Wright in Chicagoland

OK, it was `ugly,' but the house is still the first Frank Lloyd Wright building to be razed since '73

GRAND BEACH, Mich. -- All things must pass, even the streak that lovers of Frank Lloyd Wright, one of America's greatest architects, have proudly proclaimed: Not a single Wright building demolished for more than 30 years.No more, they say.

A modest beach house in this quiet lakefront enclave, not far from Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's summer home and just down the street from the Wright-designed summer home owned by Daley's brother John, was torn down Monday, preservationists ruefully acknowledged. It is the first Wright building since 1973 to be destroyed. It also appears to mark the first time that the national trend of tearing down small older houses and replacing them with big new ones has led to the destruction of a Wright house.

In an announcement it called an "obituary," the Chicago-based Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy revealed the demolition of the 88-year-old W.S. Carr summer cottage "with great regret and considerable outrage."But some said the house was not Wright's best work. Some believed it was termite-plagued. One simply called it "really ugly. "Still, officials here had a tinge of mourning in their voices for losing a Wright building."It's sad to make history that way," said John Boden Jr., Grand Beach's building and zoning commissioner. But he maintained there was little the village could do.

Unlike Chicago and some of its suburbs, Grand Beach has no landmark laws or tax incentives that could have stalled the demolition."I don't really see how we as a village had any way to stop it from happening," Boden said. Property records show that Thomas and Irene Trainor of the southwest Chicago suburb of Homer Glen bought the Carr cottage, located at 46039 Lake View Ave., on Jan. 1. Reached by telephone Friday, Thomas Trainor declined to comment.

Grand Beach officials said the village issued the Trainors a demolition permit Oct. 28 and that the Trainors have received approval to build a four-bedroom home with a two-car garage on the dune-lined, lakefront property. The house will have a low-pitched roof and broad overhangs, among the signature elements of Wright's internationally renowned Prairie-style houses, Boden said."Jumbo Prairie," he called it.

But replacing an original Wright house with an imitation was little comfort to Ron Scherubel, executive director of the Wright Building Conservancy, a non-profit group dedicated to preserving Wright's buildings. "We view it as a significant loss," he said. "It shows insensitivity to preserving the entire body of Wright's work."Neighbors, however, expressed pleasure that the cottage, which they characterized as a poorly maintained eyesore, was gone."It was a really ugly house," said Angie Storey, 37, who lives nearby. "You couldn't tell it was anything special. "Her husband, Brian Storey, 36, said: "I've seen a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright houses and that didn't even look like one. That must have been one of his earlier works.

"Even preservationists admit that the Carr summer cottage ranked relatively low in the canon of Wright homes, possessing little of the majesty of the architect's Fallingwater house that cantilevers over a stream in Pennsylvania or his steamship-like Robie House in Hyde Park. In addition, when the Carr house was torn down, it little resembled the house Wright designed. A stone veneer had replaced the original stucco and wood trim, for example."In truth," the Conservancy's announcement said, "the greatly altered summer cottage was `lost' many years ago.

"Nevertheless, the Conservancy considered the home significant because it was part of an unusual and little-known cluster--one of three Wright-designed homes in Grand Beach, all summer cottages built in 1916. Had the Carr cottage fallen into the hands of a preservation-minded owner, Scherubel maintained, it could have been restored.

The remaining Wright homes in Grand Beach are the Ernest Vosburgh cottage at 46208 Crescent Rd. and the Joseph J. Bagley cottage at 47017 Lake View Ave., just down the street from the Carr cottage. The Bagley cottage, which also has been greatly altered, is owned by Cook County Commissioner John Daley, property records show.

This was not the first time that the teardown trend has threatened a Wright house. Since 2001, three Wright houses in Chicago's suburbs--in Bannockburn, Glencoe and Lisle--have faced demolition, but preservation-minded buyers saved them.

Earlier this year, the Lisle house, a modest one-story prefabricated structure, was taken apart and shipped to southwestern Pennsylvania, where it sits in a warehouse and is waiting to be reassembled, Scherubel said."The teardown on really desirable properties is always going to be a risk," he said.

The last Wright-designed buildings to be demolished were the Arthur Munkwitz Apartments in Milwaukee, which were destroyed in 1973 to make room for a road widening, according to William Allin Storrer, author of "The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright," a catalogue of more than 400 Wright structures around the world.Born in Wisconsin, Wright practiced in Chicago and Oak Park during the early phases of a career that revolutionized the American house with flowing interior spaces. He produced roughly 500 buildings, including such masterworks as the spiraling Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

The architect died in 1959, but recent television specials about his architectural legacy and operatic life--Wright was a chronic deadbeat and once ran off to Europe with the wife of a client--have sparked a resurgence of interest in his work. Preservationists are counting on that awareness to help stave off future demolitions.

Asked if the destruction of the cottage would open the floodgates for more Wright buildings to come down, Scherubel said: "I'm hoping that people are more preservation-oriented now than they were in the past."

According to the Conservancy, nearly 20 percent of Wright's completed works have been destroyed because of fire, neglect or development.The organization was formed in 1989 to preserve the remaining Wright structures. Even on Friday, its Web site still noted: "Since the formation of the Conservancy, not one Wright building has been lost.""Well, I guess the Conservancy's going to have to change [that] sentence," a writer said in an e-mail message to the group's online chat room.

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