Oak Park is home to a high concentration of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed houses, but the architecturally significant homes have often been slower to sell on the local real estate market. Not this year.
A number of Wright designs, including his Elizabeth and Rollin Furbeck house and his redesigned Hills-DeCaro House, hit the market this summer and quickly found new buyers. Another Wright house was listed and quickly sold last week.
Greer Haseman and partner Chris Curran of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, listed the Francis J. Woolley House at 1030 Superior and found a buyer in less than 24 hours.
“Architecturally significant homes are having a renaissance. Not just here but in the collar suburbs and in Chicago itself. Add the Frank Lloyd Wright connection and it’s ‘ooh la la’,” said Haseman.
The Woolley House was built in 1893 for Francis J. Woolley, a native of Milwaukee. Woolley obtained his law degree at the University of Michigan and practiced law in Chicago. He and his wife Cora had two children, Francis Jr. and Alice. The Woolleys loved to entertain and lived in their Oak Park home until 1904, when they decamped to a house in Glencoe on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Woolley rented out the home until 1911, and then the house was vacant until 1917, when he listed it for sale for $6,000. Thomas Gara purchased the home, and in 1920, the family converted the house into a boarding house. In 1921, they added a rear addition to the home. Members of the Gara and Snell family occupied the home until the 1950s. In 1940, there were 10 boarders living in the house.
Haseman said the house was gut renovated in the 1990s. When they lived in the home, her clients renovated the kitchen and added a back deck in 2018-19.
“The success of these older, architecturally significant homes is if people have updated them. Of course, the one space that people really gravitate to is an updated kitchen,” said Haseman.
In the Woolley house, Haseman’s clients renovated the kitchen, rethought the kitchen connection to the family room, and added laundry facilities to the first-floor bathroom.
On the second floor, the primary bedroom has built-in storage along one wall, a walk-in closet and a large, updated bathroom with prairie-motif tile. The room incorporates the turret on the front of the house, which is an architectural feature Haseman said resonates with people. The other three bedrooms on the second floor share a remodeled hall bathroom.
“This house has an amazing third floor. It’s technically three bedrooms,” she said.
Her clients used two of the bedrooms as office space, and the wife wrote a book about her family’s adoption journey from her third-floor perch. There is another full bathroom on this floor.
The basement provides a fourth floor of living space with a recreation room and a wine room.
Wright designed the home around the time of his break from the offices of Adler and Sullivan, and the house combines elements of Victorian Style with hints of his Prairie Style. Art glass graces the windows on the back of the house facing the yard, doors to the dining room and a window in the entryway.
Haseman, who has a lot of experience with selling the architecturally significant homes in the neighborhood, said the location and the Wright pedigree provide some benefits that might not be apparent to newcomers.
“The nice thing about owning a Frank Lloyd Wright is that you’re automatically part of the club. There are resources you can avail yourself of for everything that comes up in owning a house a like this. Plus, there’s an active neighborhood network in which people recommend craftsmen and trades,” said Haseman.
The home’s quick sale doesn’t surprise her because she says the local inventory of homes is still low for the number of people looking to buy here. “The fall market has been shockingly busy. Things are selling like hotcakes,” she said.
