be seen on the concrete blocks making up the Weisblat House. It’s due to using lake water in the production of the concrete blocks, which were molded by the unknowing homeowners, according to Kirksey.
“[Wright] had some unreasonable requests, like they had to fire their own bricks they were using as opposed to buying or having a mason do it. He wanted them to purchase their own wood, so they had to have it milled themselves,” said Kirksey. “He had an expectation they were going to perform some of the work on their houses, which came as a surprise.”
Select concrete blocks in all three homes are textile blocks, a hallmark of Wright that features designs or cutouts. These homes include triangle cutouts to allow light to flow through.
The homes each feature a layout that promotes gathering, where small bedrooms give way to large living rooms with walls of windows.