Wright oversaw every detail within the Walter residence—from the furniture right down to the plates and cups that graced the dinner table, making this one of FLW’s most complete designs. In 1981, the Walters donated their home to the state of Iowa and it now serves as the focal point of 426-acre Cedar Rock State Park, where free seasonal tours (May to October) are led by park staff.
www.iowadnr.gov
8 and spacious interiors that were becoming part of the American architectural design vernacular. Cedar Rock State Park, Independence, IA.
Wingspread, Racine, Wisconsin
A visit to Wingspread, the Wright-designed 1938 home of S.C. Johnson (think Pledge, Raid, and Glade) President Herbert Fisk Johnson can really get your imagination soaring. From above, the largest single-family home FLW ever designed resembles a four-bladed windmill. Long slender hallways extend from the two-story living room, warmed by a huge red brick fireplace. A tightly coiled spiral staircase leads to a glass-enclosed lookout. It is said that Wright designed this crow’s nest so that Johnson’s young son could watch his father fly home from his travels. The 14,000 square-foot structure was Wright’s final Prairie School house. Now owned by the S.C. Johnson Foundation, tours of the home are available at no cost with advance reservations.
The Popes later sold the house to Robert and Marjorie Leighey. When threatened with demolition in 1963, Marjorie, by then a widow, made a deal with the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The house was moved from its original location in Falls Church, Virginia, to Woodlawn Plantation in Alexandria—once part of George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. With Marjorie’s passing, the house was converted to a museum, currently operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
www.woodlawnpopeleighey.org
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Cedar Rock State Park, Independence, Iowa
www.franklloydwright.org/site/wingspread
Here’s a first and only: A Frank Lloyd Wright- designed house that has been designated as a state park. This is how it happened: Lowell Walter was a well-to-do Iowa businessman who, with his wife Agnes, commissioned Wright to design a home at Cedar Rock—a limestone bluff above the Wapsipinicon River—in the late 1940s. The Walters’ dream house, a compact 1,800 square-foot Usonian design constructed of brick, concrete and glass, is accompanied by a boathouse—the only Wright-designed boat pavilion still in existence.
Wingspread, Racine, WI.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S LEGACY
COAST TO COAST MAGAZINE SUMMER 2024 | 19
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