Usonia, a term coined by Wright to describe his architectural philosophy, is derived from United States. Wright was a fearless innovator and new forms and methods were part of his vision of America’s built environment. but his homes avoid many of the features laypeople find alienating in modern design.
Instead of towering above their surroundings, Wright’s houses are integrated into their environment, an approach he called “organic architecture.” The most famous example of this is Fallingwater, an audacious, cantilevered building that levitates over an actual waterfall. But Wright’s more modest projects were shaped by the same philosophy. Pope-Leighhey was built for a mere $7,000 after its original owner, Loren Pope, sent Wright an admiring letter asking him for a Usonian home on a budget.
It is possible to overstate the affordability of a house like Pope-Leighey. When construction began in 1939, the median American family income was just over $1,200. Pope had to finance the project through an unusual loan he obtained through his employer, The Washington Evening Star. Still, Pope-Leighey’s cost compares favorably to modern mortgage down payments, which are usually in the mid-five figures.
One reason Wright’s Usonian houses stand out, then, is that they were conceived with middle class families in mind. Another is their connection to the American landscape. Like many 20th century architects, Wright had a horror of excessive ornamentation, but he was interested in marrying his designs to their natural environment. New Yorker architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, whose short biography of Wright is appreciative of his gifts but appropriately critical of his excesses, wrote that “[u]nlike European buildings that maintained a cool aloofness from their surroundings, Wright’s slabs were tied to the earth, physically and symbolically, with rough local stone and natural textures and colors.”
Wright also built for Americans’ suburban aspirations. He was obsessed with driving, organizing annual cross country road trips from his summer headquarters in Wisconsin to a winter campus in Arizona well into his late career. “Broadacre City,” a planned community Wright first envisioned in the 1930s, is the polar opposite of the dense, vertical design trends beloved by mid-20th urban planners. It is spread out, private, and thick with vegetation and green spaces – a vision of American suburbia before the idea really existed.