The Malcolm Willey House is located in

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

, United States. It was designed by the American architect

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...

, and built in 1934. Wright named the house "Gardenwall". Malcolm Willey was an administrator at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

. In June 1932, his wife Nancy Willey sent a letter to Wright asking if he would be able to provide them a "creation of art" for a budget of "about $8,000". The current design is the second design that Wright conceived for the Willeys, since the first design proved too costly for the family. The home ended up a modest at a cost of $10,000. The Willeys sold the home in 1963 to a family that later sold it to a Wright aficionado who only sporadically occupied the home; when the current owners purchased the home in 2002 it was in need of major restoration which is now complete. Wright-Willey

The Willey House is primarily built of red brick and cypress. Except for the red linoleum in the kitchen, the rooms on the main floor are floored with mortared brick pavers. A major design feature is the 30-60-90 triangle which shapes the terrace, the skylights, and two clerestory windows in the living room. The house is arranged so that the living room and dining room form a single space: the kitchen was separated from them by plate glass and a group of shelves. This gave a clear view from the kitchen to the living and dining area, allowing Mrs. Willey to watch the rest of the house while in the kitchen. This was an important step away from the historic precedent of compartmentalizing the functions of the house into separate rooms. The house can be considered a bridge between Wright's earlier

Prairie School Prairie School is a late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural style, most common in the Midwestern United States. The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in ...

style houses, and his later

Usonian Usonia () is a word that was used by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright to refer to the United States in general (in preference to ''America''), and more specifically to his vision for the landscape of the country, including the planning of ...

style houses, since it incorporates certain elements from both styles. Located at 255 Bedford Street Southeast in the Minneapolis neighborhood of Prospect Park, the home remains private and is only partially visible from public roads. It sits adjacent to a freeway wall blocking it from the sight and sound of nearby

Interstate 94 Interstate 94 (I-94) is an east–west Interstate Highway connecting the Great Lakes and northern Great Plains regions of the United States. Its western terminus is just east of Billings, Montana, at a junction with I-90; its eastern ter ...

; the home originally had a panoramic view of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

gorge A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tenden ...

before the freeway's construction obstructed it in the 1960s. The house hosted the dedication ceremony for Interstate 94 on December 9, 1968.

References

*Storrer, William Allin. ''The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion''. University Of Chicago Press, 2006, (S.229)

External links

Official site

{{DEFAULTSORT:Willey, Malcolm, House Frank Lloyd Wright buildings Houses completed in 1934 Houses in Minneapolis Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota National Register of Historic Places in Minneapolis 1934 establishments in Minnesota