Custom Frank Lloyd Wright house up for auction

Custom Frank Lloyd Wright house up for auction
Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Laurent home to meet the needs of the disabled owner. AP/file
Custom Frank Lloyd Wright house up for auction
Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Laurent home to meet the needs of the disabled owner. AP/file

Custom Frank Lloyd Wright house up for auction

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Frank Lloyd Wright certainly left his mark on architecture. He also had something of a reputation for being inflexible on matters of design. But there’s at least one house where he let the client define the process. The Laurent house is one of Wright’s Usonian houses – a simpler structure built for middle class families. But it was also the first residence Wright designed for an owner confined to a wheelchair.

It was commissioned over 60 years ago by returning World War II veteran Kenneth Laurent and his wife Phyllis; they live there still today. When Dennis Rodkin of Chicago magazine heard the house was on the auction block he insisted Eight Forty-Eight talk with Mr. Laurent; both men joined Eight Forty-Eight Wednesday.

Music Button: Charlie Chaplin, “Park Avenue Waltz”, from the album Oh! That Cello, (Zebra Acoustic)