November 3, 2024

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Body and Interior

NW Indiana home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright sells for $1M

Home buyers rank top kitchen and bath features

A home designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright that’s one of only two surviving Wright-designed residences in northwest Indiana has sold for more than $1 million.

Oak Park, Illinois, resident Brian Bobek bought the Armstrong House for $1.02 million in April, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported, citing Porter County property records.

The dramatic, light-filled home was built in 1939 in Ogden Dunes, a Lake Michigan lakefront town about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Chicago. It’s sometimes also called the Armstrong Dune House because of its location on a sloping sand dune.

The two-story, 3,696-square-foot (343.4-square-meter) brick home overlooks landscaped, wooded lots. It boasts four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a retro carport, two fireplaces, a sauna, and many other features, including a screened-in porch that showcases the surrounding woods.

The house was built for the family of Andrew Armstrong, an advertising director in Chicago, and was the first home Wright had designed in the Chicago metropolitan area since the 1920s, according to the Ogden Dunes Historical Society.

“This special home has been carefully maintained,” the Chicago-based Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy said. “Original Wright features include classics like board and batten woodwork, built-in bookshelves, and clerestory windows.”

The residence is one of just two Wright homes left standing in northwest Indiana. The other is the Ingwald Moe House, a Gary home Wright designed in 1909 for a successful contractor.