The second of a pair of Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian homes to find new owners this fall—the first was the McCartney House in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which received an offer as soon as it hit the market—is the massively expanded Thaxton House, the only FLW in Houston. The property fetched $2.7 million. It was initially listed in 2019 with an asking price of $2.85 million.

Completed in the mid-1950s, the Thaxton House began its existence as a typically modest home for the contemporary workaday couple or small family, with interiors measuring 1,800 sq. ft. Forty years later it was expanded to 8,100 sq. ft. The additions were designed in the FLW style, and align beautifully with the original build…although FLW might sternly have commented that no Usonian should be so extravagantly large.

Still, if he’d toured the place, Frank Lloyd Wright might’ve changed his mind. In the midst of its imposing façade, the home’s entry is captivating and inviting too, but the structure comes into its own in back, where it expands into corridors lined with floor-to-ceiling glass as a remarkable expression of largesse and connection with its setting. Interiors are blessed with the geometric evocations of modernity that echo Le Corbusier — check out the tile in the newer sections of the home, and the skylight and clerestories in one of the two kitchens — as well as the wood textures, wealth of easily obtainable and frugal materials, and a naturalistic installation: in this case, the courtyard formed by the addition.

And if this Usonian does expand beyond the needs of a 1950s nuclear family, it also contains a community-oriented extravagance which would’ve been consecrated by the master: a long built-in bench seat in the living room. Similar socially facilitating flourishes can be witnessed in Wright’s Lykes House in Phoenix, and Petra, the island home in Lake Mahopac, New York designed by him in the early 1950s and constructed in the 1990s.