Frank Lloyd Wright House To Reopen
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | July 7, 2010
Frank Lloyd Wright's Bradley House in Kankakee, Ill., about 60 miles south of Chicago
Credit: Wright In Kankakee
On July 16, Frank Lloyd Wright's first Prairie Style house, the B. Harley Bradley House in Kankakee, Ill., will open to the public for the first time in 27 years.
"We are really excited about having this house open," says Elisabeth Dunbar, president of the board of Wright In Kankakee, a not-for-profit that purchased the house last week. "It's more than a house museum. We want the house to be full of life."
Wright designed the residence in 1900 for B. Harley and Anna Hickox Bradley. Completed the following year, it passed through a series of private owners before becoming a restaurant called the Yesteryear. After 30 years in business, the eatery closed in 1983. The interior of the house was altered in the 1990s, when a team of three lawyers and an architect renovated it as offices. In 2005, architect Gaines Hall and his wife, Sharon, heard that the house's stable—one of the few designed by Wright—was going to be demolished. The Halls purchased the house to save the stable, then spent five years meticulously restoring both. (In 2006, Landmarks Illinois gave the couple an award for the restoration of the Bradley stable, now a gift shop.)
The Halls worked with the community to establish a new not-for-profit to take over the house. Wright In Kankakee formed in 2008 and officially incorporated last January. The Halls passed the torch to the preservation group last week, when Wright In Kanakee purchased the Bradley House for $1.7 million.
The National Register-listed Bradley House "truly represents Wright's original plans due to the efforts of the previous owkners, who spent five years of their lives restoring it," Dunbar says.
Wright In Kankakee plans to use the house for art classes and other educational purposes. Dunbar is still searching for the house's original windows and furnishings, sold years ago.
"We are trying to track down pieces that were removed," Dunbar says. "We would love to start seeing pieces come back to our house."
Read more about the Frank Lloyd Wright Home & Studio, a National Trust Historic Site
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Comments
Submitted by Mr G at: July 15, 2010
Thanks for saving this Wright masterpiece. I can't wait to see it!