Letter: Thoughts on record-setting home sale

I got a big laugh out of the description of a 17,000 square foot home as “an authentic Prairie-style home” inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs. I’ve toured plenty of Wright’s homes — in Oak Park and elsewhere around Chicago, Pennsylvania, Los Angeles and New Hampshire, including Usonian, Prairie-style and textile-block homes, and the thing that most of them have in common is how small they are.

Wright did build homes for his wealthier clients in the 5,000 to 6,000 square foot range and some even bigger, but much more typical are the things he built in Los Angeles: the Freeman house (2,500 square feet), Storer house (3,000 square feet), Sturges house (1,200 square feet) the Pearce house (2,000 square feet) the Zimmerman house in New Hampshire (1,500 square feet) and perhaps his most famous house, Fallingwater, in Pennsylvania (3,000 square feet, not counting outdoor terraces).

Wright used low ceilings (except for the open expanse of a common living room), narrow hallways, and tiny (by today’s standards) kitchens, bathrooms, and especially bedrooms, on the theory that all you should do in a bedroom is sleep there. I’ve stood in Wright bedrooms where, without moving, I could almost touch all four walls. Prairie houses had no basements where owners could store a lifetime of acquisitions — they were built on concrete slabs. And he used lots of built-in furniture (designed by him) to make spaces look bigger. As innovative as his designs were, most of them were on a pretty modest scale. No wine room, home gym, massage room, game room or separate room for the dog. No four-car garage.

Is a 17,000 square foot house that was originally listed for $38 million really something we want to celebrate about this town?

Richard Yospin, North Avenue