Frank Lloyd Wright House listed on National Register of Historic Places
The Kalil House, a 1957 Frank Lloyd Wright-designed New Hampshire home, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, according to the New Hampshire Department of Historic Resources. Located in Manchester, New Hampshire, it was one of only seven “Usonian automatic” homes that Wright would build.
Wright’s “Usonian” architectural style was developed in the late 1930s to provide affordable, quality housing to middle-class Americans, and variations of his Usonian automatic design (there are believed to be 20 in existence) were designed to further reduce construction costs by using modular concrete elements in the construction of homes.
However, that was not the case: The home was commissioned by Dr. Toufic and Mildred Kalil in 1954, and its estimated cost of $25,000 upon completion had soared to $75,000.
The home is an example of Usonian Auto design; the single-story structure was constructed from 2,580 concrete blocks and has poured concrete floors, hundreds of stacked rectangular windows, and mahogany planks and doors hung on the interior walls.
Owned by the Kalil family for most of its existence, it retains nearly all of Wright’s original furnishings, including lamps, rugs, fixtures and furnishings.
The New Hampshire Department of Historic Resources noted in announcing the site’s new name that “the Kalil House has maintained an extremely high level of integrity and has not undergone any alterations or major restorations since its construction.”
The Kalil House was purchased in 2019 by the Currier Museum of Art, which also owns Wright’s Zimmerman House down the street. The museum can arrange tours of both houses.
