Frank Lloyd Wright’s The Fountainhead – a shining instance of Usonian design – is now in the marketplace

The Fountainhead, also referred to as the J. Willis Hughes Home, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1948, when he was 81 years previous. It was constructed between 1950 and 1954 for oil speculator J. Willis Hughes, who lived there till 1980. The house was listed on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations in the identical yr, earlier than being purchased and restored by architect Robert Parker Adams, who’s now bringing it to market.

Positioned in Jackson, Mississippi, within the midcentury neighbourhood of Fondren, The Fountainhead exemplifies Wright’s Usonian philosophy, a distinctly American imaginative and prescient of structure – free from European affect – characterised by affordability, performance and aesthetic simplicity.

A key characteristic of Wright’s Usonian properties, of which he designed about 60 over the course of his profession, was their natural design and oneness with nature. The Fountainhead was constructed with out stud partitions, sheetrock, brick, tile or paint. As a substitute, its partitions and ceilings are composed of beautiful Coronary heart Tidewater Pink Cypress. Flooring-to-ceiling home windows additional invite the encircling landscaping into the house.

The Fountainhead was formed by the land it sits on, with the design responding to the positioning’s uncommon topography: it’s constructed as a parallelogram, which helped outline every little thing from the wall placements to proportions, similar to the scale of doorways.

The title The Fountainhead isn’t just a reference to the house’s bed room wing, which tapers right into a fountain which spills right into a pool. It’s also a nod to Ayn Rand’s novel,The Fountainhead, whose protagonist Howard Roark is commonly considered impressed by Wright. The creator was definitely a fan of the architect, having requested him to design a home for her within the mid-Nineteen Forties, though the challenge by no means got here to fruition.

The Fountainhead presents a once-in-a-generation alternative to personal an icon of each modernist design and American cultural historical past.