Love Affair with Frank Lloyd Wright House Will Not End with Sale
Home > Love Affair with Frank Lloyd Wright House Will Not End with Sale
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Theirs is an incredible love story of two distinct passions.
For 70 years, Kenneth and Phyllis Laurent have been married. And for almost as long, they have been the devoted caretakers of a one-of-a-kind home that was built specially for them by Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the world’s most famous architects.
And to add even more intrigue to their unique story is how Ken’s investment in a common, three-cent postage stamp back in 1948 took them on a life's journey that has become legendary among architecture fans and scholars around the globe.
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Their beloved Frank Lloyd Wright house is now for sale because the couple’s declining health has required them to seek an assisted living arrangement. Their physical needs can no longer be managed in the house. But, first things first in their lifelong love story. Ken Laurent and Phyllis Dahlgren met at Christian Endeavor, a group of Trinity Lutheran Church in Rockford, Illinois. Ken was from nearby Belvidere, one of nine children in a farming family. Phyllis was enrolled in secretarial school and working in an office when her supervisor suggested she attend the church group. Phyllis and Ken met there and dated for a couple years, eventually marrying on June 26, 1941. Service in World War II soon called and Ken was stationed in the San Francisco area with the U.S. Navy, where he worked an aviation storekeeper, supplying parts for aircraft carriers. With Phyllis at his side, their world would soon radically change forever, but not because of a dangerous, overseas combat deployment as one might expect. Instead, an undiagnosed tumor was growing on Ken’s spine and his legs became permanently paralyzed only two months after his discharge from the Navy in 1946.
“He had been complaining of pain while he was still in the Navy,” says his daughter Jean, “but an x-ray was done only on his upper back and nothing showed. It got so bad he had to crawl up the stairs at home. When he finally had surgery, the surgeon said the tumor was far too large to have been growing only a short time.”
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Ken endured five months of recuperation and rehab at a Rockford hospital on a device called a fracture board. Phyllis slept each night on a rollaway bed next to her husband the entire length of his hospitalization. When Ken went for a month of additional rehab at Hines Veterans Hospital in suburban Chicago, Phyllis brought him home to Rockford every weekend. Her brother, Chester Dahlgren, would carry Ken up the steps where the couple lived.
Despite his hardship and the circumstance leading up to his situation, Jean says her father always looked ahead, not behind.
“He could have been a bitter man,” she says, “but he made a life. I’ve learned more from him as an example than from anyone or anything.”
Ken’s day-to-day life as a wheelchair user in the late-1940s was undoubtedly a much different experience than what wheelchair users face today. He returned to work at the now-defunct National Lock Company in Rockford, from where he’d eventually retire after 41 years of distinguished service, but the couple’s housing situation was paramount in his mind.
“My mother showed him an article in House Beautiful magazine about a Frank Lloyd Wright home, and that gave my father an idea,” says Jean.
That idea, to put it mildly, was to write the famous architect a letter and request his services. Ken takes up the story about what happened next.
“I asked Mr. Wright in my letter if he’d be interested in designing a house for me,” Ken told RealEstateAuctions.com recently, “and he agreed.”
Ken’s 1948 letter, with the aforementioned, era-appropriate three-cent postage stamp affixed to the envelope, made its way to Wright’s studio and home called Taliesin near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Just like that, a curious, bold and enthusiastic young World War II veteran with a profound handicap and a vision reached out to a world-renowned personality to ask for assistance.
And what did Ken think Frank Lloyd Wright’s reaction would be?
“Well, I expected him to say ‘yes’,” Ken says with a smile from the living room of the Wright home where he and his wife have lived all these years. “I was innocent enough to think he would do it.”
Ken and Phyllis didn’t have to wait long for Wright’s reply. “His letter said ‘Come up and see me and let’s talk about it’,” recalls Ken, and the couple soon traveled to Spring Green to meet the architect for an initial get-together in September, 1948. The meeting went well, and Wright instructed Ken what to do next.
“He said ‘When you go home, set down what you need on paper in the way of space and send it to me’,” Ken remembers. “He didn’t say anything about design, just space, so I sent that back and he created the house around those thoughts.”
Based on Ken’s input, Wright drew up plans for their home that included an oversized master bath, wider doorways than standard for the time, wide hallways, a single level floorplan with minimal thresholds, and other touches including lower kitchen cabinets that open from the top instead of swinging outward.
The home was completed in 1952 and is known as the Laurent House, a practice of naming in keeping with many of Wright’s residential designs. The Laurents moved in on May 30th of that year, ironically six years to the day from the date Ken had become paralyzed. Located at 4646 Spring Brook Road in Rockford, the house sits on approximately 1.25 beautiful, partly wooded acres. When considering where to locate the house, Ken had a parcel of land already selected in a busier part of Rockford, but Wright told him it would absolutely not do.
Ken says that Wright advised him “‘Go out in the country about seven miles, and when you get there, go another seven.’ Well, we only made it the first seven and found the spot. It was wooded and beautiful and it was for sale, so I bought it.”
The couple have been stewards of the famous house for almost 60 years, keeping the home and its original furnishings impeccably maintained.
“Phyllis has loved this house and has done a superb job of taking care of it,” says Ken. “She has been second to none.”
In addition to the details unique to Ken’s needs, the house is incredibly rich in Wright design: the unmistakable prairie-style architecture; the signature furnishings and fabrics; and the 50-foot long, gently curved window gallery that lets in a huge amount of the wooded outdoors into the residence. Ken says that birds, deer and even turkeys are regularly seen just outside the windows.
The Laurents raised two children in the house, son Marc (now deceased) and daughter Jean. Ken estimates that thousands of people from all around the world have visited over the years for a look inside, some with appointments and even some without. Ken and Phyllis try to accommodate them all.
When the Laurent family expanded with the arrival of their daughter, Ken asked Wright to design an addition. Construction of the addition was completed in 1960, the year after Wright's death, and blends seamlessly into the original design, bringing the total size of the house to approximately 2,600 square feet.
The Laurents and Frank Lloyd Wright enjoyed a cordial relationship over the years. Wright visited their home twice and hosted Ken and Phyllis each year at his own home at Taliesin. Ken has very fond memories of those times, which lasted until the architect’s passing at the age of 91.
“Mr. Wright was very kind to us,” Ken recalls. “We’d go up on a Saturday afternoon and we’d see all the drawings on the wall of the designs he was working on. We’d be invited to buffet-type dinners in the living room with all his students and associates. Later, we’d go to the theater, maybe watch a movie, play or musical.” |
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Frank Lloyd Wright called the Laurent House a “serene masterpiece” and his “little gem.” The home is featured in dozens of books.
Time marches on, and Ken and Phyllis are now faced with a new type of housing challenge. With advancing age and increasing health concerns, they will soon be moving to an assisted living arrangement elsewhere in town and their famous home with all its Wright-designed furnishings are up for sale. A reserve auction is scheduled for 4:00 p.m. CST at 1440 W. Hubbard Street, Chicago. The house and furnishings will be auctioned in a single lot, with no purchase of individual pieces allowed. Three firms are involved in the auction: RealEstateAuctions.com; a Chicago company called R. Wright Inc. (no relation), which is a premier auction firm specializing in modern and contemporary design; and Gambino Realtors of Rockford.Ken Laurent would like to see the house become a museum, as would Jerry Heinzeroth, chairman of the board of the Laurent House Foundation, a non-profit organization. “This is the chance of a lifetime for us,” says Mr. Heinzeroth, who hopes his organization will be the winning bidder. “The Laurents have been special stewards of the house for all these years, and we want an open property for people to come and visit anytime they want, in keeping with Ken’s wishes.”
“The significance is not just the house, but the house and all its Wright-designed furnishings,” says Mr. Heinzeroth, who is concerned that a new, private individual owner might not keep everything intact.
To support the group’s efforts, Mr. Heinzeroth says “the State of Illinois has stepped forward with a dollar-for-dollar matching grant, up to $500,000, and the City of Rockford has granted us $75,000. We have donors in the wings, ready to step up.”
Ken says that if the house becomes a museum, it will give him the opportunity to return and visit someday. Currently 92 years old, Ken says with a chuckle “I can come back in 2090 and see it just like it is now.”
For more information about the opportunity to bid on the historic Frank Lloyd Wright Laurent House, call Brian Kuzdas of RealEstateAuctions.com at 708-774-7470.
Story and main photo by Anthony Caciopo Laurent House photos by Charlie Deets Update: Historic Preservation Group Buys Laurent House |
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