Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Oak Park lists for $595K

Low asking price reflects home’s run-down condition

Frank Lloyd Wright with 404 Home Avenue (Getty, Google Maps)
Frank Lloyd Wright with 404 Home Avenue (Getty, Google Maps)

An Oak Park home designed by famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright — though a departure from the Prairie style for which he’s well-known — has landed on the market asking $595,000.

The George Smith Home, located at 404 Home Avenue in the Cook County village of Oak Park, is one of Wright’s early designs and has belonged to the same family for more than 60 years, the Chicago Tribune reported. The home was listed for the first time in December for $770,000 and has taken two price cuts since.

Built in 1898, the 2,064-square-foot home was designed for Smith, a salesperson for Marshall Field & Co., and it sits on an almost quarter-acre near Washington Boulevard.

The home is one of the lower-priced Frank Lloyd Wright properties to hit the market. A home in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin was listed for $725,000 in September and sold in October for more than $1 million, according to Zillow. In addition, his four-bedroom Socrates Zaferiou House in Blauvelt, New York, which was built in 1961, was recently listed for $1.52 million and is currently marked as “pending.”

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Listing agent Catherine Cannon said the low asking price reflects the home’s worn condition. “The inside needs work, but it has high ceilings, spacious rooms and nice delivery from room to room,” she told the outlet. Local rules protect the exterior of the home from demolition.

“It’s not the norm of a Frank Lloyd Wright house that’s a Prairie-style home,” she told the outlet. “But it’s bright, sunny and cheery, with big rooms, and it’s got a great floor plan. And it has beautiful bands around the room, with high baseboards, woodwork and Roman-style brick on the fireplace and the inlaid floor.”

The home, which also has a large fireplace in the living room, 10-foot ceilings on the first level and a sunroom, had a property tax bill of $16,568 in 2021.

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— Victoria Pruitt