Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house in New Canaan listed for $8M

BY PHIL HALL Phall@westfairinc.com

One the two Frank Lloyd Wrightdesigned houses in Connecticut has been listed for sale at $8 million.

The 7,000-square-foot Usonian Estate on a 14-acre property at 432 Frogtown Road in New Canaan was designed by the iconic architect in 1955 and is one of his largest completed residential projects. The mansion offers 7 bedrooms and 8.5 bathrooms and was dubbed “Tirranna” by Wright, an Aboriginal Australian word for “running waters” and an acknowledgement of the adjacent Noroton River. But with its horseshoe layout, complex geometric spaces, large windows and low-slung roofs, one could easily identify the property on sight without knowing its history.

As for its history, the property was commissioned by John and Joyce Rayward but was completed by Herman R. Shepherd after he purchased it in 1964; Wright died in 1959. In 2017, the property was the center of media attention when it was listed for sale at $8 million – but it only sold in 2018 for $4.8 million.

Marsha Charles and Albert Safdie of Coldwell Banker Realty are the brokers on this property.

“Meeting with the students was fun,” he recalled. “They are the party with the greatest imagination.”

His conclusion -- a simple update of the iconic yet derelict, barn and house at the base of the hill -- would not suffice. A new vision would be required.

“In our approach to this project we tried to balance many things – heritage and creativity, memory and innovation, preservation and modernization, legacy and vision,” Siegel added. “The objective was to return this portion of the campus to the simplicity of the original farm homestead while recovering something of the spirit and spatial quality of the original 19th-century architecture, lost among the accretions of later interventions.”

Take a virtual tour of the Weil House & Barn Complex here.