A Frank Lloyd Wright home in Chicago has been placed on a list of the most endangered historic buildings in the city, reports Austin Weekly News, a local Windy City paper. Preservation Chicago, a nonprofit advocacy organization that protects local architecture, recently named the home, known as the J.J. Walser Jr. House, on its list of the Chicago 7 Most Endangered. Ward Miller, Preservation Chicago’s executive director, tells AD that the annual list “is our way of sharing with the public, City of Chicago officials, stakeholders, and owners our collective concerns for these structures and to spotlight them. It’s our hope that this list will encourage a good preservation outcome, and in some cases, new stewards for these troubled buildings and sites.”
Located in the Austin neighborhood on the city’s west side, the residence was designed in 1903 for Grace and J.J. Walser, a local couple. The home is finished in a tan stucco—which at the time was a unique material to use—with dark wood trim. In fact, the house appeared in a 1905 article in House Beautiful about the growing use of plaster and cement in home construction. Overhanging eaves and a hipped roof firmly establish the residence in the Prairie style, and in 1984 the home was designated a Chicago landmark. In 2013, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Built for $4,000 (about $143,000 today), it is one of the best examples of Wright’s early pursuits of inexpensive, well-designed homes. He would continue to rethink and reconfigure the Walser plan for future projects, and its influence can be seen in the Barton House in Buffalo, New York; the DeRhodes House in South Bend, Indiana; and the Horner House in Chicago, which was demolished in 1952.
The Walsers sold the property in 1910 after having lived in it for seven years. Over the next six decades, the home changed hands 11 times—simultaneously undergoing a series of renovations and remodels—before it was purchased by its most recent owners, Anne and Hurley Teague, in 1970. “Austin has experienced much disinvestment over the past half century, which has also impacted the property and its value,” Miller explains. “Its longtime owners tried their very best to maintain the home, despite the costs associated with some of the various needs and requirements, as they continued to age.”
