Frank Lloyd Wright House Walk: Goodrich House

The Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust's House Walk was Saturday, May 18, and this week we'll be featuring one of the homes each day. The event put the spotlight on local homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries. Of the 11 spots open for touring, I was able to make six. 

The Goodrich home, located at  534 N. East Ave., was built in 1896. It's transitional between the Queen Anne and Prairie style for Wright. The current owners have been involved in massive restorations and renovations for years, and that includes upgrading the home to be energy efficient and planning to turn dining room into year-round porch/conservatory.   

More from the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust: 

The Goodrich House displays elements of the then-popular Queen Anne style, including a variety of surface materials and prominent bay windows, but none of its ornamental vocabulary, like classical columns, pediments or turrets. 

the home's geometric massing, simplicity of materials and decorative elements, and wide, flared eaves suggest an architecht who is moving away from historical styles toward his own vocabulary. 

This design was inspired by a group of five that Wright created for early patron Charles Roberts to develop elsewhere in Oak Park. Wright reworked the elements of two of them to create this house for Harry and Louisa Goodrich. Harry was an intermittently successful inventor whose most profitable creation was a sewing machine attachment. 

In 1908, the second owners retained Wright to make some alterations, including the removal of a wall between the sitting room and library to create a larger combined space, adding upholstered benches to the fireplace area and proposing a new back porch, which remained unbuilt.

Almost since purchasing the home in 1999, the current owners have been engaged in extensive restoration work. Their projects include remodeling the kitchen, installing new mechanicals, performing a paint analysis and repainting several rooms, restoring woodwork, and converting a powder room and closet back into Wright's original sitting room. The original plans did not specify the fireplace materials, so the owners researched materials Wright used in similar projects and adapted an appropriate design of red brick-shaped clay tiles. 

Most recently, the owners have removed a later front dormer, altering the facade significantly. They have re-opened the front porch, almost a miniature of the main house, and recreated the original front stair placement and design. The stairs' balusters replicate those found inside on the home's open staircase.