Owners of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Oak Park home selling after nearly 27 years

The owners of a pioneering Frank Lloyd Wright home in Oak Park are hoping that the property’s next owner has a passion for preservation.

After nearly 27 years, Tom and Deb Abrahamson are selling their home at 515 Fair Oaks Ave. for an estimated $1.9 million. The property listed in mid-May and has already drawn a great deal of interest, Tom Abrahamson, 68, said.

“Our hope is that we’ll find someone who loves the home as a great place to live, an incredible party house, fun place where you discover things all the time and unlike anything that you can imagine as a home that doesn’t have Frank Lloyd Wright as its architect,” he said.

Built in 1897, the Elizabeth and Rollin Furbeck home is an Oak Park landmark. Wright designed the five-bedroom and three-bathroom home as a wedding gift for the newlywed Furbecks, on behalf of Rollin Furbeck’s father. It’s the second of two Oak Park homes Wright designed for the family, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust. Rollin Furbeck’s brother, George, commissioned a home from the architect that same year.

The landmark home is among Wright’s earliest and most innovative home designs. The front has a striking 9-by-4 foot picture window — believed by some to be the first time Wright used the element in a residential home. That’s in addition to the home’s unique ornamentation, trim and moldings that set its exterior apart, Abrahamson said. He also said Wright’s fascination with Japan and its art forms can also be seen in the home’s hipped roofs.

“At that time, Victorian homes and others had lots of little windows … [Wright] really brought this concept of sort of blurring the line between inside and outside,” Abrahamson said of the picture window. “It was highly unusual, if ever used in residential. The technology was there to make large plate glass, but you would really only see it in commercial buildings.”

The home is also unique for being among Wright’s first to include a cantilever, a structure that is not supported underneath and extends away from the home. Cantilevers and other strong geometrical elements are often used in prairie-style homes, which Wright helped popularize.

The Abrahamsons purchased the home in 1998 for $695,000, property records show. The retired couple are looking to downsize. They’re currently rehabbing a Victorian home in Oak Park that they’ll soon move into.

But the pair have loved their time in the Wright-designed house and discovering all of its quirks.

Abrahamson said he’s “absolutely” a fan of architecture. Before moving into the Elizabeth and Rollin Furbeck home, the family lived in a house designed by John Van Bergen, an Oak Park native who worked under Wright.

He said it’s important to the couple that the home’s next owner is passionate about preservation, and is perhaps interested in being active in the Wright community. There’s a foundation in the architect’s name with a mission to “[inspire] people to discover and embrace an architecture for better living,” among other groups.

Abrahamson stressed that the home is not “precious,” and boasts features that are suitable for modern, everyday living.

He and his wife added a combined kitchen and living room space in the home — a nod to the highly sought-after open floor plan of today — and did so while staying within the building’s original shape and roof line.

“It’s no different than maintaining any home that is 128 years old,” he said. “Everything has been updated to today’s standards. … The state it’s in is really just kind of basic maintenance, and it’s been kept up well.”

The Elizabeth and Rollin Furbeck home spans more than 5,000 square feet on a parcel of land that’s considered large for Oak Park. In addition to the kitchen and living spaces, it includes a large dining room, basement and mezzanine reading nook. It also has a large outdoor space, including a heated in-ground pool.

“This is not just a good-sized home in a beautiful neighborhood. It’s just been an honor, a privilege, to live in,” Abrahamson said. “I hope people appreciate that: It’s much more than just a good floor plan. It’s an intangible that you can’t really understand until it becomes a part of your identity.”