Alabama’s Frank Lloyd Wright home: 5 things you didn’t know (2024)

The legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright can seem pretty exotic, even 65 years after his death ended a career that included radical works such as the Fallingwater home and The Guggenheim Museum.

But Wright’s legacy also reflects some astute ideas about how middle-class American family life was changing, in the middle of the 20th century, and about how architecture might change to suit peoples’ evolving needs. And one small Alabama city boasts a rare example of this work, one that’s all the more unusual because it’s open to public viewing and stocked with artifacts that illustrate the sense of home Wright wanted to create for his clients.

Drawing on a recent first-hand visit and the book “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Rosenbaum House: The Birth and Rebirth of an American Treasure,” here are a few key things to know about this landmark in Florence, Ala.:

It’s Usonian

In the 1930s, when Wright was in his 60s, he began developing a new concept for single-family suburban homes. So-called Usonian homes tended to have flat roofs and no attics or basem*nts. Small private spaces were separated from large, open common spaces. Natural lighting was emphasized via glass walls and clerestory windows that provide indirect natural light to illuminate otherwise dark spaces. Localized natural materials – red brick from Alabama clay and extensive use of cedar, in this case – maintained Wright’s longtime theme that buildings should harmonize with their natural surroundings. Carports reflected the fact that automobile ownership was becoming increasingly common.

Wright anticipated that new materials and construction methods would keep costs down. This often didn’t work out in practice. Wright began designing the Rosenbaum House with an agreed $7,500 construction budget, but it ended up costing more than $13,000. There were other issues: In pushing new ideas, Wright sometimes went beyond what existing materials and methods could sustain. The plumbing of an in-slab heating system failed early in the life of the house. Milton Bagby writes in the introduction to “The Birth and Rebirth” that “The House was warmed for decades by space heaters and through-wall air conditioners” in addition to its fireplaces.

As the family grew, so did the home

Louis and Anna Rosenbaum, who owned movie theaters in the Florence area, wanted to keep their son Stanley close to home as he married Mildred Bookholz, who’d worked as a model in New York. They provided land and funds for the newlyweds to build a home across the street from their own residence on Riverview Drive. Stanley and Mildred initially turned to a friend, Aaron Green; when his ideas didn’t work out, he provided an introduction to Wright. The house was completed in 1940. A few years later, the Rosenbaums contracted Wright to design an addition that would accommodate their growing family (three sons, with a fourth on the way) and a second car. An addition was finished in 1948, making this an extremely rare example of a Wright property with an addition that also was designed by Wright.

The addition gave the house a much more functional kitchen, a utility room, an additional hallway lined with storage closets, a guest bedroom with bathroom and a spacious bunkroom for four children.

We’re pretty lucky it exists at all

Mildred Rosenbaum lived in the home until 1999, when a deal was struck for the city of Florence to take it over, restore it and operate it as a museum. According to “The Birth and Rebirth,” it didn’t necessarily feel like an auspicious moment when museum director Barbara Broach visited on a rainy day soon after. Her husband, an architect, had warned her to leave the door open and to run if she heard a cracking noise.

Inside the house was musty with the smell of mildew. Outside, the rain started, quickly becoming a deluge. Water began to pour through the ceiling, at first in trickles, then in one steady cascade after another, falling to the floor or into buckets and kitchen pans knowingly left behind by Mildred Rosenbaum.

Barbara Broach began to cry.

The flat roofs beloved by Wright had emerged early as a problem: They didn’t shed water, and they didn’t hold it very well either. Leaks had done a lot of damage over the decades and termites had piled on more. The city of Florence paid $75,000 for the property and, according to “The Birth and Rebirth,” close to $700,000 for restoration, landscaping and parking.

Work concluded in 2002.

It feels lived-in because it was

Knowing that it was home to a family of six changes the experience of viewing the Rosenbaum House, and provides food for thought about the contrast between Wright’s vision and the realities of home life. Entering the home on a tour, one first enters a narrow, book-lined corridor that opens onto a large den featuring a glass wall with a view of the back yard and the wing containing the bedrooms. Adjacent to the den there’s a dining area with a built-in table; the original kitchen is absurdly tiny, barely the equivalent of the kitchenette in a present-day economy apartment. According to a placard on the wall, Wright referred to it as “a highly functional workspace.” The bathrooms are likewise very small and the hallways are narrow.

Artifacts, including original and period furniture, give a sense of a very particular, and peculiar, moment in time. It’s an old house, dated by the pleasant smell of old cedar and the vintage fixtures. The strong choices of its design still give it a futuristic feel – and yet, there is absolutely nothing in it that reflects the jet age that was dawning as the addition was built. Electrical outlets are scarce and well-hidden. There is no television or bank of hi-fi equipment, though the family presumably enjoyed such appliances in later years.

A small library’s worth of books figure prominently in the main common area, there’s a piano. Board games peek from cabinets in the children’s bunkroom, and one of the original bedrooms is dedicated to Mildred Rosenbaum’s craftwork as an accomplished weaver. You get the feeling this house was built to encourage interaction.

How to visit

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Rosenbaum House is at 601 Riverview Drive in Florence. It is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays. Tours are $10 for adults, $5 for seniors and students, payable at the gift shop across the street from the home. Tours take about 45 minutes and the last tour of the day starts no later than 3:15 p.m. Specific closures (including June 27 and July 4, 2024) are noted on the museum’s website, www.wrightinalabama.com.

Hardbound copies of “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Rosenbaum House: The Birth and Rebirth of an American Treasure” by Barbara Kimberlin Broach, Donald E. Lambert and Milton Bagby, are available in the gift shop for $20.