User login

The Rosenbaum House

image: 
wrightinalabama.jpg

An American architectural treasure, this house was built for newlyweds Stanley and Mildred Rosenbaum of Florence, Alabama, in 1939. The house is the only structure designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the state of Alabama, and the only such house in the southeast that is open to the public.

Wright’s Usonian style (named for the United State of America) was offered as a low-cost home for middle income families. With Wright’s plans, a young family could build their own home, fulfilling the American dream of home ownership. This house sits on a two-acre lot, very near downtown Florence and facing the Tennessee River.

The Usonian style house originally contained 1,540 square feet, but when the Rosenbaum household grew to include four sons, the family called upon Wright to design an addition. In 1948, 1,084 square feet was added, containing a larger work space (kitchen), a guest bedroom, storage space and a dormitory for the boys. This seamless addition clearly shows Wright’s concept of a Usonian house that could grow with the family as it grew. The Rosenbaums were the sole owners and occupants of the house until 1999, when it was purchased by the City of Florence. The house had reached a critical stage, due to delayed maintenance, and years of leaking roofs had damaged the joists, ceilings, walls and exterior trim. Termites had also taken their toll and cored many of the walls.

The City developed a plan to save the house, using a capital improvements account funded by a one-cent sales tax. Dozens of volunteers and professionals contributed to the restoration and without this major effort the house might have been lost. This treasure, meticulously preserved, is now a museum, open to the public for this City and the world.

Location(s)

The Rosenbaum House
601 Riverview Dr.
Florence, AL, 35630
United States
See map: Google Maps
Average vote based on 1 review.4 stars
User Reviews
4 stars
Finely Preserved and Instructive Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian Home

Don't pass up the chance to tour every nook and cranny of the most lavishly preserved small Frank Lloyd Wright house on the globe. Escorted tours of this lovely home are available every week. I take groups of interior design students each year to this site, and have always found the staff to be intelligent, welcoming, and full of information regarding the Rosenbaum family, who built the home in 1939 following receipt of Mr. Wright's wonderful concept for their first independent family home. This construction is an early distillation of Wright offering his expression for the American market of a Japanese Tea House in L-shape made of wood, concrete (flooring and supports) and brick. This home features the very first cantilevered carport roof covering ever built in the world, daring use of wood-framed glass door walls to enhance support of the roof structure, a charming trio of flat roof levels, durable brass piano hinge supports for the cabinetry, daring site placement of the home for the 1930's (with the carport facing the street, no direct views into the home from corner street location, installation of one of the first modern tiled shower stalls in the South, and spacing for a proper private Japanese Garden long before Japanese gardens became fashionable in the USA). Once you tour this home, you will never see the proliferation of American "ranch homes" of the 1950's and 1960's with their covered carports in quite the same way. This home has the distinction of being the only private home designed by Wright that he ever agreed to later "remodel" by expansion, at the family's request as their number of children expanded. The original L-shape Japanese home became a double L design, with the upright sides of the two L's joined together. Ingenious. As fine as the day tours are, I must say that I hold in total reverence the special evening lighting tour that one of my student groups paid a premium to experience! We walked in the rooms with encroaching darkness outside to experience the feeling of the rooms lit via the original lighting design. One of the finest walking experiences we ever had was walking all around the home lit from within at night, to see the golden brown and amber glow from the wood walls and shining wood ceilings, with that amber glow fed through the gleam of the polished copper door screens. This is a total work of ART finely situated on a gently rolling site plan covering 2 acres. Very fine!


Rate This Museum