Coonley Playhouse
Riverside, IL 1912
Designed in 1912, the Coonley Playhouse is a thoroughly modern building. The building is an assemblage of wall and roof slabs that originally enclosed a small private school. Almost a century ago, in an early example of adaptive reuse, it was successfully converted to a comfortable single-family home. Its boldly cantilevering roofs are punctuated by rectangular openings that allow sunlight to play across its walls, a concept that would later be used in many of Wright’s important Usonian houses. As with all Wright’s houses, the interior space focuses on the central hearth. The current owners have meticulously restored, or when necessary recreated, the famous abstractions of balloons and confetti in the art glass windows that surround the central interior space. Click here to view a virtual tour of the house.