Lender Takes Over Endangered Frank Lloyd Wright Home

A foreclosure sale that preservationists hoped would deliver a lifeline to one of Chicago’s most distressed Frank Lloyd Wright houses instead handed control back to the lender, dimming prospects for a near-term rescue.

PHH Mortgage, the Florida-based holder of the J.J. Walser House mortgage, submitted the sole bid — $240,000 — at a court-ordered auction, Crain’s reported, far above what either of two prepared bidders were willing to pay for the Austin neighborhood house at 42 North Central Avenue.

With no competing offers from Austin Coming Together, a neighborhood revitalization group, or developer Andy Schcolnik, who has recently revived two other crumbling Chicago properties, PHH walked away with the deed. The lender has stayed silent about its plans, and preservation advocates say the 1903 Wright design, already in dire condition, now faces at least another winter of deterioration.

“The building is crying out for someone to come in and restore it and occupy it,” Barbara Gordon, executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy told the outlet. She warned that Chicago’s freeze-thaw cycle alone can wreak havoc on a vacant structure, especially one that has suffered years of neglect.

The stucco residence is noted for its horizontal lines, overhanging eaves and bands of windows — features that would later define Wright’s signature Prairie School style. It was designed for printing executive Joseph Jacob Walser Jr. and has stood vacant since 2019.

Austin Coming Together hoped to turn the Walser House into a companion piece to the $40.8 million Aspire Center redevelopment across the street, part of a broader push to stabilize Central Avenue.

But the $240,000 bid was too high, according to the group’s executive director, Darnell Shields. The home is appraised at roughly $65,000, and Shields estimated a full restoration would run at least $2 million.

Schcolnik voiced similar frustration, saying PHH showed no interest in working with prospective rehabbers. He recently acquired a vacant Bronzeville mansion and intended to pursue a similar turnaround for the Wright property. Both he and Shields declined to disclose their planned bids, though both made clear the lender overshot the market for a house in unlivable condition.

Values in Austin underscore the challenge. Over the past year, the average sale price of single-family homes was about $280,000, according to Midwest Real Estate Data, with move-in-ready homes dominating the higher end. Houses requiring significant rehab generally traded under $100,000 — a sad valuation for a landmarked structure saddled with code violations, mortgage complexity and extensive deferred maintenance.

What PHH does next remains unclear. Landmark protections bar demolition by neglect, and the city is already pursuing the owners in housing court. The Teague family, which owned the home since 1969, became entangled in a reverse-mortgage tangle after Anne Teague drew on the property’s equity in the late 1990s. The amount now owed is murky, and the mortgage has changed hands multiple times.

— Eric Weilbacher