This Frank Lloyd Wright–Inspired Home Had Termites So Bad It Was Being Advertised as a $170K Lot

In 1989, Hope and Terence Alcorn had been in search of a brand new residence. They’d offered their home in Buffalo, New York, and had spent Terence’s birthday home looking in Pittsburgh. As they had been leaving a brick, colonial-style home from the early 1900s, their realtor requested them what they thought. “It’s probably not our model,” they replied, explaining that that they had been dwelling in a Frank Lloyd Wright, the Gardener’s Cottage, and favored modern, natural structure. The realtor informed them: “Meet me once more at 5. I’ve a home to point out you.”

The property, it turned out, was the Abraam Steinberg Home, designed by Peter Berndtson and Cornelia Brierly, former apprentices of Lloyd Wright who had labored on Fallingwater. Minimize from brick, concrete, and redwood, the rust-colored home had a linear, geometric façade, and was surrounded by bushes. Like Fallingwater, it had sturdy horizontal strains, cantilevered sections of roof, high-level clerestory home windows, and nearly all of its furnishings built-in. Named after the physician who had commissioned it and constructed between 1949 and 1951, it was now being marketed for $170,000 as an empty lot: it had a termite infestation, and it was assumed {that a} purchaser would demolish it.

“We noticed it, put in a suggestion and moved within the subsequent week, as a result of the financial institution insisted that the home needed to be free and away from termites earlier than they’d give us a mortgage,” says Hope. Unusually, the homeowners gave the Alcorns prepossession of the home in order that they may deal with the termites and procure a mortgage, which might permit them to fund the extra intensive restoration work wanted. The truth that Terence was an architect gave them the boldness to take the challenge on. “We fell in love with the home and had been very excited to suppose that we’d be capable of stay right here,” Hope says.