Architecture Wednesday: Haddock House

Y’all know I loves me some Frank Lloyd Wright homes …FLW designs … FLW-inspired designs …and so it’s really no surprise that I am in love with Haddock House in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The original design Haddock House was conceptualized, sketched, and planned by FLW who created it as a one-of-a-kind customized masterpiece for a northern Wisconsin school teacher and friend in 1938.

Sadly, though, the house was never actually built before Wright passed away. But, forty years after Wright designed the house, a University of Michigan professor, Frederick Haddock, purchased the design from FLW’s widow. He then partnered with Taliesin Associated Architects, founded by Wright himself to manage his legacy, to bring the house to life.

With the help of Taliesin, Haddock chose a 10-acre plot of meadows and wooded hills that sloped down toward Honey Creek as the spot for his home. It was not only the site Haddock wanted, but it also was the kind of site that FLW’s original design was set in.

Haddock House is a stunning structure with unending visual appeal and artistic angles and texture. It was designed in the style of Wright’s classic Usonian homes, known for their efficient living and the way they were built specifically to blend in with their natural surroundings.

Haddock House is built with slanting layers of wood, panels of shining glazed glass, and high ceilings intended to increase feelings of spaciousness that belie the actual square footage. Personal spaces—bedrooms and bathrooms—are designed to be as cozy and warm as possible, featuring natural woods and materials that blend in with the house’s wooded surroundings. And, as is the case with most FLW homes, there are built-in details like lamps and art pieces that continue the wood-grained theme.

In contrast to all that wood inside, are all the woods and green spaces outside, including a landscape design that nods toward traditional Japanese gardens.

Once the house was finished, Haddock put it up for sale, but included FLW’s original drawings and blueprints, as well as letters of authentication from Taliesen Associated Architects making Haddock House not just a Frank Lloyd Wright design, but a full-realized, pristinely completed one-of-a-kind FLW masterpiece.

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