The only house in Illinois designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son California architect Frank Lloyd Wright Jr. — known as Lloyd Wright — finally sold after more than five years on the market.
The five-bedroom, star-shaped house that sits on 30 acres in the Chicago area village of Grayslake sold for $2.3 million, Crain’s reported.
The buyers of the home, Gabby Sloan and Brian Thompson, said that in addition to living in the home themselves, they also plan to move their Barrington Hills dog training and boarding business, Happy Pup Manor, to the property.
The pair will do some renovations to the home and update the utilities, but Sloan says they will work closely with an architect to make sure they won’t be “messing something up.”
The 5,950-square-foot house was built in 1952 when Roy and Irene Kropp commissioned Wright to design it. He designed the hilltop home with an octagonal living room, interior columns that taper at the bottom, Arizona limestone floors and a long zigzagging glass wall.
Lloyd Wright only designed two buildings in his home state of Illinois, making the house a piece of history. The other building he designed was the Good Shepherd Community Church. He and his son completed the church in 1961 and it was bought by Maine Township in 1983 to house the township’s offices.
The Kropps sold the Grayslake home to animal trainer and philanthropist John Cuneo Jr. in the 1970s. Cuneo reportedly kept bison, peacocks and other animals on the property during his time there. He sold most of the land to the Lake County Forest Preserve District in 2016 for about $10.5 million.
The home features an indoor gun range, interior and exterior waterfalls, as well as an attached greenhouse. There is also a detached five-car garage set above a 2-bedroom guest house. The property also features a swimming pool, a tennis court and a pond with water rights.
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Residential
Chicago
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[Chicago Tribune] — Victoria Pruitt