“I remember Andy and I took a walk along the street and we passed the house and thought it would be a dream to live there.”
#Frank lloyd wright waterfall house tour windows#
“There’s something about the windows and lights…it was super special.” Both Kayne and her husband, Andy Mead, had been previously married, and when looking to combine their families, the Laura Gale House felt like a picture-perfect scenario. “It was just us, our kids, and my really good friend who married us, and I felt like the house was this container that just brought us all together,” she says. Photo: Emi KitawakiĪndrea Kayne’s favorite memory of living in the Laura Gale House-which she bought with her now husband in 2017-was the day they got married. “Because the microscope is going everywhere, if there’s a dead plant or pieces of papers blowing around in the yard, you become totally, totally aware of it.” However, this also means that keeping the garden in near-perfect condition is almost as important as keeping the house in good shape. “We have a 500 small-scale windows, which are about a 24-inch square, and control your vista and your sight line almost like a microscope,” Morgan says, adding that it provides endless opportunities to watch animals, birds, and plants grow and thrive. Even when indoors, the outside is always calling. When guests come over, they’ll often tour the home and walk through each room, then immediately want to go sit on the terrace. “The garden just pulls you out, it’s like a vacuum,” Morgan says. Still, true to Wright’s vision, the home’s constant dialogue with nature is the real allure. “Living in it is wonderful,” Morgan says, adding that people are often surprised by how warm and inviting the space is. “We were not impressed because it was in terrible condition, the roof leaked…everything was wrong with the house, and we thought we would never live in a house like it.” But twenty years later, both the couple and the house had seemingly changed, and the timing was finally right. “Tom Monaghan, owned the house, and we came over to tour it one night,” he says. “We decided that we wanted to do something contemporary and modern.” Coincidentally, two decades before being handed the deed, the pair had visited the Wright home and thought they’d never live in a property like it. “We lived in a very traditional Mediterranean house,” Morgan says. Turkel House (Detroit, Michigan)ĭale Morgan and his partner, Norm Silk, were ready for a modernist change when they bought the Dorothy G. “You try to live with and respect the character of the house and work with it rather than against it.” Dorothy G. “You don’t come into a house like this and look at the latest thing in a magazine or HGTV and say, ‘I'm going to go do that to this house and paint everything gray or do a farmhouse kitchen,’” he says.
Though he says his home doesn’t require any more work than any other older house, a Wright design does ask for certain care.
“It’s registered in more humble materials, but it has the spatial qualities of a Frank Lloyd Wright house,” Nichols says. At 1,500 square feet, the Usonian home is the smallest Wright design in New Jersey, and he built it for a family that didn’t have a large budget (something the architect would often accommodate to). “It was in a condition where we could afford it because it needed work,” he says. He and his wife had designed and built a home in central Pennsylvania, but decided to move closer to Philadelphia to be near aging family. Photo: Dan Nicholsīut one day, that unexpected chance came. “There’s spirit to the house,” Amy concludes. “We sometimes open the house to tours, and people have been very complimentary, they love seeing a Wright house being used as it’s intended,” Eric says, explaining that there are photos on the wall and toys around the home.
Ultimately, they’ve received positive feedback from guests and friends and family alike. “I felt so nervous to open the house up originally, because I was afraid that people would have an opinion that we did something wrong,” Amy says. With the ultimate goal being to honor the architect’s vision, it’s easy to question whether the right decisions are being made, particularly as it comes to restoration and renovation. However, the pair say there is also a certain amount of pressure that comes with owning a Wright design. Photo: Eric Allix Rogers, courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy
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