Photo 21-BDU-12

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This is Frank Lloyd Wright's Don Duncan house located off Leask Lane in unincorporated Lisle IL just past the western edge of Morton Arboretum and down the road from Dan and Ada Rice's farm.

It's an extremely rare photo showing it amid its original sprawling acreage, set far back and completely unseen from the road.

It was a Wright Usonian Prefab design built by Marshall Erdman in 1957, but Duncan and his wife did go to Taliesin to meet with Wright who died in 1959.

Duncan eventually sold off his acreage piecemeal and a high end subdivision grew up between Leask Lane and the two acre site he kept around the house.

A custom house builder bought the two acres from Duncan's estate after he died in 2002 at age 95 and sought to demolish the house, which would've made it the first residential Wright demolition in 30 years.

But it was rescued and reassembled at Polymath Park in Pennsylvania near Fallingwater where it stands near some other rescued Wright structures and can rented out for overnight stays.

The house was located at what is now (approximately) 3830 Ambassador Court.

A boy in my class at then LCHS, class of ‘71, lived here. Our senior year all of our classmates spent a week here, every night, working on our Senior year Homecoming float. The location was perfect; we always wanted it to be private so no one from the other classes would spy on our idea, or do any damage. He was a nice guy and very active in school activities. I went on to major in art, and study a lot of architecture. I didn’t learn until years later that this was a FLW designed home!

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