The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Walser House, a 123-year-old Austin home that inspired the architect's better-known works yet has spent the last two decades in shambles, is for sale.
Asking price: $350,000.
The government-sponsored Federal National Mortgage Association — better-known as Fannie Mae — put the house on the market this past week, after receiving title to the foreclosed property in December following a court-ordered sale.
"It's good news now that the building is out of the mess of the foreclosure process, and now, we've got a clear path to possible ownership for somebody to take this on," Barbara Gordon, executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, said.
The development potentially represents the best shot in more than a generation to revive the landmark two-story stucco home at 42 N. Central Ave. — provided the asking price, restoration costs of at least $2 million and a recent appraisal that valued the house at $65,000 don't chase away prospective buyers.
The home is vacant and uninhabitable.
Built in 1903 for printing executive Joseph Jacob Walser, the house is important because it brought together in a single design many of the elements Wright would use in later and larger Prairie School commissions.
The home's strong horizontal lines, deeply overhanging eaves and band of windows on the second floor would find their way in Wright's more noteworthy homes such as the Emil Bach House, 7415 N. Sheridan Road, built in 1915, South Bend, Indiana’s K.C. DeRhodes House from 1906 and the Barton House, built in Buffalo, New York, in 1904.
The Far West Side home is an official Chicago landmark that's also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
A new owner looking to repair the home would have to restore the exterior and interior to as close to the original look as possible.
"The landmark designation preserves the [original] design intent, the materials, the special character of the interior," Gordon said. "That's something any potential buyer is going to have to understand."
The Wright conservancy, preservation groups Landmarks Illinois and Preservation Chicago, along with the organization Austin Coming Together have been working in concert to save the home since 2020.
"It's going to be an expensive house to restore, but I think it's one really worth restoring," Preservation Chicago Executive Director Ward Miller said.
Austin Coming Together Executive Director Darnell Shields said his organization had been working to buy the house from the bank that foreclosed on the property.
Shields's group raised $40 million to convert a closed Chicago Public School at 5500 W. Madison St. — right across the street from the Walser — into the new Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation.
"We wanted to make a reasonable offer towards the [Walser, but] we haven't had any response or anything," Shields said. "So it was kind of startling to see it on the market — and then see it on the market for a more inflated price than what the property is currently worth right now, which is just egregious."
Shields said he still planned to pursue purchasing the house and converting it to community use.
"Until it's protected, until real development, real stabilization efforts and investment happens, the house is under threat," Shields said. "And that's a blemish and a black eye potentially waiting to happen. We're trying our best to keep that from happening."
