It looked like Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiraling David and Gladys House in Phoenix, Arizona, had been saved from the wrecking ball back in June of last year, but a deal to donate the building to the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture has reportedly fallen through. Now the house is back on the market for $13 million, over $10 million more than when it first went up for sale in 2012.
After being purchased in 2012 by homebuilder and architecture aficionado Zach Rawling, it appeared that the house, built in 1952, would be restored and put to good use. Rawling donated the building to the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin for use as a learning center and in-situ design studio, which kicked off during the 2017-2018 academic year.
Although the school was able to produce videos with several well-known architects at the house and successfully complete the scheduled studios there, funding concerns seem to have scuttled the partnership. In a joint statement released in June of this year, Rawling and the school’s dean Aaron Betsky announced that due to conflicting funding obligations and an uncertain timetable, the school and house would part ways.
The relationship between the School and the House is formally manifested in the David Wright House Collaborative Fund, a supporting organization of the Arizona Community Foundation. The principal focus of the David Wright House Collaborative Fund was to develop a vehicle to raise the $7-million endowment on which the pledge of the House for the benefit of the School was conditioned. Over the past year, we have learned that the fundraising timetables of both parties do not lend themselves to a joint campaign.
The original terms of the donation, which required that the school raise $7 million by 2020, proved difficult. Additionally, Phoenix residents reportedly weren’t thrilled over the potential conversion of the house into an educational facility and were worried about the traffic and noise the transformation would bring.
Interested in buying a progenitor to the Guggenheim? You can put down your $12.9-million bids here. AN will follow up on this story when updates become available.
