Wright Plus Co-Chairs Joan Pantsios and Debbie Crouch said that participants in this year’s Wright Plus will get a chance to see how the homes have been remodeled over the years.
“People are doing very sympathetic work. The homeowners are really taking care of the houses,” Pantsios said.
At the Harry S. Adams house, she said visitors should be on the lookout for a large urn when they go up the stairs. The urn was falling apart when the owners purchased the home, and they were going to have a new one made. After a conversation with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, she said they were able to restore the original urn rather than replace it.
At the E. W. Pratt House, homeowners used the original art glass windows to inspire the design of a new front door, and at the Ashley C. Smith House, the fence in the front of the home replicates the design of the original leaded glass windows.
Pantsios pointed out that the Beachy House recently underwent a roof restoration project and that the owners found a box of original roof tiles and were pleased to discover just how much their restoration resembled the original roof.
Crouch said that while all the homeowners are wonderful stewards of their homes, it’s important to note the homes are not museums and are used for day-to-day living. Some of the fun of the housewalk is seeing how homeowners have made historic homes livable for more modern times.
She pointed out that the two adjacent Dunlop Houses have more modern kitchens that are charming. One of them also sports a pool in the backyard.
“The kitchens and the bathrooms are the first things to get redone,” Pantsios said. “In the days these houses were built, you had a cook, who was probably the only one using the kitchen. Nowadays, people live in their kitchens.”
According to Pantsios, a lot of recent homeowners have expanded the footprint of the kitchen by incorporating rooms once used for maids. Many homeowners have also added family rooms to their houses.
In E. E. Roberts’ E. W. Pratt House, there was originally a back staircase for a maid to use. In 2009, later owners removed the staircase to remodel the first floor and created a small room off one of the bedrooms on the second floor in the space where the rear staircase once stood.
Crouch said that most homes on Wright Plus will permit visitors to tour two floors, but some homes will have three full floors available for touring. Commonly, the third-floor spaces were once used as ballrooms but have since been converted to more everyday uses.
“You can still see that they used to be ballrooms. People used to entertain big groups in the past,” she said. “It’s really charming and wonderful to imagine.”
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