Cranbrook acquires Frank Lloyd Wright’s Smith House

In 1950, Frank Lloyd Wright designed a house for Sara Stein and Melvyn Maxwell Smith, two school teachers living in Michigan. They had met him almost ten years earlier at Taliesin, and despite their modest salaries, commissioned Wright to design them a home.

The result was a low-slung timber and glass home that stretches under a canopy of leafy trees. It was a marvel of economical design at the time and a prime example of Wright’s Usonian vision. Now it will be accessible to those who want to experience it.

Cranbrook, home of the famed art and design school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, recently acquired the Smith House, courtesy of a donation from the Towbes Foundation.

James Haefner/Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

“The Smith family always said they didn’t want this to just pass to another set of homeowners,” Gregory Wittkopp, director of the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, tells The Detroit News. “The phrase they used was they wanted it to be ‘an educational resource.’”

An educational resource it will be. The school will offer tours from May to November—a perfect excuse to spend a warm day wandering around other Midwestern architectural gems.

Via: The Detroit News