Last fall, a rare opportunity presented itself when a pair of neighboring Usonian houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright were listed together for $4.5 million. Eight months later, that deal is no longer on the table, as the sellers, Marika Broere and Tony Hillebrandt, announced that one of the homes, known as the Eric and Pat Pratt House, has sold. However, there is still an opportunity to for a lover of American modernism to own a piece of history, as the second home, the Samuel and Dorothy Eppstein House, is still available. No longer offered with its companion, the home’s price has been reduced to $2.1 million.
In 1947, a group of scientists from the Upjohn pharmaceutical company came together with plans to build a collection of homes. The group purchased a little more than 20 acres of pastoral land near Kalamazoo, Michigan, then approached Wright to design the homes, who agreed to the commission. While the architect sketched out 21 houses on round one-acre sites, only four were built. Later, a fifth home on the land was designed by Taliesin fellow Francis “Will” Willsey. In 2004, the neighborhood, which is known as The Acres, was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Among these founding families were recently married couple Samuel and Dorothy Eppstein, for whom Wright crafted a roughly 2,000 square-foot in-line house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. According to Michigan Modern, the couple had to request a few changes from the architect’s original plans, such as enlarging the children’s rooms and kitchens, but Wright agreed and construction began in 1951. Like many homes in the neighborhood, the clients built much of the home themselves and were tasked with constructing some of the three thousand concrete blocks that the home needed.
