In the mid-to-late 1890’s shortly after Frank Lloyd Wright left the architecture firm of Adler and Sullivan to go out on his own, some of his first solo designs were a handful of homes on River Forest’s western edge. The William Winslow House was built between 1894-95 on Auvergne Place. Across the street, Wright remodeled the Edward C. Waller House in 1899 (demolished in 1939,) and on the block behind them, Wright designed the Chauncey Williams House in 1895 at 530 Edgewood Place.
The Chauncey Williams House recently hit the market for $2.4 million, and the home is a unique example of Wright’s early work. The home has several Arts & Crafts Style motifs — the most striking of which might be the large river boulders surrounding the entire base of the home. The stones were pulled from the Desplaines River, and legend has it that the Wrights, the Wallers and the Williams pulled the rocks from the river themselves.
Real estate agent Tagger O’Brien of P.M. Walsh & Co., who is listing the house, says that the property was originally part of the Waller estate, and the Winslow and Williams Houses were built after Waller subdivided his property…