If you’ve ever wanted to sleep in a home designed by America’s original starchitect, Frank Lloyd Wright, here’s your chance. Over his lifetime, Wright designed more than 1,000 innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, and museums. He also designed hundreds of houses, from vast estates for wealthy bankers to modest suburban homes for small families, all of which incorporate his principals of Usonian design and his signature organic style. And a few of those houses can be rented for a night or a week at a time. Celebrate the 150th anniversary of the architect’s birth by booking a retreat in one of these seven Frank Lloyd Wright houses across the country.
1. Palmer House (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
- Book now: From $410 per night, flwpalmerhouse.com
Tucked into the northeast side of Ann Arbor’s Nichols Arboretum, this home was built in the early 1950s for local residents Bill and Mary Palmer. The 2,000-square-foot house is a study in geometry, from the cantilevered overhang down to the Wright-designed furniture (including five-sided beds and triangular armchairs). Wright’s love of nature shows in the home’s hillside orientation; every room offers views of delicate red cypress trees. Bonus: The house is close to the University of Michigan and just a five-minute drive from the dining and art scene in downtown Ann Arbor.
2. Seth Peterson Cottage, (Baraboo, Wisconsin)
- Book now: From $250 per night, sethpeterson.org
In 1958, when Wright was nearly 90 years old, a young man named Seth Peterson asked Wright to build a cottage on Mirror Lake, a reservoir in the architect’s native Wisconsin. Wright agreed but died the following year, before the home was fully completed. Peterson committed suicide before the cottage was finished, and the home sat abandoned until 1989 when a group of residents launched a restoration project.
The fully restored cottage is a small, but mighty example of Wright’s desire for architecture to be a bridge to nature. Perched at the top of a wooded hill, the 880-square-foot cottage has a wall of windows overlooking the lake below, and the flagstones used for the cottage floor continue outside, where they form a small terrace. The cottage was the first Wright-designed house to be available for rent, and it offers a weekend escape in what is now Mirror Lake State Park, near the Wisconsin Dells.
3. Emil Bach House (Chicago, Illinois)
- Book now: From $495 per night, stayinchicagohomes.com
This Prairie-style home was built in 1915 in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. Declared a Chicago Landmark in 1977 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, the Emil Bach House is part of a series of geometric homes with flat, overhanging roofs built by Wright in the early 1900s. The Bach House is the only Wright house of this style left in the Windy City. And though the home is now surrounded by high-rises, the two-story, two-bedroom house is still in touch with nature: It’s only a block from Lake Michigan.
4. Alpine Meadows Ranch (Darby, Montana)
- Book now: From $1,200 per night, thirdhome.com
While this ranch in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley was originally founded as a retreat for university professors in 1909, it’s now privately owned. Of the four structures on the 205-acre property, Wright designed two. The Frank Lloyd Wright Farmhouse has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a sunroom, a kitchen, and a living area with a fireplace made from river stones, plus views of the Sapphire Mountains. The Writer’s Cabin is a small cottage with one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchenette, a living room (also with a river stone fireplace), and a small porch, plus easy access to the Bitterroot National Forest. Located two miles from the town of Darby, the ranch is the perfect base for hiking, fishing, and (in winter) skiing.
5. Hawaii Frank Lloyd Wright House (Waimea, Hawaii)
- Book now: From $800 per night, southkohala.com
The only Wright house ever built in Hawaii wasn’t actually designed for Hawaii. Originally conceived in 1954 for the Cornwell Family, the three-bedroom home was intended for a site in Pennsylvania. It’s unclear why the project was not built there. In the early 1990s, a Honolulu-based ad executive named Sanderson Sims partnered with Taliesin Associated Architects (Wright’s now-disbanded firm) and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to bring the plan to life in Hawaii. The team selected a site on the edge of the Waiaka stream with views of the ocean and three of the island’s most important volcanoes—all on display through the curved living room wall of floor-to-ceiling glass doors and windows. Other perks include an outdoor hot tub made from lava rock and easy access to the white-sand beaches of the nearby Kohala Coast.
6. The Wright House (Peoa, Utah)
- Book now: From $450 per night
Situated on 66 acres in an Aspen grove near Park City, The Wright House was designed by its namesake in 1956 and built by his great-nephew between 1997 and 2002. The home was not originally planned for this plot of land (it was meant for a site in Michigan), but one of Wright’s early apprentices—David Elgin Dodge—selected this location. The self-sufficient home has three bedrooms, three fireplaces, and windows that look out on the surrounding mountains. From the house’s location in Peoa, Utah, it’s an easy 20-minute drive to Park City and all the activities northern Utah has to offer, including skiing, hiking, fishing, and cycling.
7. Duncan House (Acme, Pennsylvania)
- Book now: From $399 per night, franklloydwrightovernight.net
Built in Lisle, Illinois, in 1957, the Duncan House is one of Wright’s lesser-known prefab homes. The three-bedroom home was slated for demolition in 2002—until the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy (FLWBC) stepped in. FLWBC found buyers who were willing to pay to have the home relocated to the Polymath Park Resort, a Wright compound in Pennsylvania (and not far from Fallingwater, considered by many to be Wright’s masterpiece). The house now stands near two other Usonian-style homes designed by Wright apprentice Peter Berndtson in the 1960s. All three homes are available to tour or rent. And an on-site restaurant, Treetops, offers outdoor dining in the forest. Make your getaway totally Frank Lloyd Wright–centric by visiting Fallingwater, as well as Kentuck Knob, another residence designed by Wright.
>>Next: See 9 Stunning Frank Lloyd Wright Works on the New Great Wright Road Trip
