Frank Lloyd Wright house in Michigan hits market at $790K; Oregon’s is open to the public

Frank Lloyd Wright, the most famous architect in the U.S., designed one structure in Oregon, the Gordon House, which is the only Wright residence open to the public in the Pacific Northwest. Guided tours of the interior of the two-story house with decorative geometric fretwork and walls of glass rising 12 feet to the ceiling are offered throughout the year ($20, thegordonhouse.org).

The cedar-and-concrete-block house in Silverton, at 869 W. Main Street near the Oregon Garden, has concepts Wright championed that are still valued today such as materials that mirror the landscape, energy-saving radiant-heat concrete flooring and a great room.

What the Gordon House doesn’t have, like so many treasured Wright buildings, is a “no trespassing” sign or “for sale” sign. Across the U.S., Wright dwellings are on the market, asking up to almost $9 million.

Samir Mezrahi, whose humorous Zillow Gone Wild postings on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook target “atrocious homes, wacky decorative taste and landscaping anomalies,” has taken a whack at a Wright house for sale in Kalamazoo, Michigan. “Looks like a beautiful rest stop” he writes under a photo of the 1949 Ward and Helen McCartney House, which was formed by two triangles on a 1.12 acre property adjacent to a nature preserve.

The asking price for 2662 Taliesin Drive in Kalamazoo’s Parkwyn Village is $790,000. An offer was accepted Wednesday, March 27, according to listing agents Fred Taber of Chuck Jaqua Realtor and Victoria Krause Schutte of @properties and Christie’s International Real Estate.

”Feels like a steal at under a million tbh!! Should we start a gofundme or something to buy it and make it a Zillow Gone Wild house?” wrote Mezrahi.

The single-level, 1,671-square-foot residence of Navy veteran Helen McCartney, who lived there for more than 50 years, is an example of Wright’s Usonian approach to architecture, which he defined as living in harmony with the land in the United States of North America (USONA). He envisioned mass producing similar homes to have an organic appearance as if rising “out of the ground and into the light.” His Usonian designs, as seen at the McCartney House as well as the Gordon House, typically had a flat roof with generous, shade-making overhangs.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation described the McCartney House in Parkwyn Village as “adventurous and unique.” The four-bedroom home, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is being sold with original furniture and blueprints.

Wright designed three other dwellings in Parkwyn Village, but “his concepts influenced most of the homes in the neighborhood,” according to the Wright foundation. The street name Taliesin Drive refers to Wright’s winter home and desert laboratory, Taliesin West, a UNESCO World Heritage site and National Historic Landmark in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is open to the public.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy maintains a list of Wright-designed homes on the market across the country. Asking prices reflect the escalated value of his work:

• The horseshoe-shaped, 1955 Tirranna (“running water”) mansion in New Canaan, Connecticut, with 7,000 square feet of living space sold in January 2024 for $6 million.
• The Richard Lloyd Jones House in Tulsa, Oklahoma, built in 1929 of alternating piers of square glass windows and concrete “textile” blocks, is for sale at $4.5 million.
• The last house the architect designed before he died in 1959, the circular Norman Lykes House, constructed of colored concrete block to blend with the Phoenix Mountains Preserve, is for sale at $8,950,000.
• And the Fawcett House, designed by Wright in 1955 to showcase seamless living indoors and out, sits on 76 acres in California’s Central Valley city of Los Banos, and is listed at $3.7 million.

Oregon’s Wright house

The 1957 Gordon House in Silverton was saved from demolition and moved near the Oregon Garden where it was reconstructed and opened to the public in March 2002. Since then, more than 100,000 visitors have explored Wright’s handsome approach to functional, affordable living.

Starting April 3, guided, 45-minute tours of the Gordon House are offered at noon, 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday (for more information: 503-874-6006, info@thegordonhouse.org).

Donations, admission and merchandise sales support the nonprofit Gordon House Conservancy’s educational and preservation mission. The Gordon House Conservancy and volunteers care for the house and grounds.

In 1957, while Wright was still creating the exalted Guggenheim art museum in New York City, he accepted a $25,000 commission to design a modern house for Conrad (”Ed”) and Evelyn Gordon on their farmland alongside the Willamette River near Wilsonville.

At the time, Wright was almost 90 years old and had spent more than two decades developing Usonian suburban housing with high architectural quality at a moderate price.

The Gordon House was completed in 1963, four years after Wright died. Floor-to-ceiling doors in the great room opened to the landscaped grounds. Each of the two upstairs bedroom balconies originally faced the Willamette River or Mount Hood.

Perforated boards, or fretwork, screens were made to draw in light, ensure privacy and serve as an economical alternative to draperies or stained art glass, according to historians who successfully nominated the Gordon House to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The open floor plan concept developed by Wright is evident in the great room, which has dining and living areas as well as a concrete-block fireplace and a library with built-in seating.

Evelyn Gordon, a weaver and artist, was a widow when she died in 1997 and the property, which had years of deferred maintenance, was sold to new owners who tried to get the Gordon House removed from the Clackamas County List of Historic Structures to have it demolished.

Instead, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, a Chicago-based organization devoted to preserving Wright’s built legacy, negotiated an agreement with the owners to donate the significant dwelling.

A stipulation of the agreement required the 2,133-square-foot house be relocated within 105 days, starting Nov. 30, 2000. The structure was carefully dismantled by preservationists and volunteers, and the four sections were moved 26 miles south to the Oregon Garden site over three days, arriving March 11, 2001, four days ahead of the deadline, say historians.

The original north-south orientation was preserved and interior walls are intact, as are all doors, cabinets, wood trim, furniture and shelving. The Gordon House “continues to present an accurate representation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian house design and subsequent construction for Conrad and Evelyn Gordon,” say historians.

Visitors can see every room, including the kitchen — what Wright called the “workspace” — and his ideas of paneled refrigerator doors, under-cabinet lighting and other features for cooking efficiency, comfort and speed that continue to influence kitchen design today.

— Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072

jeastman@oregonian.com | @janeteastman