At Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's studio near Spring Green, Wis., an eager band of draftsmen once gathered to work alongside the much-revered architect.
One of those apprentices, known then as "the pencil in Wright's hand," was a young architect from Minnesota named John Howe.
Howe, an original member of the Taliesin Fellowship Associated Architects, later built a cottage across a wide valley from Taliesin. As the story goes, one day in the late 1950s, a young couple from the Twin Cities saw a picture of that cottage and wrote to Howe, asking him to design a house for them and their two young boys on a wooded hillside overlooking Lake Minnetonka in Orono.
Howe delivered with a sprawling, 3,620-square-foot Prairie-style house, known as Wintertree, that's now on the market for $2.295 million.
"The views are breathtaking," said listing agent Val Fazendin, Roger Fazendin Realtors. "When you walk in, it's just amazing. You can see the lake from just about every single window, and rolling hills are all around you."
In an original letter that Howe wrote to his clients, George and Norma Johnson, he described his approach to siting and designing the house.
"I located the house at the top of the wooded slope so that from every room the inhabitants could enjoy views of the lake. The plan is laid out on a grid, or unit system, of equilateral triangles, measuring 5 feet, 4 inches on each side. This produces a greater flow of space and flexibility in the plan than could be obtained with conventional 90-degree angles and the usual box-shaped rooms they produce."
In that letter, Howe says that because the Johnsons had two small boys and Norma wanted to make housekeeping as simple as possible, he located the cooking, laundry, playroom and family dining room adjacent to one another. All of the rooms in the house, with the exception of the living room, are on one level. The 1½-story living room is a step down from the rest and has walls of glass facing North Arm Bay. There's also a study with panoramic views of the lake.
