Your Home, Your Heart: Transforming House-Building with Personal Passion

On a crisp autumn morning in 1936, journalist Herbert Jacobs walked into Frank Lloyd Wright's studio with an impossible dream: to build a beautiful, modern home for just $5,000. While most architects would have dismissed such a request during the depths of the Great Depression, Wright's eyes lit up. Here was an opportunity he'd been waiting for – a chance to revolutionise American housing. The story of Wright's Usonian houses begins with this moment, but its roots stretch deeper into American soil. Wright, ever the innovator, had long bristled at America's devotion to European architectural styles. He envisioned something uniquely American, homes that would grow from the landscape rather than being imposed upon it. He called this vision "Usonian," a play on "United States of North America," though he later romantically suggested it meant "of the soil." The first Usonian house, built for the Jacobs family in Madison, Wisconsin, broke nea...