Frank Lloyd Wright's Home & Studio, now locally owned

It is hard to imagine — impossible really — that by the early 1970s, Frank Lloyd Wright's home-based studio on Chicago Avenue was a dumpy rooming house and that there was talk of demolishing it.

Oak Park had a gaggle of visionary leaders in that moment and they saw both the necessity and the opportunity in first saving and then lovingly restoring the home and studio. They raised a lot of money locally and they took on a partner in the National Trust for Historic Preservation which, in a first, joined with the local forces to own and oversee this gem.

Now, in a full circle tale of good people doing right, we learned this week that the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust, the local successor to the Home & Studio Foundation, has now purchased full ownership of the property from the National Trust. This is a welcome return of stewardship to the community which first came together 40 years ago to save this treasure.