Local landmark draws visitors

Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Visitors to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed “Prairie Style” home in McCook Friday afternoon walk through the living room to the cantilevered private veranda. Tours of the home were hosted by Nebraska Life Magazine.
Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette

CONNIE JO DISCOE

Regional Editor

McCOOK, Neb. — The Nebraska Life Magazine hosted sell-out tours of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in McCook on April 21.

Home owner Jan Korell told visitors that Wright designed and built the house for McCook jeweler Harvey P. Sutton and his wife, Eliza, between 1905 and 1908. Wright’s “Prairie Style” designs emphasized horizontal lines; there are more than 7,200 linear feet of quarter-sawn oak trim on the main floor of the two-story home.

Windows that wrap around the house on all sides also create horizontal lines, inside and out. The leaded glass windows are simple designs, Jan says, “but they’re delightful to live with.”

The front door of the home is almost hidden, which, according to Wright historians, is typical of his design. Jan said that Wright believed that if a visitor couldn’t find the front door, he or she obviously wasn’t an invited guest and most likely didn’t have any reason to be at the house.

The Sutton house remained a private home and war-time apartments until the Suttons’ deaths in 1952.

In 1960, Dr. J. Harold Donaldson purchased it and cut it up into 24 little exam rooms, a waiting room and reception area.

Donaldson retired in 1978, and McCook residents Don and Mary Poore worked for 10 years to restore the house. John and Stacy Cannon took up the restoration work for another four years and then sold the house to Jan and her husband, Van, in 1992.

The Korells have restored “The Sutton house” to Wright’s designs, with limited updates to fit today’s lifestyle. The only furniture original to the house are a dining room sideboard, a set of andirons and possibly a couch.

The dining room chairs are copies of chairs designed for Wright’s Robie House on the campus of the University of Chicago in the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago, Ill. A circle of high-backed chairs around the central table create a feeling of “a room within a room,” Jan said. “They create a very intimate, very interesting space.”

The Sutton House is the only house in Nebraska designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, although he drew plans for another, for the Charles and Belle Barnes family of McCook, between 1902 and 1904. Barnes eventually decided that Wright’s design, expected to cost $2,000 to build, was too expensive and the project was abandoned.

Wright’s “Barnes Project” blueprints are on display at the Museum of the High Plains in downtown McCook.

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