A Frank Lloyd Wright-designed residence within the city of New Canaan, Connecticut, has simply offered for $6 million—25 p.c beneath its asking value—to an undisclosed purchaser. Referred to as Tirranna, the 7,000-square-foot property, in-built 1955, is among the famed architect’s largest residential initiatives, and one in every of his final.
Most not too long ago promoting for $4.8 million in 2018, Tirranna is among the many higher-priced Frank Lloyd Wright properties on document, in addition to one of the vital costly properties offered in New Canaan within the final 12 months. It’s one in every of a handful of Wright properties to enter the market not too long ago, which additionally contains the Mrs. Clinton Walker Home in California, Wright’s solely oceanfront residence.
Inside view of Tirranna, that includes Philippine mahogany paneling and Cherokee-red flooring. Photograph: Udor Pictures. Courtesy of Coldwell Banker World Luxurious.
Tirranna was listed by Coldwell Banker World Luxurious’s Albert Safdie and Marsha Charles, who closed on the property January 22. “It was a uncommon honor to symbolize Tirranna,” they mentioned, “a real gem of mid-century architectural historical past that can proceed to supply a Zen-like expertise mixing nature and luxury to its newest inhabitants.”
Although small in dimension, the idyllic city of New Canaan turned a hotbed of architectural experimentation within the twentieth century. It’s estimated that, between 1948 and 1973, upwards of 100 Modernist properties had been constructed within the space by architectural greats who included Marcel Breuer (creator of the Whitney Museum of American Artwork on the Higher East Aspect), John M. Johansen, and Eliot Noyes. They had been a part of the Harvard 5, a gaggle of architects who settled in New Canaan within the Nineteen Forties after graduating from the college’s design division. Philip Johnson’s famed Glass House, too, calls New Canaan residence. Like Wright, all of them emphasised simplicity, performance, and honesty of supplies.
Tirranna will get its title from an Australian Aboriginal phrase that means “working waters,” referring to a close-by stream, recalling the architect’s most iconic residential mission, Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. The basic Usonian abode options seven bedrooms, eight and a half loos, and a wine cellar normal out of a bomb shelter. Tirranna’s inside options Philippine mahogany paneling, Cherokee-red Colorundum concrete flooring, and a clerestory for an abundance of pure mild. The architect additionally offered massive home windows that look out onto nature. In 1958, an observatory was added above the master suite.
Exterior curved patio and round pool. Photograph: Udor Pictures. Courtesy of Coldwell Banker World Luxurious.
The land instantly surrounding the house was reworked into gardens by horticulturist Frank Okamura and panorama architect Charles Middeleer. Okamura is credited with reviving the bonsai custom in America via his decades-long work on the Brooklyn Botanic Backyard and his e book The Artwork of Bonsai. A greenhouse, round pool, tennis court docket, barn, playhouse, and a one-room guesthouse may also be discovered on the grounds.
Wright himself briefly stayed within the residence whereas overseeing the development of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum some 40 miles away in Manhattan. With its semicircular model, Tirranna mirrors the spiral concrete ramp that makes the Guggenheim one of the vital recognizable items of structure within the metropolis. The greenhouse of Tirranna was even constructed utilizing scalloped-glass home windows left over from the Guggenheim mission.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, underneath development (ca. Fifties). Photograph: Charles Phelps Cushing/ClassicStock/Getty Photographs.
The round home windows utilized in Tirranna’s greenhouse had been left over from the Guggenheim mission. Photograph: Udor Pictures. Courtesy of Coldwell Banker World Luxurious.
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