Surreal Wood, Stone, and Glass Villa in Ohio: Architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Final Project

Famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright has left his imprint across America’s modern look and feel, most famously with Pennsylvania’s Fallingwater, a house often considered one of America’s best works of architecture. But Wright is behind over 500 buildings that stand across the country, some of which you might have already admired without realizing it, like the striking mansions of Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood. Before his death, Wright left one last architectural treat for the design-minded to dote on. It’s a house called RiverRock, and you can actually stay in it overnight.

You’ll find Wright’s final project in the charming Cleveland suburb of Willoughby Hills, Ohio. It bears Wright’s signature blend of integration with nature, clean lines, and wide-open, breathable interiors, with a combination of wood, stone, and glass materials. Notably, though, its construction wasn’t complete until 2025 — over 60 years after Wright’s death, and the fact that Wright had no involvement in the construction itself has sparked some debate about to what extent it can be considered true to his vision. Nevertheless, the completion of RiverRock means that you now have the chance to stay in a beautiful house that derives from Wright’s blueprints and experience firsthand the architect’s eye for a living space that’s harmonious, elegant, and meditative.

Though known for some grand works like the Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright also designed some smaller residences called Usonian homes. One of these Usonian homes can be found in the funky Pennsylvania town of Ohiopyle. They were intended to be affordable to the middle class, characterized by simple materials, open spaces, and having a single story. They were also built on pastoral land, essential to Wright’s unity of architecture with nature. All of these features are evident at Ohio’s RiverRock, the home Wright designed on his deathbed.

More precisely, Wright died in 1959, and the designs for RiverRock were found on his drawing board posthumously, named simply “Project #5909.” Wright designed the house on the request of Louis Penfield, one of his previous contractors. One feature integral to Wright’s blueprint is a site-specific poplar tree. Even though the site remained available after Wright’s death — and the tree has been standing ever since — the house didn’t begin to actually materialize until 2023, under the ownership of Sarah Dykstra.

Since the building was completed without Wright’s oversight, not everyone accepts it as a Wright design to a tee. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation said to ArtNet, “Although it is true that the RiverRock drawings were some of Wright’s last, the current construction varies from the actual plans designed by Wright” due to building codes and materials. On the other hand, Dykstra told the construction team that if they needed to make any deviations, to “do so under the ‘skin’ so the house will look exactly the same,” she shared with News-Herald. All of Wright’s delicate touches are there, from the sprawling glass windows to the specific orientation of the home, allowing sunlight to land right on the junction of wood and concrete during the start of spring and fall.