Frank Lloyd Wright houses are more than just the output of one creative mind—they are the blueprint for so much of American architecture. Architect John Lautner said it best when he wrote that Wright “contributed so many ideas that there are details of work, each one of which could create a whole new architectural style,” in AD in 1971. Born in 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin, Wright had a career that spanned 70 years, during which he designed more than 1,100 projects. Impressively, nearly half of them were realized.
Now over 60 years after his death, Wright remains America’s most famous architect. The reasons for this are plentiful: He was an out-of-the-box thinker, a shrewd marketer, a man that—for better or worse—attracted scandal, and, most importantly, a singular talent. “You hear about compression and release every time you go into a Frank Lloyd Wright house, but there are so many architects who use that technique,” John Waters, preservation programs director at the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, tells AD. “Wright just did it exceptionally well.”
But Wright was also mercurial: always reimagining, reinventing, and rethinking his work and approach. “When you look at [his projects] all at once, it’s astonishing that it was all done by one person,” Waters adds. This constant evolution made him a dynamic figure, someone who remained at the forefront of his field. He embraced technological advancement, new materials, and changing society—creating architecture that met the world in the present while pushing it into the future.
He designed a number of monumental public buildings, like the Guggenheim, the Johnson Wax Headquarters, and the Marin County Civic Center, to name a few. But the best way to understand Wright’s impact is to look at his residential projects. Not only were these commissions where he largely got his start, but they are also a roadmap of his personal movements and periods. Below, explore 20 Frank Lloyd Wright houses that redefined American architecture.
The best Frank Lloyd Wright houses from every era
Early Years and Bootleg Homes
In 1887, a 20-year-old Wright arrived in Chicago, a city that, like the young man, was on the brink of a metamorphosis. Just six years earlier, the Great Chicago Fire had destroyed more than three square miles of the metropolis, and a major rebuilding was underway. Wright had studied civil engineering at the University of Madison and worked as an assistant to Allan Conover, an engineering professor, but left the program before finishing his degree in pursuit of becoming an architect.
[I] “took the city directory of architects,” Wright wrote in his autobiography. “Choosing names I’d heard in Conover’s office or names that sounded interesting.” After several interviews, he was hired as a draftsman with Joseph Lyman Silsbee, where he worked for a little under a year. In 1888, Wright was offered a job at Adler & Sullivan, among the most prestigious firms in Chicago at the time. “They were foremost in Chicago. Radical—going strong on independent lines,” Wright wrote about the firm. Though he describes altercations with other draftsmen in his autobiography, he was mentored by Louis Sullivan, who eventually promoted him to head draftsman.
He married his first wife, Catherine Tobin, the following year, and Sullivan lent the young architect money to design and build a family home. But Wright was regularly in need of extra money, by his own admission due to expensive taste, and he began taking on freelance commissions on the side. Known as “bootleg” homes, these projects were not allowed under Wright’s contract. It’s unclear whether he quit or was fired, but in 1893 he left Sullivan’s firm.
Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio (1889)
