In December 1914—four months after a rampaging servant burned down his Wisconsin retreat and hacked to death seven people there, including his mistress—Frank Lloyd Wright was living in a little red-brick house at 25 E. Cedar in Chicago. He’d just made it clear to his wife, Catherine, that he wouldn’t be coming back to her and their six children in Oak Park when he received a flattering letter of condolence from an intriguing stranger. Her name was Maude Miriam Noel, and her letter, signed “Madame Noel,” piqued his interest enough to spark a meeting.
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For a while, anyway. Although Noel eventually became Wright’s second wife (they married in 1923, separated in 1924, and divorced in 1927), it was a fraught relationship from the beginning. In April 1915, in the midst of one of their knock-down, drag-out battles, he moved out. It’s not clear how much time Wright spent at 25 E. Cedar after that, but the house is still there, with a marker dedicated to him out front.
Or so it was until a couple years ago, when construction on a new, four-story mansion only inches away, at 21 E. Cedar, apparently began to destabilize it. Now the garage is boarded up, there’s an obvious fault line running through the facade, and the house stands unoccupied, morphing from asset to eyesore.
A spokesperson for the city said the building department has conducted inspections and “obviously something happened during the demolition and construction at 21 E. Cedar that caused the damage.” But, he said, “the Department of Buildings doesn’t regulate means and methods of construction.” The structural engineer for the new house submitted a retention-wall plan and “we rely on the structural engineer’s measurements and calculations that this will be sufficient to protect the property next door.” What the department does require is that the general contractor—in Giannoulias’s case, according to the city, Swain Development—carry insurance.
The Siegels’ structural engineer, Allan Gold, says Giannoulias’s builders “undermined” the house’s foundation, causing “severe” damage. “We tried to repair it but weren’t able to lift the house back as much as it dropped.” Gold says the city “probably should’ve been more diligent” when construction on the mansion started. In contrast, he adds, “We had trouble getting the building permits to try the repair. It took almost a year.”
