I just might have to reconsider the disdain I have for split style homes in light of some surprising information I just discovered. Maybe I have it all wrong! I’m correct that it was a man who designed the first split level home in America but I didn’t know it was none other than Frank Lloyd Wright! Ha! Surprised? I am but I shouldn’t be at all. It makes perfect sense. As everyone knows (or should know), Wright was a maverick in home design in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s; his ’organic’ style revolutionized building architecture. Wright thought a house should blend into the surrounding landscape – many of the homes he designed even incorporated trees or streams already existing on the land. Smaller stair runs and living levels spread out make a house feel as if it’s part of the natural setting just for the fact that it’s closer to the ground, unlike the beautiful, but monstrous and obtrusive, Victorians that were built in his time.
Isabel Roberts House - considered to be the first split level in America
Alrighty, I can accept that. Who am I to dis Frank Lloyd Wright? Hold on a second…I wonder how Wright would feel about how his design concept matured into tract housing with row after row of identical, boring splits? Would he consider “that” organic? Hmm, I highly doubt it. Would he cringe when he saw the modern take on his original split level idea – the split foyer, or bi-level, house? I shouldn’t speak for Wright, but if he were alive today, I think he’d be very disappointed. He would probably be the first person to say, “Absolutely, re-design that house to give it some character!”
