‘Living In A Work Of Art’: Oak Park Woman Shares Journey In FLW Home

OAK PARK, IL — A 2016 visit to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Oscar B. Balch House was more of an art museum trip for Samantha Lotti than an appointment with a real estate agent to buy it.

Lotti studied Wright’s work in college art history classes and admired the organic Prairie style that broke the constricts of Victorian gingerbreads and other European styles that dominated architecture in the early 1900s.

But, she told Patch, “I didn’t think I would want one, or be interested.”

Lotti heard enough horror stories about how hard it was to maintain the stained glass, carved stone, wood paneling and other elements that Wright loved to work into his designs to be hesitant about buying the Balch House. Built in 1911, it was getting up there in years. And because of its landmark status, renovation decisions are complex — and expensive.

That scares some prospective homebuyers away, and it’s not unusual for Frank Lloyd Wright houses to languish on the real estate market. Lotti went to satisfy her curiosity about the house, but planned to walk away from it.

“Three steps in, and I fell in love with this house,” she said. “My heart was totally in love. So I decided to buy it.”

Lotti bought the house for $1,126,800, about 10 percent below the asking price, and she thanks herself every day for acting on a gut feeling the home was meant to be hers.

‘Living In A Work Of Art’

“I wake up every morning and look around and go, ‘Wow, I’m still here,’” said Lotti, 39, a certified acupuncturist and herbalist who practices traditional Chinese medicine at Biodynamic Health Systems in Oak Park, where she is the sole practitioner.

“It is just stunningly beautiful,” she said. “If you love art, I think it’d be hard not to love living in a Frank Lloyd Wright home.”

There are about 400 Wright-designed homes still standing, about 100 of them in Illinois, where the architect worked first for a Chicago firm, and later from his home and design studio in Oak Park. There are about two dozen Wright homes within the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District.

“The prairie has a beauty of its own and we should recognize and accentuate this natural beauty, its quiet level,” he once wrote.

Lotti loves the bold, geometric lines of the Oscar B. Balch House. Wright was a master of illusion who used variations in color, ceiling heights and hallway widths to make spaces seem larger or smaller.

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One such trick of the eye in her home is a screen strategically placed between the hallway and the living room.

“You can see through, but not clearly,” she said. “He knew how to play with space and light in a way lots of architects do not. It’s like living in a work of art. It’s really a magnificent layout.”

The home was in excellent condition when Lotti bought it in 2016. The previous owner meticulously restored much of the original structure and added an expansive kitchen and great room to the back, preserving the street view and symmetrical front elevation. Such modifications are allowed as long as they are made to the rear of the house that can’t be seen from the street and are consistent with the design of the main house.

Despite those restrictions, the only parts of the house that are technically protected are two Wright-designed glass light fixtures, which were deeded to the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic Trust by the previous owner.

“Those can’t be touched or modified at all,” Lotti said. “But the rest of the house, I could gut and make more modern.”

But why would she? An environmentalist, her goal with an ambitious renovation project was to make the masterpiece green.

It’s Not Cheap — Initially

Lotti’s initial goal was to make enough improvements to transform the house to net-zero-energy status, meaning the house would generate as much energy as it consumes. What she hadn’t counted on was the amount of energy it would take to renovate the home.

“Sadly, I’ll never get it to net-zero or decarbonization — not needing fossil fuel,” she said. “To be net-zero, I would have to have the envelope — the perimeter, roof, and basement floor — all well insulated.”

A 10-foot-by-8-foot concrete pour in the basement of the 4,400-square-foot home cost almost $10,000, she said.

The math didn’t work for Lotti. “I’m much more comfortable going with decarbonization,” she said.

With solar panels, “I’m almost there,” Lotti said. “The engineer I’m working with said I’ll get close to being able to pay all the electrical bills with the solar panels, but not 100 percent.”

But installing solar panels isn’t “as easy as it sounds,” especially on a Frank Lloyd Wright house with outside aesthetics to consider. And before that work could be done, Lotti needed to fix the roof, which leaked and lacked sufficient insulation. She hired a historic renovation contractor to do the work, which cost about $55,000. She tore out the second-floor ceiling to add insulation. That was another $50,000 or so.

The 49 single-paned windows that were one of the original selling points leaked air, driving up heating and cooling bills.

Lotti dealt with the storm windows “as best I could with so many, but I would have had to Swiss cheese the outside and put foam insulation in from the outside, which is a ton of work,” she said. That would have added more work to the project list to restore the stucco exterior and more costs to the $142,000 she’d already spent.

Lotti wrote more big checks to replace the gas-fired boiler-and-radiator heating system with a geothermal system. She’s quick to point out that her costs — about $300,000 from start to finish — were higher than the $60,000 or so to install similar systems in homes without the restrictions of Frank Lloyd Wright homes.

While decarbonization is “a lot to take on,” Lotti doesn’t want it to scare people away from improving their own homes, regardless of what architect designed them. The tax credit significantly offset the costs of the geothermal system, which efficiently keeps temperatures constant regardless of the season, and eliminates the environmental impact of burning gas.

Even with the high cost of installing the system, Lotti expects to pay for it in energy savings over 20 or 25 years.

“There are really qualified professionals, especially in Oak Park, who know how to do it,” she said. “It can get you away from running gas and the imprint that leaves on the environment.

“If a very well-known historic home can do this and not have any interruptions in the climate inside the house, it’s definitely something anyone can do,” she continued. “I just hope other homeowners don’t shy away from less environmental footprint because they don’t understand it. Especially in light of so many wonderful incentives, it’s a good deal.”

Fun Surprises

There have been delightful surprises along the way. A wall was opened to reveal the original horse hair insulation used in the early 1900s. The Balch House was one of the first Wright-designed with a flat roof, and when the ceilings were torn out, Lotti and her contractors saw a distinct difference in the north and south rooms, which were identical.

“In the north room, they were experimenting, trying to figure out how to make a flat roof that would allow for the structure to be sound and not threatened with problems.,” Lotti said. “The support beams, and also support blocks, are sturdier than they need to be.

“In the south room, they had figured it out,” she continued. “It’s much cleaner and more expertly done.”

When Lotti picked off a piece of external trim to examine it, she discovered the original colors were bolder, a rusty red to complement the stucco exterior, which was an oakier color.

“I love how bold his colors were,” Lotti said. “It turns out, most of his houses were bold colors, but we didn’t know that because we saw black-and-white pictures.”

She’d like to restore the original palette of the house, too. But that’s another hundred grand or so. And there’s time enough to do that.

A ‘Custodian,’ Not An Owner

For now, after three years of living in the house while the work was going on and sleeping in the living room for most of it, Lotti is pausing the work and just enjoying her home.

“I needed a break after three years of having people here every day at 8 a.m.,” she said. “It was too much.”

For Lotti, the project has been both “exciting and exhausting.”

“Every decision I make today, even the small ones like what kind of hardware, will impact the long-term well-being of the house,” she said. “Frank Lloyd Wright doesn’t change. You can’t settle for any piece of hardware, or a stain of wood that is kind of similar. You have to find a way to re-create the stain that’s already there.

“That’s the exhausting part, but also one of the most gratifying parts of taking on a Wright house.”

Lotti doesn’t regret the decision seven years ago to buy the house, or the “fortune” she has put into it.

“It’s been very gratifying, albeit difficult,” she said. “It’s well worth it because you know the house is going to live for another 100 years,

“I don’t consider myself an owner,” she said. “I consider myself a custodian … to make sure it’s available in perpetuity.”