Prairie-style premium: House with Frank Lloyd Wright’s fingerprints hits market in Oak Park

A historic Oak Park home reoriented onsite and redesigned by Frank Lloyd Wright is back on the market for the first time in 24 years.

The Hills-DeCaro House was built in 1883 as a Victorian and purchased in 1900 by Wright’s client, Nathan Moore, as a gift for his daughter. Wright updated the six-bedroom, 6,350-square-foot home in his Prairie style, turning the home 90 degrees in the process, as reported in Crain’s. The asking price for the 313 Forest Avenue home is just shy of $2.3 million. Wright also added two verandas on the first floor and updated the home’s siding to stucco with dark wood trim.

The home has a long history of renovations and other unique details: a fire in 1976 caused during a restoration project burned most of the first floor, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust. Also on the one-third acre property stands a ticket booth from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, held 20 miles away in Jackson Park. It was first used by the Hills family as a children’s playhouse.

The previous owners restored the home from the fire and updated its utilities, and the windows are recreations of the original glass style. The kitchen was also expanded to modern preferences from what had been a small galley kitchen, opening up smaller rooms to pair it with a breakfast room. The basement was also updated for entertainment. The current owners also added a walled, private patio in the backyard.

Both the living room fireplace and the primary bedroom fireplace feature narrow, horizontal Roman bricks, and built-in bookcases are featured throughout. The sunroom on the first floor was previously an open-air porch, but now has windows with views of other Wright homes in the area, such as the original home Moore commissioned Wright to design in 1895 in the Tudor style. — Eric Weilbacher