Sep 13, 2019 We Recommend — Frank Lloyd Wright’s $10,000 Home: History, Design, and Restoration of the Bach House

“…it’s quite impossible to consider the building as one thing, it’s furnishings another, and it’s setting and environment still another.” — Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright’s $10,000 Home: History, Design, and Restoration of the Bach House
Robert J. Hartnett
Hilton Publishing: Chicago, 2019
NA7511.4 C6 H37 2019

“I have been so fortunate to have received so much help in writing this book; I have literally talked with people from across the continent. There was a college professor in Oregon; two historical society managers, one in Wisconsin and one in Maine: a librarian in Utah*; and antiques store manager in Georgia; and a manager of an architectural history museum in Montreal, Canada.”

When Emil and Anna Bach approached Frank Lloyd Wright to design and build their Chicago home in 1915, he quoted a cost of $10,000, or $250,000 in modern purchasing power. Wright is known for his grand, international designs like the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and the Guggenheim in New York. But he also designed beautiful and carefully practical small family homes like the Bach’s “little dream house.”

“In 1909, Wright left Oak Park and traveled to Berlin, Germany, to work on a book titled Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright (Executed Buildings and Designs by Frank Lloyd Wright. The book has come to be known as The Wasmuth Portfolio after its German publisher, Ernst Wasmuth. This work was published in 1910, printed as a two-volume set that included 100 lithographs of the intact buildings Frank Lloyd Wright created from 1893 to 1909. It was the first time Wright’s work had been published anywhere in the world.”

Frank Lloyd Wright’s $10,000 Home is a design-focused portrait of that iconic building, featuring rare building illustrations, beautiful maps, intimate family stories, and extensive photographs that offer a distinctive look at the house’s history, the families that lived their, and the thoughtful process of its protection and restoration.

An avid admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work, Robert Hartnett has volunteered with the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust as a multi-site tour guide in Chicago and Oak Park, Illinois. This book grew out of his belief that the role of architecture in our communities, and the history of the Bach House in particular, are important topics that should be shared in engaging and informative ways.

*Thank you, Jon Bingham!