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-Frank Lloyd Wright, 1936

With this statement Frank Lloyd Wright articulated the issue that would bedevil him for much of his career—namely, how to produce well-designed, low-cost housing. Though he’s best known for his large-scale commissions (the Prairie houses, the Guggenheim Museum and his masterpiece, Fallingwater– all expensive projects for wealthy clients), Wright possessed a fundamentally democratic spirit. Producing affordable housing was, for him, an obsession. Throughout his career, he consistently looked for ways to keep costs down, whether by making use of factory-built elements or by using Taliesin apprentices (from his guild-style school of architecture) to supervise building projects. As early as 1917, Wright had developed what he termed the American System-Built House, which employed partially assembled elements and pre-cut timber that could be put together on-site. And in 1932, Wright proposed a utopian community he named Broadacre, comprised of one-acre lots, a project that he would continue to tinker with until his death. 

But Wright’s Usonian houses are his most enduring attempt to solve the affordability problem. Usonian was the word Wright adopted to describe the particular character of the United States as distinct from Canada and Mexico, and more precisely his vision of a new, unconventional approach to architecture that responded to that character. Among the innovations Wright came up with are open plan designs, carports and radiant core heating.

Most Usonian houses were L-shaped, which allowed for a pleasing interior flow and fit nicely around a garden terrace. Wright designed the first Usonian house in 1936. He was nearly 70 at that time, and after a run of Depression-induced lean years, his career was finally back on track with the major commissions of the Johnson Wax Building and Wingspread (the Johnson family residence) in the offing. Fallingwater in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands—also built in 1936—landed him on the cover of Time magazine. 

Experts disagree, but it appears that, all told, approximately 60 Usonian houses were built across the country, though plans for more than 100 exist. Some purists feel the ones built before WWII are the true Usonians, and point out that the later ones tend to be more elaborate having been built for wealthier clients. Usonians don’t come on the market often; they tend to remain in the families of the original owners. There are three in the Washington D.C. area: the Pope-Leighey House and two others—one owned by Wright’s grandson, Robert Llewellyn Wright, and the other by a founder of AOL.