On May 19, Chicago-based Wright auction house will offer an opportunity to buy Frank Gehry’s 1987 Winton Guest House, a landmark structure the architect designed for a site on the shores of Minnesota’s Lake Minnetonka. The only catch? The winner will have to move the building to a new location.
The guest house “marks a seminal moment in Gehry’s development,” says Richard Wright, president of Wright. “It’s the first structure that articulates his little village concept—the idea that each room has a unique architectural expression, but that they live together in a balanced composition. It prefigures exactly what he goes on to do in his masterwork in Bilbao.”
But for such an important project, the 2,300-square-foot guest house has already led a surprisingly transient life. After purchasing and subdividing the 12-acre property where it was built, a developer donated the building to the University of St. Thomas, which sliced it up, moved it to Owatonna, Minnesota, and restored it between 2008 and 2011.
Last year, the school sold the property on which the structure had been rebuilt, and it must now be removed by August 2016.
The estimate for the sale is $1 million to $1.5 million. A model of the residence based on one from the Museum of Modern Art’s collection will be on view at Wright’s New York gallery, May 5–19.
Wright, 980 Madison Avenue, New York; right20om
