Frank Lloyd Wright’s endangered Booth Cottage sells for $555K

A suburban cottage built by architectural great Frank Lloyd Wright in 1913 recently changed hands for the first time since 1956. The cozy 1,700-square-foot structure sold for $555,000, the Chicago Tribune reported. The figure was well below the home’s earlier 2017 asking price of $1 million.

It’s too early to say what comes next for the Glencoe, Illinois, property. Its outdated interior and the fact that the valuable lot could support a larger home make it a possible candidate for demolition. The residence holds an “honorary” landmark status with the Village of Glencoe, and could theoretically be torn down. It was recently included in Landmark Illinois’s 2019 list of the state’s most endangered architectural sites.

The cottage originally served as a temporary home for Wright’s attorney Sherman Booth while the architect completed the larger—and more famous—Booth House nearby. The modest building was later moved to its current location on Franklin Road after the Booth estate was carved up into the Ravine Bluffs subdivision.

Listing agent Diana Matichyn, who represented the estate of longtime owners Meyer and Doris Rudoff, told the Tribune that her client was “looking forward to finding the right buyer who will really bring the property back to life.”

It’s unclear if the unidentified new owners plan to restore the historic Wright-designed cottage or tear it down. Their representative, real estate agent Honore Frumentino, declined to say if demolition was in the cards. “I don’t think they know yet,” she told the newspaper.