Built for a dry-cleaning entrepreneur, the long, low-slung house recalls Wright’s 1930s Usonian designs, while looking forward to the ranch house. The L-shaped plan has its long axis stretching 170 feet. At the east end, three bedrooms line up along a gallery; the middle section, between broad, squat chimneys, contains an entrance hall and living room; and the west end holds kitchen and dining areas. The ell’s short axis is a 40-foot-long covered walkway linking the kitchen to the garage. A low-pitched roof with wide eaves visually presses the house toward the ground. To reduce costs, Wright built the walls of buff concrete block, which he stepped out slightly at every second course, so that the house widens as it rises. These stepped-out courses cast strong horizontal shadows. Long ribbons of casement windows, framed in cypress, accentuate the horizontality while softening the starkness of the concrete walls. Inside, built-in furniture saves space, while concrete-block walls and concrete floors require no paint and little maintenance. To make the rooms feel warmer, Wright trimmed walls with woodwork, sheathed ceilings in wood, and exposed the beams. Full-height windows and doors in the spacious living room and window ribbons elsewhere bathe the interior in natural light.
Perched above the nearby lakefront at 7820 Club Circle Drive is Chipstone (1949–1950), a red brick, Georgian Revival house (now a museum) housing Polly and Stanley Stone’s magnificent American furniture collection. Boston architect Andrew Hepburn designed a house to display the Stones’ rapidly growing collection.