March 2008 Issue

A Night to Remember - Frank Lloyd Wright's Louis Penfield House

Frank Lloyd Wright's Louis Penfield House

 

“Most people comment on how intimate the contact is with the surroundings,” says Paul Penfield of his boyhood home, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Usonian structure in Willoughby.

Built by his parents in the early 1950s, Penfield House is the only Wright-designed house in the state that opens its massive doors –– most of which are 8 feet high and 22 inches wide, designed to accommodate Penfield’s father, who was 6’8” –– to overnight guests. Penfield spent four years restoring the property, and in an interview with “This Old House,” he spoke intimately of the floor-to-ceiling windows, fountain and view of the Chagrin River that reflect Wright’s philosophy of incorporating natural surroundings into the design. The house is a haven for both architecture fanatics and arts enthusiasts, who find the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History just 15 minutes away in University Circle.

“Even though I grew up here,” says Penfield, “the magic still captures me each time I walk in the door.”