Buying a Frank Lloyd Wright house puts owners in exclusive group
In mid-september, Frank Lloyd Wright aficionados are expected by the busload in New Canaan, Conn., passing through a gate with the name “Tirranna” carved into the metalwork, to tour a 6,917-square-foot hemicycle house largely designed by the United States’ master architect.
They’ll examine the mahogany cabinetry, admire the mitered glass windows that erase the barrier between inside and outside, snap photos of the swimming pool that cantilevers out over the Noroton River, and wander the 15-acre grounds.
Although the house, one of Wright’s last grand works, is for sale at $7.2 million, it is unlikely that any of these visitors will be putting in offers. Rather, the visit to Tirranna will be a high point of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy’s annual conference, which this year takes place in New York City and commemorates the 150th anniversary of the architect’s birth, a milestone being marked by numerous special events around the country, including a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.
For Doug Milne, the Houlihan Lawrence associate broker who has the listing, inviting conference participants was in keeping with the support of the conservancy exhibited by Tirranna’s last owners, who have died, and also a good opportunity for exposure.
“Who knows? There may be some well-heeled people who could afford it, or it might trigger something. A lot of it is word of mouth,” said Milne, 65, noting that few people have seen the house since Ted and Vada Stanley bought it in 1992 and spent 2 1/2 years restoring it.
For brokers like Milne, marketing these houses offers unique challenges, including the need to become a Wright expert, to devise a strategy for separating potential buyers from sightseers, and to develop a convincing argument for why someone should pay a premium to live in a house with small bedrooms and a snug kitchen, cinder-block walls, concrete floors, narrow doorways, a carport instead of a garage and, quite likely, no air conditioning.
For potential buyers, it means becoming the steward of a legacy, which includes instant membership in an exclusive, sometimes intrusive, society of Wright enthusiasts.
“It’s like dealing with a group of theater critics. You’ve got to put on a good performance to generate accolades, and if you don’t, you’re going to hear from them,” said Paul Penfield, the owner of a Wright house in Ohio that was designed for his parents in 1953 and is now for sale.
Here are the stories of three Wright houses that have recently changed hands or are now on the market.
A Tough Sale in an Obscure Location
Fred Taber knew he had his work cut out for him in late 2012 when he was approached to sell the three-bedroom Eppstein House in Galesburg, Mich. One of four Wright houses built for scientists from Upjohn in a 70-acre compound known as the Acres, the 2,250-square-foot house had been largely neglected for more than 15 years. The roof leaked, the boiler had rusted out, the 60-year-old wiring needed updating and the pool surrounded by a chain-link fence was an eyesore.
Taber, a real estate agent with Jaqua Realtors in Kalamazoo, spent two years encouraging the owner, who lived in Washington state, to get the 1953 house in livable shape before putting it on the market. The next task was arriving at an asking price. It made no sense to compare it to other 1950s ranch houses in Galesburg, where the current median listing price of a house is $112,000, according to Realtor. com, or to Wright houses in Chicago or Madison, Wisc.
“This house is in a small community. Most people don’t even know these houses are here,” said Taber, 46, who finally settled on $475,000.
Taber created a blog for the house, and held several open houses, which typically drew two audiences: locals “who would come through and say how horrible it was and that it looked like a prison,” and Wright fans who would try “to show they knew more about the house than I did.”
In July 2016, Marika Broere and Tony Hillebrandt of Ontario, Canada, bought the house for $368,000. They have spent almost as much again rebuilding the roof, updating electricity and plumbing, restaining the woodwork, double-glazing the windows, adding air conditioning and removing the pool.
Self-described house “hobbyists” who have bought and renovated several properties in Canada, the couple became interested in Wright houses after moving to North America from the Netherlands 12 years ago, but never imagined they would own one.
“Would you believe it if somebody told you that someday you’d own a Rembrandt?” asked Broere, 60. “For us, this is first an amazing piece of art, and second, it is a home.”
This fall, they will begin renting the house on Airbnb for about $310 a night.
Overcoming a Recalcitrant Owner
Misty Brownell calls the sale of the Cooke House in Virginia Beach, Va., last November “the highlight of my 14-year career.” The 3,000-square-foot passive solar house, completed in 1960, included a 70-foot semicircular great room with a 40-foot sofa designed by the architect, a spa and sauna, and a bank of windows looking out on Crystal Lake. Her challenge was not the house, which was in great shape, or the location, also great, but the 91-year-old homeowner, who was ambivalent about letting it go.
The house had been on and off the market for about 15 years without receiving a single offer when Brownell, a real estate agent with Atlantic Sotheby’s International Realty, received the listing in March 2016. The owner had a magnificent art collection, and Brownell spent several months persuading him to put it in storage.
“With a house of this magnitude, you really needed to remove all that stuff to see the house. This was the work of art,” Brownell said.
Having succeeded in her request, Brownell created a video to demonstrate what living in a Wright house might be like. And she did extensive research on the architect, and the market for his houses, which prompted her to lower the asking price to $2.75 million from $3.75 million.
She limited showings to those who could produce proof of available funds. “This was not a sightseeing event,” she said. Within eight days of putting the house on the market in August 2016, she had not one but two offers, both shy of the asking price.
“I said, ‘I don’t have anyone willing to pay $2.75 million, or $2.5 million, but I do have the only offer you’ve ever had in 15 years,’” Brownell said. The owner finally settled on a $2.3 million offer, which, with concessions, ended up being $2.2 million, but not before he learned the intentions of the prospective buyer, a local businessman who had been interested in the house for the last 30 years.
“It was no different than if he had a daughter, and the buyer wanted to take her hand in marriage,” Brownell said.
Committed to a Cause
Tirranna’s $7.2 million asking price, if achieved, would set a record for the highest price ever paid for a Wright house. The current leader is the Storer House in Los Angeles, which sold for $6.8 million in 2015. But the Meier House, a 1917 Prairie design in Iowa, sold for $125,000 in 2013.
Also known as the Rayward House for its original owners, who commissioned the first and main phase, completed in 1956, it is set in a wooded glen. With seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms, the house is being sold by a foundation established by the owners, Ted Stanley, who died in 2016 and his wife, Vada, who died in 2013. Stanley was a founder of the Danbury Mint, a Connecticut collectibles manufacturing company now called MBI.
When their son Jonathan was told he had a bipolar disorder after a psychological breakdown in 1988, the couple decided to dedicate their fortune to mental health research. They donated more than $800 million to the Broad Institute, a biomedical research cooperative in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which will also receive the proceeds from the sale of Tirranna. Jonathan Stanley said he had no qualms about his wouldbe inheritance going to fund research.
“How can you complain about a guy who spent 2 percent of the money he made in his life and gave the rest to charity?” asked Stanley, 51, a board member of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va.. “My dad loved me a lot, and what happened to me deeply affected him and gave him a cause for his charity.”
The house went on the market for $8 million in January, drawing attention from prospective buyers in New York, Los Angeles, Australia, Saudi Arabia and London, said Milne, who reduced the asking price in May. The median asking price for houses in this New York City suburb is currently $1.794 million, according to Realtor.com.