The American System-Built Homes were the architect?s attempt to bring better housing to the masses A famous pack rat, Frank Lloyd Wright left an almost incomparable archive as far as American architects go, with countless records and sketches available to modern researchers. Within that trove of documents, one project file has more sketches than any other, containing 900=plus iterations on a single idea. If you guessed this project was Fallingwater or the Guggenheim, you would be a bit off.
Wright created hundreds of drafts for a little-known, early 20th century scheme to provide affordable prefab housing, the American System-Built homes, a concept that quickly fell victim to WWI material shortages and became a footnote in the architect?s career. But while these duplexes and bungalows were tiny, they made an oversized impact on Wright?s career. ?These homes are enormously significant,? says Michael Lilek, a local preservationist involved in restoring and preserving a collection of these rare Wright prefabs. ?The earlier Prairie School homes that Wright built were for customers with deep pockets. These showed Wright wanting to create space for everyone, his broadest gesture to a wider audience. It?s him saying that every person could live a better life if they could live in an architect-designed home.?

Michael Lilek
Interior of the model B1 American System-Built Home

Lilek works with Wright in Wisconsin, a nonprofit that has acquired a c...