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Frank Lloyd Wright’s final home sells for $1.7M at auction

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The house first hit the market in 2016 for $3.6M

By Megan Barber Updated
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A circular home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Phoenix desert. The home features round windows, a curving wall, and shadows at sunset. Photos by Craig Root, Craig Root Imagining

The circular Norman Lykes home, Frank Lloyd Wright’s final residential design, has sold at auction for nearly $1.7 million. The Arizona home has been on and off the market since 2016 with an original list price of $3,600,000. The home was most recently listed at $2,985,000.

According to the Associated Press, the winning bid came from an out-of-state resident who competed against 20 other bids at the public auction. The winner wishes to remain anonymous but said that he plans to keep the home intact and use it as a vacation home.

Designed just before Wright’s death in 1959 for Norman and Aimee Lykes, the 3,095-square-foot home was ultimately built in 1967 by apprentice John Rattenbury.

The home is an excellent example of the architect’s late-career style—exemplified by the Guggenheim and David and Gladys Wright home—and is most notable for its curving set of concentric circles. Located on a desert plateau in Phoenix’s Palm Canyon, the building looks like a set of intricate clock gears from above.

Wright was inspired by the curves and forms of the surrounding mountains, and the home boasts 180-degree views of the landscape. The interior features curved walls clad in golden hued Philippine mahogany, circular and semicircular windows and other geometric cutouts, custom built-ins, and original Wright-designed furniture.

In 1994, Rattenbury updated the interiors, which originally had five bedrooms—some as small as closets—and now has three bedrooms and three bathrooms with a larger master suite. (All changes were approved by Taliesin West.) The house also includes a crescent-shaped pool, which helps mitigate the desert heat.

Despite being most famous in the Southwest for constructing his winter home and architecture school, Taliesin West, Wright also designed several other Phoenix homes. The spiral-shaped David and Gladys Wright House, for example, is still on the market for $10 million.

The Norman Lykes home also wasn’t the only big sale of a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home this week. After more than one year on the market, the Ennis House sold in Los Angeles for $18 million, making it the most expensive Wright-designed home ever sold.

At sunset, a pool sits in front of a patio with overhead lights and circular windows cut out of the wall.
A crescent shaped pool contrasts nicely with the desert ambiance.
A living room features a built-in sofa bench with purple cushions, wooden chairs, and a curving wall of glass.
Curving walls of glass and built-in benches mark the living room.
A circular kitchen features stainless steel kitchen counters, crescent shaped windows, slate floors, and wooden cabinets.
The kitchen includes stainless wrapped kitchen counters and slate floors.
A circular room features geometric cut-out windows and shelves with a built-in, curving wooden desk.
Geometric cut-out windows are a recurring theme throughout the house.
A white bed features carpet, built-in wooden shelves, and windows with big views out into the desert.
The bedroom takes advantage of the surrounding views.
A curved bathroom features built-in wooden closets with mirrored fronts and a marble bathtub.
One of the three bathrooms in the house.

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