Frank Lloyd Wright designed Nathan Moore’s first house in 1895, and like a lot of Wright stories, there was a bit of drama in the home’s early history.
At first, Wright was going to redesign the Victorian home on the corner of Oak Park’s Forest Avenue and Superior Street, but that plan was jettisoned and that original house moved off the lot. Moore instead tasked Wright with building a new, Tudor Revival home. While Wright was loathe to copy a historic style, he was just starting out and had a young family to support so he took on the commission.
For years after the home was completed, Wright expressed his unhappiness with the house and declined to design homes in the Tudor style for other clients. The Moores, however, remained delighted with the house, buying the two properties to the south of the home to create one large property. They tore down one home and hired Wright to remodel the other, which they gave to their daughter Mary, when she married Edward Hills.
In 1922, a fire struck the Nathan Moore home, destroying the third floor and damaging much of the remainder of the house. The Moore’s turned to Wright to redesign the house. Wright’s redesign resulted in a more ornamental home. Gothic windows, terracotta designs, and heavily carved wood decorate the exterior of the home.
When Nathan Moore died in 1946, his daughter Mary inherited the home and sold it. For many years, the home was owned by William and Jackie Dugal, who opened the home for tours. Today, son Jim and his wife Nancy own the home.
Jim and Nancy Dugal are bringing the home back to the state it was in 1923, when Wright remodeled the home for the Moores after the fire. Nancy’s son, Michael Roush, stepped in to help his mother and stepfather manage the rehabilitation of the home.
Roush notes that Moore had Wright install an elevator during that remodel, and that figures into the vision for the house.
Several of William and Jackie’s children had Friedrich’s Ataxia, a neurodegenerative disorder that led to them using wheelchairs. Roush notes the house has a lot of stairs but is wheelchair accessible with ramps and the elevator. Jackie Dugal was passionate about making the community of Oak Park more accessible, and Roush says Jim Dugal wants to continue that vision in the family home.
“We are going to open the home for private tours when the work is finished. It will be one of the only accessible Frank Lloyd Wright homes,” Roush says.
Roush came by his love of architecture naturally. He grew up in a John Randall McDonald-designed home in Wisconsin. Growing up in a home designed by a student of Wright’s has led to his life-long love of architecture.
Roush is bringing more than his love of architecture to the home this summer. Under his supervision, the drama is returning to the home in a literal sense.
As an actor, Roush performed for Forest Theatre Company’s founder Rick Corley years ago in Arizona Shakespeare productions. When Roush moved to Oak Park to oversee the renovations to the Moore-Dugal house, he reached out to Corley, and an idea was born.
Corley was looking for an outdoor venue for his summer Shakespeare production, and Roush and the Dugals were looking for a way to contribute to the arts via their home.
Partnering with the Dugals, the theatre company is staging three weekends of productions of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well on the lawn of the Moore-Dugal house this August.
The company performs daylight Shakespeare plays outdoors in the summer months, and for Corley, the opportunity to bring the experience to the Moore-Dugal house was hard to pass up.
Corley says, “I think the Dugals were excited to have the house be seen less as an artifact and museum piece and more of something that’s alive and can be dynamic and interacted with.”
Staging the play on the lawn allows the house to serve as backdrop according to Corley who says, “We don’t have to have a set because the house itself is so beautiful. We’re able to use the balcony as part of the set.”
He adds, “The acoustics are very nice because you’re performing in front of a brick house. There’s a sort of vocal warmth to the setting. It really is perfect for us.”
Lisa Green, executive director for the theatre group, says that Jim Dugal has a deep connection to the arts due to his mother’s interest in the arts and was inspired to bring them back into to the house.
“It’s a pretty special thing to carry on those wishes,” she says.
Logistically, setting the play on a lawn in a neighborhood involved a bit of planning. Green had to think how to stage things so as not to kill the grass, which rooms of the home would make appropriate dressing rooms for the cast, and how to make sure the audience was comfortable. Porta potties, garbage cans and neighbor relations were other tasks that she took on.
Other than some heat and a few sprinkles, she says that the opening weekend of the three weekends of performances went well.
“We got to perform with this beautiful house as our backdrop. It feels like it was a big win for FTC.”
“The Dugal family has been nothing but gracious,” she says. “They’ve given us this great location in the heart of Oak Park, in this historic district, tied to this amazing historic home. The street is just magical.”
See it for yourself
The Forest Theatre Company’s production of All’s Well That Ends Well takes place on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, Aug. 7 through 23. Show time is 5 p.m. and tickets are free, though advanced registration is requested at: forest-theatre.org or foresttheatre.ludus.com
The Moore-Dugal House is located at 333 Forest Ave. in Oak Park. When the interior rehabilitation of the home is completed and the home is open for private tours, Roush says that more information will be available at the home’s website: https://www.mooredugalhouse.org/